Since the end of the World War II, Europe has been repeatedly afflicted by waves of brain drain, with varying degrees of intensity across time and countries. But these outflows of human capital have rarely turned into some form of brain circulation, nor have they been compensated by adequate inflows of foreign talents. Now, the Digital Revolution and the economic restructuring imposed by a never-ending Eurozone crisis are amplifying the costs of these human capital losses, creating skills shortages that are undermining Europe's ability to compete globally. So far, the European Commission (EC) has…
While autocrats are known for imposing strict regulations on speech, the intrinsic openness of digital communications sets up an interesting challenge. Bashar al-Assad has built an online campaign that is highly communicative, seemingly transparent, and spans multiple social media accounts, while attempting to transmit a rigid agenda. In the digital era, political communications lie increasingly on a nuanced spectrum between the fields of journalism, public relations, advertising, and propaganda. On this spectrum, Assad has built a pervasive and multifaceted communications campaign over the course…
Created by a team of researchers at the Wittgenstein Center for Demography and Global Human Capital in Vienna, this visualization explores bilateral migration fows between 196 countries. The project used stock data from the United Nations (the number of people living in a country other than where they were born) to estimate these flows over five-year blocks of time. Rather than calculating the net flow, the color of the line represents the country that the migrants left, and it points to the new country where they settled. The thickness of the line represent how many people followed that path of…
Measuring and mapping human trafficking are challenging for several reasons and therefore do not lead to effective counter-trafficking strategies. Understanding the drivers of human migration, however, is a much more promising approach for developing policies with risk-mitigating strategies. Insofar as the patterns of human migration are intertwined with other aspects of illicit trade, they can serve as an early warning signal of vulnerabilities in the global trade system for criminal activity. Tracking the financial links between human trafficking and other crimes provides various options for…
A Chinese construction project in Belarus recently gained quite a bit of media traction. The truth is, however, Chinese investment in Belarus has been growing steadily since 1992. As the trend continues, it has become apparent that EU and U.S. economic sanctions on Belarus fail to instigate the change so desired. Moreover, the sanctions have actually become a point of exploit for Chinese companies such that Belarus is now a market where Chinese firms are not only welcome to assert themselves, but can also enjoy such benefits like a tax-free market entryway into Russia.
Over the last decade, rising powers emerged as powerful contestants of U.S. leadership in cyberspace. However, while their joint rise has led to growing institutionalized cooperation among them, their contestation of the U.S.’s role in the cyber arena has varied greatly, hinging heavily on each state’s political system.