France is more attractive to foreign graduates, The Economist says

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“The Economist”, the British weekly news magazine, has designed a “footloose” mobility index to identify the most attractive countries for graduates, and created a ranking of 74 countries depending on their appeal. The ranking shows that specific European countries experiment an appeal boost, such as France, which jumped from 13th to 8th global rank in ten years.

To create the ranking, “The Economist” used data from the yearly Gallup World Poll directed to about 150,000 people in 150 countries. The poll only used graduates’ answers, asking whether they wanted to live abroad, and, if so, their top destinations. To better assess these, “we only took into account respondents who declared having passed a first cycle degree”, The Economist says.

New flows

More precisely, to identify most appealing countries for graduates, the British magazine created the footloose index. The Economist explains that “the index is based on simple maths”: what would be the net variation of the graduate population of a country if mobile graduates could come and go as they want, as footloose groups?

First conclusion: “As population age, there is increased competition worldwide for skilled young migrants.” And unsurprisingly, the five first in the struggle to stay among most attractive countries are the same: Canada, Australia, the United States, Germany and Spain. However, the study uses on four dates (2010-2012, 2013-2015, 2016-2018, and 201-2023) to analyse emerging new flows in other countries in Europe: Portugal, Italy, Greece, and France.

A boost of appeal for France

And France stands out in this context of attractiveness. Over ten years, France has climbed five ranks: from its position as 13th most appealing country for graduates in 2010-2012 to 8th worldwide in 201-2023, after Switzerland, but before Italy. France had even reached the 6th rank in 2013-2015.

And other countries followed an opposite curve, says The Economist. Great Britain, ranked six in 2010-2012 fell to the 20th rank in the wake of the Brexit, and only managed to climb back to 14th position in latest studies. “A lot a Europe graduates no longer view Great Britain as appealing”, says The Economist, and “many more British graduates want to leave”.