Research Conditions and Nothing Else Matters? – A Typology of International Researchers’ Rationales for Choosing Host Institutions

This article presents an empirically based typology of researchers’ rationales for choosing a mobility destination and challenges the commonly held assumption that research conditions the primary decision-making criterion. Theoretically informed by a structuration approach, I reconstruct (1) how researchers reflexively monitor, rationalise, and motivate their mobility actions and (2) how these processes relate to contextual settings in terms of individual life course and career perspectives and macro-level factors, e.g. such as the funding and scholarship landscape or unfavourable conditions in source countries. The analysis draws on 16 qualitative interviews and survey data from 1,532 foreign-educated post-doctoral researchers at German Higher Education Institutions. Based on a triangulation approach, I identify five distinct mobility rationales: ‘Consciously focused’, ‘Exiles’, ‘Sojourners’, ‘Opportunity oriented’ and ‘Familistic established’. The typology serves as a heuristic for science and higher education policymakers to design target-group specific measures for attracting researchers and fostering mobility.