The brain drain in Mexico-a subject for research ... or agenda?

The purpose of this article is to analyse the present state of the discussion and data regarding the brain drain in Mexico. From current data, recent trends show certain peculiarities in the national picture, pointing to an increase in the number of free movers, and a decrease in the number of young people who obtain Mexican government scholarships for studying abroad. This decrease is partially compensated by the growing number of short-term mobility programmes. The trend also points to the fact that although Mexico fits into the classical pattern of South-North dependency, as well as having a low capacity for attracting foreign human resources, it also shows an almost exclusive dependency towards the United States, and a perennial difficulty in designing new linkage and organisation measures for pertinent scientific migration. This in turn permits an analysis of the elite formation and reproduction mechanisms in a dependent country, and the identification of the indirect repercussions of public policies regarding internationalisation and quality assurance in the widening developmental breech between the more and the lesser developing countries.