The growing knowledge-based and service economies in megacities like Beijing and Shanghai have attracted large numbers of highly educated migrants,whereas their living conditions have drawn plenty of attention. In examining these issues, we conducted an empirical study regarding the precarity among highly educated migrants in Beijing. There are some structural and institutional factors underneath the highly educated migrants' precarity, as the household registration (hukou) system still plays a significant role in accessing social welfare (urban public housing) and job opportunities in Beijing. Although the new urban poverty has occurred in the city as a result of the questionable policies regarding social distribution and welfare, it can also be argued that some of these migrants view temporary precarity as a strategy toward future upward social mobility - the hope of doing better over the long term.

A growing body of academic research and policy initiatives has addressed the global race for talent against the backdrop of the unprecedented scope and pace of skilled international migration. In this article, we coin the term "intellectual migration" as an analytical framework for international migration to explore how the experiences of students and skilled migrants to the United States from Brazil, Russia, India, and China (the BRIC countries) complicate notions of brain circulation. This framework not only brings together students and skilled migrants but also takes into account the complex relationship between these migrants' career aspirations and their connections to their (extended) families, their racialization in the United States, and economic and geopolitical changes in their home countries.