Beyond the Borders of North-East Italy: First Results from a Five-Year Study on the Propensity to Emigrate of Final Year Students at the University of Udine and the Destinations Chosen

Abstract

The emigration of many highly skilled individuals is considered a problem when it is not counterbalanced over time by a worker inflow of equal quality and quantity. This phenomenon, known as the “brain drain”, can also have negative effects on the development potential of the migrant’s country of origin. The perspective adopted in this study is different from the stance commonly found in the literature, which focuses on an ex-post analysis of the brain drain based on official data on the demographic flows of residents. Instead, a case study is used to investigate the phenomenon at its source before it translates into “new emigration”. Hence, in 2017, a census survey was designed for students terminating their degree courses at the University of Udine to detect their intention to emigrate at the end of their academic studies. Moreover, the students were asked to indicate possible destinations to identify any geographical concentration in their preferences. The results for the first five years of the survey (2018-22) are given for the first time in this article, including those regarding the impact of the pandemic and the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict on the propensity of graduates to emigrate.