Ideational Shift in the Public Political Discourse on Highly-Skilled Migration in Contemporary Russia

In an age where so-called 'citizens of the world' no longer identify the place they were born in as being inevitably of permanent residency for all their lifetimes, intellectual potential of people is gradually becoming one of the main competitive strengths in reaching the highest quality of life possible. Globalization has also changed the way science is perceived, making it international and mobile. This shift made mainstream discourse on the impact of highly-skilled migration to evolve from negative to much more positive one. However, some societies still tend to stick to old paradigms and reproduce discourses that dominated the field some 50 years ago. Linguistic turn in political science made academia more aware of the fact that ideas and core beliefs play significant role in policy-making and even determine the rationality of actors. Current research aims to investigate and critically evaluate key discourses that have dominated the debate over highly-skilled migration between 2000 and 2016 and understand if Russia has undergone an ideational shift where ideas of highly-skilled migration have become more acceptable not just among researchers but also among a wider base of actors.