Beyond brain drain: Spatial and non-spatial determinants of highly skilled Turkish professionals' mobility to Dutch city-regions

Date

2026-12-01

Author

Saçın, Hülya
Büyükcivelek, Ahmet Burak

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Global competition for talent has shifted from nations to city-regions, rendering traditional wage-driven migration models insufficient. This study examines the “New Wave” of highly skilled migration from Turkish metropolitan centers to Dutch city-regions, exploring how tangible urban features (Hard City) and intangible socio-political environments (Soft City) interact. Employing a mixed-methods design with 196 professionals, the research triangulates advanced Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) with a qualitative thematic analysis of open-ended participant narratives. The structural pathways reveal a balanced equilibrium between physical-functional environments and socio-institutional atmospheres in anchoring overall migrant satisfaction. However, localized effect sizes and qualitative insights unmask a clear hierarchy: the socio-institutional atmosphere commands a substantially greater independent capacity to explain variations in migrant well-being than physical infrastructure alone. At the granular level, environmental cleanliness, quality healthcare, and safe cycling networks emerge as the critical physical anchors for satisfaction, while macroeconomic purchasing power is structurally outperformed by socio-cultural tolerance and linguistic accessibility. Furthermore, the model confirms a temporal satisfaction paradox; while high-quality public spaces suppress immediate return intentions, extended residence fails to yield linear socio-cultural integration. Instead, over time, professionals experience involuntary immobility, feeling trapped within a highly functional “Golden Cage”. Ultimately, this paper reframes highly skilled mobility as a deliberate flight from unpredictable socio-political structures toward human-scale urban morphologies, where global talent strategically exchanges familiar cultural roots for institutional predictability and collective public capital.

Subject Keywords

Brain drain, Highly skilled migration, Netherlands, Quality of life, Spatial trade-off, Urban habitus

URI

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=105045872245&origin=inward
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/120119

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Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Article