1 Introduction

During the last two decades, the share of people with higher education migrating to other countries grew at an annual rate 1.5 times above the general migration (Delgado Wise et al., 2021). Such mobility enhances scientific innovation by allowing highly skilled individuals to match their knowledge with others and work in countries where they can find the required economic, social, and policy resources (Van der Wende, 2015). Developed economies are experiencing a talent shortage, which prevents them from leveraging the tandem between knowledge and innovation, and therefore deters their economic growth (Ryan & Silvanto, 2021). Under this scenario, high-skilled migrants from emerging countries play a paramount role.

Coda-Zabetta et al. (2022) recognize the role of migrant inventors in the success of the largest clusters in English-speaking countries and European ones. Particularly, the U.S. concentrates 50% of high-skilled migrants globally available (Gaspar Olvera, 2021). Their contribution to attaining the SDG addressing the generation and transfer of innovation in the U.S. is evidenced by a boost of 0.03 percent of the U.S.-born employment rate caused by a 10 percent increase in the share of foreign-born workers with advanced degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) (American Immigration Council, 2022).

According to Kerr (2020), immigrants account for about a quarter of all U.S. innovation and entrepreneurship. Even though U.S. universities dominate STEM disciplines globally, individuals born abroad increasingly make up the U.S. STEM labor force (Hanson & Liu, 2018). Moreover, the U.S. patent registry office is among the leaders worldwide, however, to maintain its position it depends on foreign patent applications since only 47.9% of the applications issued correspond to nationals (Gaspar Olvera, 2021).

Nonetheless, the movement of the brightest and best can have very serious negative effects on source countries and institutions, as has been appointed by Ackers (2005). Therefore, from the sender country’s stance, previous research has suggested alternatives to leveraging the “lost talent” of their emigrants. Breschi et al. (2018) recognize that scientists, engineers, and other professional migrants can play a role in knowledge diffusion and new business creation. This takes place through varied mechanisms that range from harnessing their expertise to supporting multinational enterprises (MNEs) decision-makers in foreign acquisitions or purchase of knowledge assets or entering an innovation hub to introducing foreign acquirers to multiple social networks. Due to their international exposure, educational background, professional ties, and knowledge of languages, they can also play a bridging role or even support the internationalization efforts of firms in the host countries (Useche et al., 2020). This is facilitated by “the cognitive effects arising from the projection of a coherent, appealing, and progressive identity on the part of the diaspora which signals an image of prosperity and progress to potential investors and consumers” (Leblang, 2010, p. 587). Foley and Kerr (2013) confirm that migrant innovators possess knowledge and connections that facilitate entry into foreign countries and transfers of technology through their social and ethnic ties. Hernandez (2014) also recognizes the relevance of such transnational networks of information for the transmission of tacit knowledge, particularly for firms from high-technology industries since they perform inherently more knowledge-intensive activities.

Among Latin American sending-migrants societies, Mexico stands as one of the countries where the migration of high-skilled people to the U.S. has experienced exponential growth in the last three decades (Delgado Wise et al., 2021) since this country offers what Dabić et al. (2020) referred to the structure of opportunities in the host country such as enticing economic and educational opportunities, a stronger sense of independence and upward social mobility (Dheer, 2018) including better job prospects, higher wages, access to renowned universities and research institutions, and a conducive environment for career advancement. Highly skilled Mexican migrants also look for better taxation deals, labor market supply and demand, quality of work, efficient bureaucracy, availability of supporting funds and venture capital, and business expansion (Mahroum, 2000). Other motivations underlined by Colic-Peisker and Denk (2019) are safety, transparency, validating professional careers, and securing permanent residency rights. Besides, the U.S. political and social stability along with the opportunity to be part of established networks and communities of high-skilled individuals make this country very appealing to these migrants. This results in a win-win situation since migrants escape from their home country's institutional voids that deter them from innovating, and the host country receives the required talent to attain knowledge and innovation SDGs. But, through what mechanisms does the transfer of knowledge, and therefore of innovation take place? Then, the following research question arises: How can Mexico leverage the migration of its most talented people to achieve a win-win situation vis-a-vis the U.S. without compromising the development of its human capital?

