The demand for skilled labor is rising dramatically worldwide to meet the needs of a global economy driven by high-technology goods and services. Advanced industrial societies - the United States, Japan, the countries of Western Europe - are becoming more dependent on foreign scientists, engineers, and computer programmers to propel their economic growth. And emerging economies - such as India, China, and South Africa - are increasingly recognizing the need to stem the outflow of their own domestic professionals. The International Migration of the Highly Skilled examines the scale and significance of these international flows of highly skilled workers. The seventeen contributors (political scientists, sociologists, economists, and anthropologists) bring to the field a broad range of perspectives on the global market for high-skilled labor. They examine the legal history of skilled immigration to the United States and Canada, the ""brain drain"" phenomenon, immigrant entrepreneurship and immigrant niches, and recent changes in immigration policy making. The book includes several case studies analyzing the experiences of both sending and receiving countries. The authors offer a timely foundation for current and future policy discussions concerning high-skill migration. Despite the current economic downturn in the United States and other receiving countries, knowledge-intensive sectors of their economies will continue to grow and will continue to depend on the contributions of skilled migrants.