Dr Louisa Borg Haviaras

Recently President Nikos Christodoulides was in London to launch the ‘Minds in Cyprus’ initiative, with the aim of bringing talented Cypriots back to their country.  

This initiative focuses on employment, innovation, tax incentives, education and family integration, all of which will make it easier for highly skilled Cypriots abroad to bring their careers back to Cyprus. President Christodoulides also recently visited the US tech and energy hubs of Silicon Valley and Houston, together with key advisors, to promote Cyprus as a serious player in technology and entrepreneurship.  As key incentives this plan offers flexibility to work from home, investment incentives, a dynamic professional environment and attractive working conditions.

However, what is the meaning of return migration? Literature reports that it is difficult to measure return migration due to definition challenges and data availability.

Difficulties in defining ‘return’ arise because the movements covered by the term are variedand one single definition might not reveal complex or particular categories of return such as temporary, permanent, circulatoryre-emigration and secondary migration.

In our case return migration in the present context is understood to mean that permanent return may be defined as when a Cypriot scientist migrant returns to the home country with the intention to stay.

Despite rich research findings focusing mostly on the consequences and driving forces of migration, the relationship between return migration and home country is an aspect of return migration relatively neglected.

Arguably a deeper understanding of this relationship is essential as this determines the root causes and motives that resulted in the decision to migrate in the first place and potentially influence future return decisions.

Although return migration is not free of complexities, previous research indicates that research attractiveness in the home country, including the research environment quality, amount and openness of career perspectives, meritocracy and transparency is instrumental for retaining and attracting scientists and researchers.

This, it could be argued, implies attractiveness of the national scientific and research establishment and in general the institutional characteristics of the home country in terms of organisational structures, recruitment policies, openness and points of re-entry into the national research system.

Is Cyprus ready for such an initiative? Is Cyprus going to implement such an important initiative? Although in March 2016 Cyprus exited its three-year financial assistance programme with the economic recovery continuing, there is a lot of reform to be done and the stalling of measures reflects a more complex political environment.

National research, development and innovation governance still lacks guidance and vision, as well as a coherent strategy that integrates outward and return migration into a development programme with the coordination and synergy between national research environment stakeholders, public and private, and business.

The European Commission Report on Cyprus 2024, and not only of this particular year, warns that labour market performance has been strong, but challenges persist, notably in terms of skills mismatches and basic skills.

Funding from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and cohesion policy are mutually reinforcing Cyprus’ efforts to boost competitiveness and stimulate sustainable growth. Still, we lack a lighter administrative burden and a better business environment and a better anti-corruption framework.

The Recovery and Resilience Policy includes reforms that aim to attract investment and people to work in research and innovation through tax incentive schemes and collaboration between research institutes and public universities to create new education programmes.

Under this policy Cyprus also committed to increasing research and development funding for businesses, with a focus on small and medium businesses and start-ups. Administrative capacity however limits the potential for reform.

Poor performance in basic skills, the low rate of science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates, and the declining rate of adults enrolled in training are the main challenges to tackle skills mismatches and labour shortages.

Cyprus needs to improve the business environment by cutting red tape, streamlining permitting procedures, promoting a robust anti-corruption framework and by creating real incentives for research, development and innovation. While Cyprus benefits from a highly educated population, its research and development system remains very small, and its role in economic development is limited.

A considerable number of highly skilled migrants do return to their home country due to successful government public policies, as seen with countries such as Taiwan, China, India, Austria and Hungary.

The above have serious implications for Cypriot policy makers and highlight the need to focus their attention on the overall attractiveness of the Cypriot national research landscape in order to stimulate return scientific migration and retain scientists and researchers in Cyprus.

Dr Louisa Borg Haviaras holds a PhD from Oxford Brookes University