The objective of this research is to determine the kind of mechanisms that would allow Mexico to leverage the knowledge gained by its high-skilled migrants involved in innovation-relevant professional categories in the U.S., and consequently to attain one SDG particularly important for the progress of emerging countries, namely the generation and transfer of innovation (United Nations, 2015).

With this purpose in mind, the externalities’ view is a pertinent theoretical framework to objectively analyze the costs and benefits conveyed by high-skilled migration. To undertake concerted actions that minimize the negative externalities and potentiate the positive ones, the stakeholders’ approach is a suitable theoretical structure. While some existing literature has combined these two theoretical lenses (Dew & Sarasvathy, 2007; Griffiths et al., 2019; Grimble & Wellard, 1997; Kochan & Rubinstein, 2000; Magill et al., 2015), none of it has examined their intersection to better understand the high-skilled migration phenomenon, specifically how the externalities created by migration interact with the actions and initiatives of stakeholders to shape the outcomes of knowledge transfer and ultimately impact the development and progress of both the sending and receiving countries. We then respond to the call (Brzozowski, 2015) for broadening the number of theoretical concepts developed for the analysis of the phenomenon. Hence, the novelty and main contribution of this research is bringing together the externalities view and the stakeholders’ approach from both a micro and macro-social perspective. This fresh approach allows policymakers to enact and implement public policies that increase the odds of positive spillovers from these valuable human resources back to their home countries.

2 Literature review

Previous research has paid attention to the role of high-skilled migrants in promoting technology and knowledge transfer between migrants’ sending and receiving countries.

A mechanism constantly signaled in the literature to leverage the migration of talented people is channeling capital back home through remittances (Leblang, 2010). But, limiting the role of this type of migrant to remittances would be a myopia. High-skilled migrants can also reduce information asymmetries since they can provide investors with information about their home country and they may have knowledge about investment opportunities, regulations and procedures, or familiarity with language and customs that can decrease the transaction costs associated with cross-border investment (Leblang, 2010, pp. 584–585). Useche et al. (2020) also refer to how migrant inventors who work for MNEs may help their firms identify relevant knowledge bases of acquisition targets in the inventors’ home countries through their social networks. In this sense, Ackers (2005, p.122) also refers to the web of relationships that highly skilled migrants build “across time and space which shape not only their careers but those of their students and colleagues.” Furthermore, the transnational network of information that migrants integrate reduces the institutional, cultural, economic, and technological distances (Hernandez, 2014). Ackers (2005) suggests that for an effective knowledge transfer the sending countries should create institutionalized learning spaces or centers of excellence where migrants can share the knowledge acquired within a formal framework.

Immigrant entrepreneurs who undertake businesses simultaneously in their home and host countries can become also relevant conduits of innovation in their sending countries since it has been identified that they have a propensity to undertake businesses in high-tech sectors (Butticè & Useche, 2022), to conduct R&D and to patent (Brown et al., 2018). This can be explained by their documented higher level of education than their native counterparts in the high-tech sector (Brown et al., 2019). Furthermore, they are better placed to recognize market opportunities and understand the resources required to operate in different markets (Butticè & Useche, 2022).

In the following sections, we explain the externalities and the stakeholders’ approach, and then we bring them together to analyze the case of high-skilled Mexicans migrating to the U.S.

