Skilled Gambians abroad: Stay or leave? How migration and embeddedness theories can explain their decisions

Management and organization literature have, so far, overlooked the behaviour of migrants in terms of their decision to stay abroad or return. The literature focuses mainly on the causes of migration and until recently, the... [ view full abstract ]

Management and organization literature have, so far, overlooked the behaviour of migrants in terms of their decision to stay abroad or return. The literature focuses mainly on the causes of migration and until recently, the area of return has remained relatively unexplored. Existing theories or extant literature explain why people move, while ignoring the crucial counterfactual question: why do so many people, under similar circumstances, decide to remain? This is a research gap that needs to be addressed. Scholars are challenged to build a more robust and nuanced theoretical framework that can account for this phenomenon. This study builds on the existing migration theories combined with the embeddedness theory to investigate why some skilled Gambians choose to stay abroad while others choose to return home. The data will be collected through surveys targeted to skilled Gambians who have migrated. It will also use interviews with those who stayed abroad as well as those who have returned to the Gambia.

Keywords: The Gambia, migration, highly-skilled migrants, migration theory, embeddedness theory