WASTE OR GAIN OF BRAINS? AN ANALYSIS OF THE PROFESSIONAL REINTEGRATION OF BRAZILIANS RETURNING FROM EUROPE
return migration; skilled migration; brain waste; professional reintegration.
This thesis investigates the challenges of professional reintegration of skilled Brazilians returning from Europe, aiming to analyze whether this migratory flow results in an effective brain gain for the country or converts into brain waste. The research adopts a mixed-methods approach. The quantitative stage analyzes microdata from the 2000 and 2010 Demographic Censuses of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics to identify macrosocial trends in the sociodemographic profile and labor market insertion of returnees. The qualitative stage uses in-depth semi-structured interviews with 15 migrants who returned from 2012 onwards, selected via snowball sampling, to understand the individual experiences of return. The quantitative results show a growth in the volume of skilled returnees, who are spatially concentrated in the Southeast region of Brazil and present an increase in insertion into unstable occupations. The qualitative data reveal that the return frequently occurs due to subjective motivations, family restructuring linked to the care economy, and institutional barriers faced abroad. In the Brazilian context, professionals face bureaucratic delays for the recognition and revalidation of diplomas and a lack of interest from the productive sector, factors that result in professional underutilization. As an alternative, individuals mobilize interpersonal networks of trust, conceptualized as Cordial Capital, and insert themselves into transnational telework dynamics. The work concludes that territorial repatriation does not guarantee the full utilization of the human capital acquired abroad. Mitigating brain waste requires an entrepreneurial State that implements sustainable reception policies capable of articulating scientific promotion with the creation of real opportunities in the national productive sector.