2.1 The externalities approach

According to Steinacker (2006), “externalities exist when an individual’s actions impose costs on or provide benefits to others who are not parties to the decision and who are neither compensated for nor pay for the effects they receive” (p. 460). Under this perspective, positive externalities provide gains for society, while negative externalities produce losses. Literature has mainly addressed externalities from an economic and/or legal point of view. Economists refer to “situations in which the production or consumption of a certain good by an agent either confers benefits or imposes costs on others” (Mildenberger, 2018, p. 2106). From a corporate stance, “externalities refer to situations in which third parties unwillingly bear costs or receive benefits from companies’ actions” (Ayres & Kneese, 1969; Baumol, 1972, as cited in Montiel et al., 2021, p. 1001). It is then necessary to weigh such costs and benefits to choose from among imperfect alternatives the mechanisms that maximize the value of the result (Medema, 2020a as cited in Paniagua and Rayamajjee, 2023). Governments play a role in “correcting” externalities since as Paniagua and Rayamajhee (2023) warn, trying to solve one externality can produce many other unanticipated externalities that can outweigh the benefits of the previous intervention. In other words, governments try to either diminish the spillover costs or increase the spillover benefits. Nonetheless, some externalities can also be solved by private trades and bargains, without government intervention, but transaction costs can also prevent private bargains from eliminating externalities (Lemieux, 2021). The scale of the externality as well as the institutional context within which it is embedded are relevant factors to consider since robust institutional and governance structures are required when externalities are complex due to many individuals, organizations, and authorities involved in a specific situation or phenomenon. Furthermore, the mitigation of complex externalities requires the engagement of different participants (governments and governance organizations, private and nongovernmental actors) at different scales (Paniagua & Rayamajhee, 2023). The intrinsic characteristics of externality and the institutional context surrounding it jointly determine the costs and benefits of different solutions and their economic viability (Paniagua & Rayamajhee, 2023).

In this research, externalities are analyzed from a country-level perspective, referring to the role that the government of the sending country should adopt to deal with the migration of high-skilled Mexicans as a societal phenomenon with ample implications for different stakeholders. A micro perspective is also adopted to explain the role of both the firms and the migrants themselves.

2.2 The stakeholders’ approach

The stakeholders’ approach is a framework pertinent to deepening the knowledge about the behavior, intentions, interrelations, agendas, and interests as well as the influence and resources of relevant actors (Brugha & Varvasovszky, 2000). Grimble and Wellard (1997) define in similar terms the stakeholders’ analysis as “a holistic approach or procedure for gaining an understanding of a system, and assessing the impact of changes to that system, identifying the key actors or stakeholders and assessing their respective interests in the system” (p.175). One of the core axes of this approach is understanding stakeholders’ behaviors, values, and backgrounds/contexts including the societal context (Freeman, 2020). It also allows for creating specific policies.

The richness and complementarity of the relationships forged among stakeholders lie in their distinctive features and capabilities, and in their capacity to develop strategies to overcome conflict (Boerner & Jobst, 2011) since one of the main objectives of a stakeholders’ perspective is to contrast ways of seeing the world to reframe problems and co-create solutions (Watson et al., 2018) while managing potential conflict from divergent interests (Frooman, 1999). The equilibrium among stakeholders’ expectations is a prerequisite for the survival and success of a shared goal (Pedrini & Ferri, 2018). In the same vein, Freeman (2020) suggests that the voluntary construction of cooperative agreements among groups of individuals creates an obligation to act fairly since the stakeholder theory adopts both an instrumental dimension related to profits and wealth-enhancing and a normative dimension related to moral and ethical implications (Ayuso et al., 2014).

If we extend the concept of stakeholders from a firm perspective to a broader societal view, the identification of stakeholder groups becomes complex, hence the choice of such individual stakeholder groups implies a degree of arbitrary decision-making, as suggested by Fassin (2009).

Moreover, there is an intrinsic link between the involvement of multiple stakeholders and the capacity to develop radical innovation (Dentoni & Veldhuizen, 2012). It is therefore indispensable to establish durable and sustainable ties among the stakeholders (Freeman, 1999) since the relationship must not only pursue the reduction of risks but also the improvement of decision-making processes, the accuracy of accountability processes (Pedrini & Ferri, 2018), and the commitment to contribute to the common good (Argandoña, 1998), and/or promote equitable justice (Phillips, 1997).

