Brain chains: managing and mediating knowledge migration Wardlow Friesen* and Francis L. Collins School of Environment, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand (Received 20 November 2015; final version received 22 December 2015) Knowledge constitutes a critical vector in processes and outcomes of migration, in the evolution of economies and societies, and in national policy-making. This is apparent in the growing emphasis on managing migration and the infrastructure of intermediaries involved in facilitating and channeling flows of migrants, but also finance, ideas and objects generated through diaspora communities. Scholars have captured these movements through vocabulary around ‘brain circulation’, or brain ‘drain’ and ‘gain’. While these concepts are useful for describing patterns and out- comes, sometimes in narrow cost-benefit terms, they do not provide tools to explore the constitution of knowledge flows in migration. This paper proposes a more nuanced construction of brain circulation which we call’brain chains’ to acknowledge the complex linkages comprising knowledge migration, between individuals, families, diasporic communities, private and public agents, and nation states. The rationalities of migration management and mediation are expressed at all levels, but perhaps most visibly at the level of national (im)migration policy. The concept of brain chains is illustrated through a case study of the relatively small country of New Zealand. This country is an apposite example because of its high levels of immigration, its changing ethnic composition, and its relatively large national diaspora. Further, it provides a clear example of changing regimes of migration management based on neoliberal assumptions related to human capital and the roles of migrants. A focus on brain chains provides a foundation to develop more theoretically substantive explorations of the production, circulation and mediation of knowledge in contemporary migration. Keywords: migration; knowledge migration; brain circulation; migration management 1. Introduction Over the last three decades there has been an increasing emphasis on knowledge as a critical dimension of migratory processes. Evident first in the shift towards ‘human capi- tal’ in migration policy, knowledge now constitutes a critical variable of contemporary migration. This is manifest in the valorisation of ‘global talent’ or ‘high skilled’ migrants and the emphasis on international study as an ideal pathway to skilled migra- tion, but it is also apparent in the contrasting ways in which other migrants, labourers, spouses, refugees and asylum seekers are excluded in relation to these ideal types. The generation and valuing of knowledge in migration is the product of multiple interacting influences. While nation-states attempt to ‘manage’ migration in increasingly intricate ways to maximise benefits and minimise costs, individuals and families try to do the *Corresponding author. Email: w.friesen@auckland.ac.nz © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Migration and Development, 2016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21632324.2016.1168107