njemački

City views / perspectives – skilled migrants as seismographs of urban development

Post/socialist state-building and transformation processes have been going along with continuous brain-drain dynamics until today, whilst knowledge or (highly) skilled migrants have been an important target group for official brain- gain-policies. Appeals to return “home” have been and are trying to reach out particularly to diasporas. Occupational structures, knowledge milieus, living standards and life quality measured also on levels of urban openness and cultural diversity decide upon development perspectives of competing cities – especially when societies invent themselves anew as knowledge societies and introduce respective development strategies. By attracting in particular co-ethnic migrants, it is intended to support socio-cultural homogeneity and to intervene compensatory into accelerated social diversification dynamics as post-socialist form of (anti-) diversity-management. However, also co-ethnic knowledge migrants might likewise rather contribute to heterogeneity, possibly to intensifying socio-spatial disparities and thus to tendencies of disintegration, which find reverse correspondence in nationalistic practices and rituals of local closure and defense. Do knowledge migration and brain-drain/gain-dynamics sharpen effects of transformation which lead to further disintegration – labeled schematically as ethnic stratification and spatial segregation, socio-economic differentiation, cultural and political diversification – or only reflect and even counterbalance them? Do knowledge-based development strategies and co-ethnic brain-gain policies support urban densification / diversification and integration and if, how is this being inscribed into the various appearances of post-socialist cities? The increasingly debated, growing misbalance between policy intentions and policy outcomes, which especially also marks European urban policies, can here concretely be addressed – between the discursive poles of strong social cohesion in formerly consensual societies on the one hand, and much stronger polarization in generally as insecure and uncomfortable criticized contemporary societies on the other hand.

post/socialist ; transformation processes ; skilled migrants

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