2.3 The analysis of high-skilled migration from the conjunction of the externalities and the stakeholders’ approaches

Previously we referred to the negative effects that the movement of highly skilled people may have on source countries and institutions (Ackers, 2005), but these effects can be prevented or counterbalanced through positive externalities portrayed in knowledge spillovers, innovation, economic growth, development of new technologies, improvement of practices, and enhancement of research collaborations. Under the positive externality view, high-skilled migration would allow talented people to be exposed to more sophisticated technologies and innovations in the host country that eventually would be diffused among other people in the home countries. This view assumes that positive knowledge spillovers will take place when migrants move to domestic firms or start their businesses (Montiel et al., 2021). Butticè and Useche (2022) agree that those immigrants, specifically immigrant entrepreneurs, generate positive externalities in the form of knowledge diffusion and innovation.

Janeska (2020) suggests the term virtual return to refer to the skills and knowledge transferred by migrants to their country of origin, while they physically remain in the destination country. The global connectivity to which high-skilled migrants, particularly young talent, are exposed allows them to more easily become part of academic or business networks that eventually become transnational knowledge networks integrated by and between individuals, communities, and nations, named brain chains (Friesen & Collins, 2016).

The positive externalities generated by high-skilled migration can be harnessed and amplified through effective stakeholder collaboration, such as the establishment of networks, knowledge-sharing platforms, and supportive policies (Ackers, 2005; Breschi et al., 2018). Therefore, balancing the externalities and the stakeholders’ perspectives is crucial to developing effective migration policies that maximize benefits and minimize negative impacts. Adopting this methodological focus, a binomial theoretical approach, allows us to advance our understanding of the impact of migration on the home country by unraveling the mechanisms underlying knowledge and innovation transfer.

The leverage of knowledge from high-skilled immigrant workers translated into innovation cannot be achieved without the convergence of interests and expectations of different groups (Freeman, 1984) such as the migrants themselves, the sending (Mexico) and receiving (U.S.) governments, the private sector conformed by practitioners willing to fill in critical resource gaps, the academia, and non-governmental organizations. In the Discussion section of this research, we explain the role that each one of these actors performs as part of the high-skilled migration phenomenon. We center such discussion on the migrants, the sending country, the firms, and the academia. Due to the multifaceted nature of high-skilled migration, analyzing it through the lens of stakeholder theory facilitates the identification, analysis, mapping, prioritization, and balancing of the relevant actors (Prasad et al., 2020).

From the negative externality view, the number of years that it takes for high-skilled people to have their academic credentials and/or experience validated in the host country as well as the effort and time invested in developing a learning curve oftentimes leads them to stay in the destination country. This has happened with high-skilled Mexican migrants who have shown longer stay periods (20 years on average) as compared to the rest of the migrant population in the U.S. (Gandini, 2019). Furthermore, these immigrants do not necessarily belong to the upper socioeconomic classes in Mexico, but they are part of the middle classes who in the end represent the population with the highest potential to undertake innovations and contribute to increasing the productivity of the Mexican economy not only because of the volume they signify but also due to their level of education (Gandini, 2019).

Talented people find little incentive to patent in Mexico since their innovations are of scant market value (Gaspar Olvera, 2021). Aboites and Díaz (2018) find an explanation for this situation in the better resources for R&D within institutions of the receiving countries, and the higher salaries they offer. Along the same line, Tuirán (2009) refers to a lack of opportunities in Mexico, unemployment, inadequate infrastructure for R&D, few positions at public universities, and on the other hand, better professional opportunities in other countries.

Most high-skilled Mexicans living in the U.S. (89.1%) are in the age cohort of active working life (22 to 65 years old), and most of them are employed in managerial, finance, business occupations, educational services, and STEM fields (Delgado Wise et al., 2021). In this sense, it is astonishing that within the STEM disciplines, more Mexican graduates are living in the U.S. than those residing in Mexico. Whereas for the U.S. the share of high-skilled Mexican immigrants constitutes only 3.5% of the foreign graduates living in this country, for Mexico, they represent a little more than 20% of the graduate people (Delgado Wise et al., 2021).

