The inquiry into the migration flows between distinguishing skilled and low-waged labour between world cities is considered as an extremely pertinent measurement for generating relational data (Beaverstock and Boardwell 2000). However, as we have seen earlier, official migration statistics are usually collected on a national-level, the available data reflects inter-nation migratory flows rather than inter-city flows (Findlay 1988, Beaverstock 1990). However it is still possible to detect the number of foreign migrants (residents, students and workers etc) in a major city by checking municipal statistics; such data was found on the websites of the Municipalities of Shanghai and Paris. Here are a number of ways sources the author used (in addition to those national bodies mentioned above) to identify the numbers of students in:
Student Migration Data on the City Level
Shanghai: Shanghai Municipality (www.shanghai.gov.cn ) Municipal Statistics Bureau (www.stats-sh.gov.cn )
Paris: Mairie de Paris (www.paris.fr)
Etudiant de Paris (www.etudiantdeparis.fr)
IASTAR France (International Association for Student TVs and Radios) / www.eduparis.net Project
Without surprise, data on inter-city student migration or migration in general are very scarce. Once migrants enter a country, they usually have freedom to travel domestically. The temporary and mobile character of student migrants remains great challenges for statistical recording. Nevertheless, in some countries, for example, in the case of France, foreign residents are required to register at the local police ‘prefecture’ to apply for a residence permit and in this way, migration data can be collected on the local level. But this information is usually kept in confidentiality and is not for public use. Luo (2006)10 commented on that:
‘There is data for incoming and outgoing (international) migration to Shanghai, recorded by the Public Security Bureau who is in charge of the border entry and exit. But the information is highly confidential and can only be accessed by special permission. Even for the purposes of academic research, permissions are usually only granted for key Chinese institutions and think- tanks because the policies derived from the research are concerning the border management, combating for illegal migration and prosperity of the country.’
(Luo 2006, interview)
There is a rough estimation of student migration from Shanghai, the outbound number is said to be around 100,000 in the past 20 years, and around 32,000 students returned to work and or start their own businesses in Shanghai (Luo 2005). But there is no data on where they are returning from. The Municipal Government and media occasionally publish press releases or articles on return migration, but they are often linked to the specific return programmes by the Shanghai Government, or focus on the number of new enterprises set up by returnees. These numbers are ‘official figures’ which only record those who officially returned and registered with the governments or trading office to acquire a business license. The majority of returnees is not coming to Shanghai via the official recruitment channel but on a private basis, therefore will most likely be overlooked in the official data.
10
Professor LUO Keren, East China Normal University, through private interview in Shanghai in summer, 2006.
On the French side, the only information on foreign students in Paris can be found on the student website of the City Hall (Mairie de Paris). Here is the abstract from the website, which claims that there are 40,000 foreign students in Paris and every year there are 14,000 new arrivals:
‘You have decided to pursue your studies in Paris? You have just arrived here? Therefore you are about to discover a cosmopolitan city which hosts 40,000 foreign students – among them 14,000 arriving every year. However, before enjoying this city, you will have to go through several administrations that we will help you to understand.’
http://www.etudiantdeparis.fr/
The website promotes Paris as a cosmopolitan place to study, a home for international students. However, it only indicates how many foreign students are in Paris without any information on their nationalities not to mention which city they were previously based. There is no data on return migration neither from Paris nor from France.
As shown above, there are far fewer secondary data on international migration on the city level to allow the conduct of in-depth quantitative analysis or comparison. Thus, quantitative data alone cannot fully show the flows between originating and host cities or countries. In order to solve this problem, a number of social scientists have suggested to gather relational data through the combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods which are focused at either firm level (Johnson and Salt 1990, Beaverstock 1996) or at the level of the migrants themselves (Beaverstock 1996). This combination has been used in studying the elite migration within the advanced producer services within the world city network (Beaverstock et al. 2000). Therefore the data collection of migration statistics was enriched through fieldwork in Shanghai and Paris, on the personal contact level of migrants and relevant stakeholders.
3.2.3 Quantitative Reasons for the Relational Case Study of Shanghai and Paris
As an attempt to understand the inter-city student migration flows, a pilot research was conducted on the linkages between cities through business education network (mainly MBA schools). Global city research has been identified as theoretically rich but poverty poor in empirical data, as suggested pointed out by Peter Taylor (1997). It proves to be difficult to quantify the changing positions of cities in the world city system and hierarchy (Beaverstock and Boardwell 2000). In response to this problem, researchers have attempted to collect relational data between cities, such as telecommunication (Marek 1992), air traffic and airline passengers (Timberlake 1998, Witlox et al. 2004, Derudder and Wiltox 2005) in addition to the extensive research on attribute data of city.
In order to enrich the existing data on intercity linkage, following the quantitative data collection system of a similar but larger project on world city network formation funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (www.lboro.ac.uk/ gawc/projects/projec19.html), a pilot project was launched to collect relational data and demonstrate the connectivity between cities through the network of business education.
