5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Highly qualified professionals are more than ever mobile, migrating abroad for personal or professional reasons. This mobility takes various forms, along with varying sectors, and temporary versus permanent status. Considering that their profession is often regulated, this session will look at emerging trends in facilitating this mobility, looking at the processes of prior learning recognition, various forms of licensing, trajectories of professionalisation or de-professionalisation, etc. As a context for these professional migration flows, while core capitalist countries attract more qualified professional labor from around the world, developing countries experience challenges of growth, democratization, and pluralization in their professional markets. In addition to the impact of global economic inequality on these professional migration flows, migrating professionals (doctors, engineers, academics, etc.) also find themselves in a process of cultural diversification, hybridization, and identity search. Therefore, the economic existence conditions of professionals and their worlds of cultural meaning and value are in constant flux.

We invite researchers to contribute to an update on these issues and other themes that might be associated with them. This can include, for example, how the influx of such professionals transforms local professional practice and how these professionals navigate their insertion, identity and social mobility in their new professional environment.