This is explained largely by the strong income differential between STEM graduate Mexicans working in the U.S. and those working in Mexico (Delgado Wise & Chávez Elorza, 2019), and it portrays a lack of capacity of the Mexican economy and the national innovation system to absorb this talent (Aboites & Díaz, 2018).

The identification of both the benefits and the costs surrounding the migration of high-skilled Mexicans to the U.S. leads to the following proposition:

Proposition 1. Highly skilled young Mexican migrants can build brain chains between Mexico and the US that favor the generation and transfer of knowledge (bi-directionally) that enhances productivity and growth in both countries.

Guadarrama Atrizco (2018) has stated that not enough has been done to stimulate innovation and scientific and technological development in Mexico but what has prevailed are insufficient budgets, reduced spending, a disconnection of the higher education bodies from the corporate sector, and little private investment.

In this sense, Díaz Pérez (2014) underlines the lack of demand for technology by Mexican companies as one of the main drivers of high-skilled migration. Contrary to what happens in the U.S. corporate ecosystem, in Mexico, there is a kind of myopia within this ecosystem since it still does not attach the proper value to the tangible innovative applications that researchers and graduates from doctorate programs can develop, and it continues to conceive these high-skilled people as individuals whose profile only matches with academia. Firms in Mexico should also assume their responsibility to capture the talent of high-skilled migrants or even to avoid the migration of talented people by increasing professional standards, providing more development opportunities, offering advanced training, and of course, granting competitive wages.

By the same token, higher education institutions in Mexico as well as research centers and think tanks may also play a decisive role in fostering the transnational nature of the knowledge gained by high-skilled migrants in the U.S. Regrettably, there is a clear disconnection between the universities, public research centers, and the productive sectors of the economy (Delgado Wise et al., 2021). This must be solved since a critical foundation of technological advancement is precisely academics and intellectuals who devote themselves to education and research (Wang, 2022). Another problem to tackle within the education sector, particularly among public universities is improving the transparency of the selection process for the recruitment of academic staff since oftentimes it is characterized by non-professional criteria and political patronage (Navarro, 2002, as cited in Guerra & Tigau, 2020).

Preventing the accomplishment of SDGs in migrants’ destination countries at the expense of the development of migrants’ sending countries requires solving structural problems that demand a leading role from the sending countries’ governments. This role is not restricted to economic and education policies, but also to guarantee that scientific research will not be subjected to political, economic, or ideological pressures (Vessuri, 2020). Policymakers in Mexico should propose concrete actions that stimulate the return of high-skilled migrants, or at least, their circular migration by increasing spending on R&D as a percentage of the GDP, making the hiring conditions in the labor market more flexible, investing more economic resources applied to innovation (Guerra & Tigau, 2020; Tigau, 2022), creating investment incentives, supporting networking events, providing platforms for collaboration and knowledge sharing, advancing a national research and development strategy, and providing more support in a wide range of research fields.

Accordingly, the following propositions emerge:

Proposition 2. Leveraging the knowledge of high-skilled migrants in the sending countries requires going beyond public policy enactment and execution. Rather it is necessary for a concerted effort of the governments along with the private sector players and the academic institutions to offer fair wages and career-development initiatives directed to fully or partially recover high-skilled migrants, particularly those formed and/or trained in the STEM fields.

Proposition 3. Ingrained institutional voids in high-skilled migrants’ sending countries are not going to be solved shortly, but the joint coordination of stakeholders in the sending country can leverage the knowledge acquired by these talented people back to their home countries.

3 Discussion

This research is topically interesting because it suggests that high-skilled Mexican immigrants in the U.S. can prevent a brain drain phenomenon in which the realization of SDGs in the U.S. from the hand of foreign-qualified workers occurs at the expense of the implementation of SDGs in Mexico. It is theoretically relevant because it puts the stakeholders’ approach at the center of the high-skilled migration phenomenon as a mechanism to foster the positive externalities or minimize the negative ones of such migration for sending countries.