Ten top MBA business schools11 and twenty-two cities are included in this study.
Cities were given scores from 0-3 according to their status in relation to the business schools (3 as the being the location for Headquarters, 2 as the location for joint programme and strategic alliances schools, 1 as the location for regular executive forum and established partner schools, 0 as no presence of activities by chosen business schools). After the data were collected from the websites and brochures of the top 10 business schools, they were analysed by the connectivities macro developed by Rossi and Rossi.12
11
The selection of business schools were based on the rankings of Financial Times, see more detailed information on: http://rankings.ft.com/rankings/mba/rankings.html .
The early data exploitation showed great similarity to the results of the ESRC project, putting Paris again among the top five of the world cities league; and most of the top cities in both projects are the same, despite the different industries sampled (GaWC project used six advance producer services, law, accountancy, finance/banking, consultancy, advertising).
Table 3: Top Twenty-one GaWC Cities compared with result of MBA schools city rankings
MBA School Cities GaWC World Cities
London London
Singapore New York
San Francisco Hong Kong
New York Paris
Paris Tokyo
Boston Singapore
Philadelphia Toronto
Hong Kong Madrid
Chicago Brussels
Toronto Frankfurt
Tel Aviv Amsterdam
Koblenz Chicago
Beijing Milan
Shanghai Sydney
Washington San Paolo
Vermont Los Angeles
Cambridge (USA) Zurich
San Paolo Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires San Francisco
Hyderabad Beijing
New Haven Seoul
This quantitative exercise showed the relative high position of Paris and Shanghai in the MBA schools rankings also confirmed the appropriateness of the choice of these two cities as the target location for this research. The selection of Paris is on the basis of its leading status in the global city network and European cities hierarchy. Paris is arguably the second largest city in Europe, the political, economic, financial and cultural heart of France and radiates far beyond in Europe. Also worth noting is also the heavy presence of US cities in the MBA school world city network (9 cities) compared with 4 in the GaWC list, which is an indication of the importance of the US in global knowledge network.
Although Germany has the second largest population of Chinese students in Europe, there are no comparable cities to the level of Paris. This is due to the federal structure of Germany, whose economy is significantly more decentralised than in the UK or France. Major cities in different regions have developed different activities: while Berlin and Bonn are considered the country’s political capitals, the financial hub is Frankfurt, Hamburg is a centre for media and international trade, Munich the ‘cultural’ and hi-tech capital, etc. In terms of higher education, many of the most reputed German universities are located in smaller cities such as Tübingen, Heidelberg, Mannheim, Göttingen or Koblenz (the latter being the only one listed in the ranking above, counting only one schools of relatively small size).
Quite the contrary, Paris is one of the major education hubs for Europe and has a number of top business schools listed in the Financial Times Top 100 MBA schools rankings. It is also home to a large number of international students as shown in Figure 5. In comparison, Paris possesses a real cluster of clearly recognisable top business schools. Figure 5 clearly shows the large stock of student populations in France and the high percentage of international students. Previous research on MBA schools also confirms the important role of Paris as the No. 5 city in the business education network. Thus this research selects Paris can thus be considered a pertinent choice in Europe as the site for studying Chinese migration. Also the study on Paris, as a non-English City has been relatively under developed compared to other English speaking cities like London and New York (Scott 2004). So this research will also raise the profile of academic research on Paris as part of the world city network.
Figure 5: Number of Foreign Students in Paris with reference London (in tertiary education) 300000 350000 31468 58333 0 50000 100000 150000 200000 250000 300000 350000 400000 Paris London N u m b e r o f S tu d e n ts Total Students Overseas Students
(Sources: EduParis and Study London (author’s calculation))
Another choice was made in terms of subject of study. As student migration is still a quite broad topic, this research focuses exclusively on students from business education. The rationale behind this decision is that no other academic discipline is as much subject to global competition for talents and as attractive to students in terms of career prospects, as a recent report of the Graduate Management Admission Council has shown (Loades 2005)13. As a result, it is undoubtedly the field of study, which has
produced the highest level of student migration: most international students are concentrated in business and economics education, which are by far the most popular subjects, with an intake more than double of that of the second largest academic discipline, engineering and technology.
The choice of selecting Shanghai as the location for studying return migration is also obvious, because Shanghai being the biggest recipient of return migration and China’s arguably most suitable candidate for global city (Lin 2004). Furthermore, a survey conducted by the Elite Reference magazine14 has asked more than 3,000 Chinese
students in 49 countries about their first choice of city where to which they wish to return. It turns out that, with a popularity of 37.3% and 31.8% respectively, Shanghai
13 Rebecca Loades 2005: The future of graduate management education in the context of the Bologna
accord, GMAC (Graduate Management Admission Council), www.gmacbolognaproject.com.
event tops and Beijing (31.8%) are the two as most favourite Chinese cities city for returning students.