Golub, Branka (2004) Hrvatski znanstvenici u svijetu: socijalni korijeni u prostoru i vremenu. Biblioteka Znanost i društvo (9). Institut za društvena istraživanja u Zagrebu, Zagreb. ISBN 953-6218-19-4
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Abstract
This investigation of the social roots of Croatian scientific (e)migration encompasses a larger interval of time. In writing it, I used the material and theses from a 1992 doctoral dissertation on external migrations of scientists and relied on two empirical studies from 1995 and 1998. Furthermore, I synthesized the material on the drain of Croatian scientists from four empirical studies dating as far back as 1986. Where it gives insight into the respondents' answers, the text reaches back to individuals who left their homeland in the second half of the twentieth century, primarily in the sixties and seventies, and in some cases even further to pre-war and wartime emigrants. The war being World War II, of course. When I began my investigations of the brain drain, or to be more precise, the drain of Croatian scientists, the volume and destination of this phenomenon were completely unknown. Even to this day, there has been no systematic study into the drain of the highly educated Croatian population, not to mention other socio-structural features. For this reason, I was oriented mainly toward the local scientific population during my investigation of the various aspects of Croatian scientific emigration, except for the first research in 1986 when the investigation focused on Croatian scientists abroad. While investigating the potential scientific drain, I was also indirectly concerned with the real one. The approach and methodology required that I disregard the actual volume of emigrations and focus on certain more sociologically important assumptions such as the socio-structural characteristics and motivational patterns of potential or actual highly educated emigrants from the Croatian scientific community as well as outside its ranks. The synthesis and theoretical organization of empirical material from a segment of social reality during a time when Croatian society was undergoing dramatic changes was far from an easy task. The first investigation of the Croatian scientists' drain was conducted at the time of socialist Yugoslavia (1986); material for the second was gathered on the eve of the first multi-party parliamentary elections in May 1990 and shortly before the Homeland War; the last two took place four and seven years after Croatia gained independence, in 1995 and 1998 respectively. Within the global context, this was an era of significant socio-historical events such as the collapse of socialism, which began with that figurative symbol of the start of transitional changes in the real-socialist bloc — the fall of the Berlin Wall. Any author (sociologist) wishing to write a sociological analysis of aspects of social life at the time and place of such a radical turning point of civilization should either wait for a sufficient passage of time in order to explain one segment or the whole of social reality in its entirety and the anomy of shifting from one social system to another, or engage in an analysis of certain issues as those changes are happening and before they take a definite shape. I opted for the second variant, attempting to incorporate the available empirical material on the drain of Croatian scientists into the theoretical framework on the subject of external migration of scientists. The sociological angle of the investigation of the migration of experts, mainly scientists, includes the above historical and theoretical dimension as well as the socio-structural factors of the brain drain as recorded in each investigation, and the motives of emigration examined on the individual (subjective) level. As manifested on several levels or dimensions, the investigation of the scientists’ drain is still a relevant task, just as it was almost twenty years ago when the first investigations began. Although as old as science itself, the topic of external migration of scientists has been neglected for years in Croatia and is thus insufficiently investigated. In world literature, it has mostly been reduced to one, economic aspect. Scientific migrations, according to some authors and analysts, belong to general migration movements and follow the mobility patterns and models of an entire population or its working-age fraction. According to others, they are a phenomenon of their own with an inherent logic of emergence and manifestation. Emigration from the mother country as a phenomenon arises from general and specific circumstances in society or local communities as well as from individual motivation, aspirations, ambitions, and the freedom of individual choice. Socio-structural factors are the society's contribution to this phenomenon and are more or less stable and constant during periods in which society as a whole is constant and stable. When a society, such as Croatian society of the nineties, enters into change, structural factors change as well. However, the effects — besides the direct ones brought about by the change itself (crisis, conflict, reform) — become visible and measurable only upon completion of the restructuring process of institutional and civil society. The 1986 and 1990 investigations of the socio-structural factors underlying scientific drain, particularly the investigations of sub-system factors, pointed to certain push factors of the scientific-institutional organization which, in the decade that followed, entered into transition. However, since the restructuring process is still underway and since not much has changed for the better either on the legislative or organizational-institutional level, the push factors from the pre-transitional period are still noticeable to a certain degree. Intensified brain drain was only expected at the beginning of the nineties in circumstances of war-induced pauperism of the already impoverished scientific infrastructure (long-term underfunding, inadequate equipment, informational isolation) and at a time when Croatian society was embarking on the difficult road to transformation — a road potentially concealing many traps and trial-and-error learning. The motivational aspect of the emigration of scientists abroad suggests that, in a more stable social context, certain motivational patterns occur that are specific to the scientific segment of the population and comparable to the observed and recorded models in the world literature, especially in more developed countries. In the transitional period after 1990, it was expected that there would be changes in the motivational structure of the scientists’ drain. They followed the specific-to-general pattern. Intrinsic motivation, oriented toward professional reasons for going abroad such as scientific excellence, creative work, individual achievement, better conditions for scientific work, and similar factors, was repressed by typically existential motives. The motivational pattern with an accent on professional goals was, in an aggravated social situation, restructured according to the universal order of motives underlying general migration streams and thus became more similar to the motivational pattern of scientific (e)migrants from developing countries. Proclaimed individual freedom, together with the freedom of scientific work and creativity, operates as a subjective response to concrete time-space, social, and scientific circumstances, and is in a conditional relation with the socio-economic status that makes them possible (or will make them possible in the future). According to the findings of one investigation, unemployment and lack of appealing prospects in the broader social context toward the end of the nineties were the two main reasons why young people of various social and professional positions said that, if able to choose, they would seek their chances outside Croatia. In present-day society, in which employment represents a situation less ordinary — a hard-to-attain goal for a large segment of the population, particularly its most vital age group — the inclination of as much as two-thirds of young scientists to abandon their scientific profession (68.0%) or their homeland (63.3%) leaves no doubt as to how they feel about their socio-professional position.
| Item Type: | Book |
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| Additional Information: | Language: Croatian. – Title in English: Croatian scientists abroad: social roots in space and time. |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Hrvatski znanstvenici, odljev u inozemstvo, socijalni korijeni (Croatian scientists, brain drain, social roots) |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HM Sociology |
| Depositing User: | Karolina |
| Date Deposited: | 17 Jan 2017 12:53 |
| Last Modified: | 07 Nov 2025 06:51 |
| URI: | http://idiprints.knjiznica.idi.hr/id/eprint/704 |
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