This discussion is particularly relevant when considering that mobility is a human right, and the different actors of society must find a delicate balance between respecting and even facilitating the right of people to look for their individual development through migration and undertaking the necessary measures to promote national development. Additionally, the public discourse should be honest to differentiate those situations in which the individual voluntarily decides to migrate due to diverse motivations, and those negative or hostile national circumstances that push or even force individuals to abandon their country to find the proper development mechanisms in other countries. This debate most of the time has focused on the precarious situation of low-skilled migrants, but it is necessary to recognize that this involuntary migration also takes place among high-skilled migrants.

A negative externality approach would suggest that the underlying factors that are pushing high-skilled Mexicans to migrate are structural problems that will not be solved in the short or even the medium term, which leaves us with the imperfect alternative of fostering at least the circular migration to make the knowledge transfer back to Mexico possible. In other words, this approach would not consider the avoidance of high-skilled migration or the repatriation of these talented people but at least to keep their permanent connection with different actors of the society of origin. Regardless of the bearing cost that the migration of high-skilled people to the U.S. has on Mexico, this young talent can reduce the negative externalities. This can be materialized through different mechanisms. On the government side, there are entrenched negative practices that can be removed through public policies that favor student and academic selection processes based exclusively on meritocratic criteria instead of subjecting scientific research to political, economic, or ideological pressures. Equally important is to make more flexible the hiring conditions in the labor market, improve the incentives for investment, support networking events, and create collaboration and knowledge exchange platforms. In addition, it is urgent that the Mexican state significantly increase the investment as a percentage of GDP in research and development to a level that at least reaches the average for OECD countries. In a nutshell, the Mexican government should boost national research through a robust development strategy that enhances support to a broader set of research fields.

However, these actions will not be effective if they are not accompanied by serious efforts by the private sector to promote the career development of Mexican talent through fair wages and continuous learning opportunities. Firms must also increase their demand for technological solutions and conceive academics and researchers as generators of tangible technological innovations.

Academic institutions must make a greater effort to develop study programs focused on innovation that are aligned with the needs of the labor market. They should also look to develop a closer link with the corporate sector.

On the high-skilled Mexican migrants’ side, they should engage in business exchanges with Mexico to share know-how and practical skills as well as information related to prices, business opportunities, suppliers, and customers (Lissoni, 2018); to transfer scientific and technical knowledge, and to develop technology facilitated by their access to recent innovations. They can also integrate bilateral/multilateral working teams or cooperation networks with Mexican colleagues (Tigau, 2022). From a corporate stance, Mexican migrant inventors in the U.S. may push further the investment and innovation processes of U.S. MNEs in Mexico, since as found by Foley and Kerr (2013), U.S. MNEs with a high number of patents by migrant inventors invest in such inventors’ countries and rely less on joint ventures with local companies.

Another mechanism for high-skilled Mexican migrants becoming effective transmitters of knowledge is by starting their businesses, and eventually employing other high-skilled people or undertaking intrapreneurship projects in MNCs that offer well-paying jobs and career development opportunities to people holding sophisticated knowledge. Likewise, they can integrate brain chains that alleviate the weaknesses of the national innovation system in Mexico since they possess the ability to assimilate and apply knowledge, becoming crucial for home countries’ absorptive capacities (Gelb & Krishnan, 2018) by transferring back to other Mexican entrepreneurs, scientists, and engineers their knowledge and ground-breaking practices. They “may be uniquely positioned to explore novel combinations of knowledge acquired in their home countries, together with technologies to which they are exposed in the U.S.” (Bernstein et al., 2021, p. 17). High-skilled Mexican migrants can make a difference by getting actively involved in their home country’s academic forums and becoming role models that convey to younger generations their interest, passion, and commitment to studying for a degree in STEM. According to Funk and López (2022), some young Hispanic people do not pursue STEM because they believe that these disciplines are too hard, or they lack access to high-quality education or a mentor that encourages them to pursue these degrees. Therefore, exposure to innovation during childhood has a causal effect on the type of innovation one pursues. In this sense, mentoring can lead children to follow certain career paths (Bell et al., 2019).

