Skilled migration from Kyrgyzstan to Turkey in the context of education and integration

The global race for human capital makes talent distribution asymmetric through the phenomenon of immigration. People with valuable skills tend to migrate both domestically and abroad because of the income they can earn. An important share of skilled migration occurs through a talent development process supported by higher education institutions. In these cases, the first migratory action and selection of immigrants occurs through the assessment and elimination of natural tendencies and skills, rather than formal skills. The migration flow of foreign students and teachers is concentrated in universities in more developed countries, and often after graduation the same people are hired by domestic companies. Thus, qualitative migration in the context of education, which is expected to be valid at first glance, can cause new social phenomena in the main and target societies due to factors arising in both the socio-psychological individual dimension and such macro-relationships as a subject-institute and institute-institute. From this point of view, a sociological study of educational migration makes it possible to determine the status of relations between an immigrant and a host country and the potential aspects of the potential transformation of changes, interactions between people and the use of capital among migrants. According to the academic year 2017-2018, published by the Higher Education Statistics Institute, a total of 1926 Kyrgyz citizens are educated in Turkish higher education institutions to earn undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees. In this study, the features of acculturation strategies suring studying process and of the use and development of the cultural, social and human capital of students from Kyrgyzstan in Turkey as qualified migrants were analyzed. The conceptual framework was based on acculturation and adaptation models, migration theories, human capital theories in the context of skilled migration, Bourdieu's Theories of Capital Forms. The main research question is formulated as "What are the acculturation models of temporary skilled migrants, which are students from Kyrgyzstan, is there a connection between the social, cultural and human capital of students and their acculturation model?" The research method is a mixed method using in-depth interview and online survey data collecting tecniques. To collect qualitative data using an in-depth interview, in total 20 students who studied in Istanbul, Ankara, Konya, Sakarya using the snowball selection method were selected. For quantitative research, 200 people were selected using the quota sampling method with a 9.45 confidence interval, a 95% confidence level and after a selection procedure 102 response forms were analyzed. The analysis of the obtained qualitative data evaluated by the content analysis method. In the quantitative data analysis, a simple method for assessing percent and determining the correlation relationship (chi-square test) was used. In result of the qualitative and quantitative data analysis, four main five-staged acculturation models of Kyrgyz students in Turkey were formulated: Balanced Acculturation Model, Selective Acculturation Model, Wrong-Puzzle Model and Cosmopolitan Acculturation Model. It was also concluded that in the process of educational migration, most of the students preferred integration and separation acculturation strategies, and less of them choosed assimilation and marginalization strategies. Institutional and social factors have a significant impact on the formation of student adaptation models. It was found that with the support of social capital, certain forms of cultural and human capital, such as language skills, professional knowledge, skills and experience, as well as individual psychological characteristics were effectively used in the adaptation process, especially in the early stages of the migration process and expanded at different levels with new elements acquired in the recipient society at later stages. Keywords: Skilled Migration, Student Migration From Kyrgyzstan to Turkey, Acculturation Models, Human Capital, Bourdieu's Theory of Forms of Capital