'Home Is Where the Heart Is': The Experiences of Expatriate PhD Students and Returnees

This chapter aims to analyse the motivations and experiences of researchers who leave their country to be trained abroad and those of returnees, in particular how they integrate into their workplace and community abroad and back at home. It is based on quantitative information built on administrative and survey data concerning mobility fiows and reintegration modalities in the Portuguese scientific system, complemented with a set of interviews addressing motivations, career trajectories and reintegration experiences. Motivations to go abroad relate mainly to scientific drives such as to learn new theories and methodologies, to improve the scientific CV and to establish international networks, but non-scientific reasons such as cross-cultural experiences are also mentioned. Incentives to return home are twofold, either to resume a previously tenured position or to try to obtain one, depending on the generation to which the researcher belongs. However, nonscientific justifications such as being c\ose to family or other country-related motivations play a very relevant role.