Young high-skilled Mexican migrants may also foster entrepreneurship and business development if they invest in their home country’s start-ups with local partners, or if they provide financial funding (Gelb & Krishnan, 2018). This is particularly relevant at a time when most R&D activities remain concentrated in a few countries where MNEs have their headquarters (Glennon, 2023). Moreover, through their entrepreneurial endeavors highly skilled migrants, specifically those who possess technological knowledge, foster knowledge spillovers and consequently contribute to job creation and economic development in both the U.S. and Mexico since these businesses tend to be high growth in nature and innovation. These endeavors are characterized by high spending on R&D and radical innovations. Therefore, this kind of entrepreneurial venture tends to require higher financial capital, and immigrants with a high level of education are likelier to acquire financial capital from banks, thereby facilitating the start of new ventures. This becomes a self-fed virtuous circle since greater technological growth facilitates entrepreneurship among immigrants (Dheer, 2018).

Another way to share knowledge in the country of origin is through academic publishing in peer-reviewed journals or periodic publications so that immigrants develop and share new ideas that unleash innovation and enable stronger economic growth (Denhart, 2015).

These mechanisms do not constitute a perfect solution to ingrained national weaknesses, but they are concrete and feasible actions that if undertaken jointly and synergistically by the government, the private sector, and the academia may contribute to attaining the SDG related to knowledge generation and transfer in the U.S. without compromising the achievement of this SDG in Mexico.

4 Conclusion

The responsibility of fostering the involvement of high-skilled Mexican migrants in the innovation potential of both sending and receiving societies must be assumed from a stakeholders’ approach. This means considering not only migrants and their respective home and host countries’ governments, but also relevant players such as venture capital firms, startups, law firms, MNEs, universities, and research centers. Thus, the main contribution of this research is bringing together the externalities’ view and the stakeholders’ approach from both macro-social and micro perspectives. This allows policymakers to enact and implement public policies that increase the odds of positive spillovers from highly skilled migrants back to their home countries.

In the long run, high-skilled Mexican migrants can become the key piece in the puzzle that balances, or at least changes favorably the unequal economic and social relations between Mexico and the U.S. Mexico could provide the U.S. and other developed countries with the critical mass of scientists and technologists that these economies are starting to lack (Delgado Wise et al., 2021). Nevertheless, it is indispensable that this provision takes a transnational form through the knowledge exchange emphasized throughout this paper. In other words, high-skilled Mexican migrants must be part of the brain chains. Mexico urgently needs to harness the advantages of mobility on knowledge production, exchange, dissemination, validation, and collaboration derived from these knowledge networks (Jöns, 2011).

Fostering the contribution of high-skilled migrants from emerging countries to the knowledge economy of developed ones will push or enhance, if a more optimistic perspective is adopted, the globalization of innovation through the joint effort of public policymakers, immigrants, and MNEs. Nonetheless, the different stakeholders must be conscious of the imminent danger that Mexican society faces in terms of losing intellectual capital since Mexico has started to experience the aging of the population with the expected consequences of young, educated people becoming scarcer shortly (Pande et al., 2017). This forthcoming risk makes it necessary to reflect on the importance of solving the structural problems that feed the emigration of talented people from Mexico. It is evident that if the stakeholders referred to in this paper take the necessary steps to retain Mexican talent, a virtuous cycle will start with the increase of patents registered by these talented people in Mexico that eventually insert this country into the global knowledge economy instead of perpetuate, as Crossa and Delgado Wise (2022) suggest, the role of Mexico as a supplier of inventions and innovations that become the exclusive property of U.S. companies.