The impact of covid-19 on highly skilled migrants’ well-beingand intention to stay in Brainport Eindhoven

Human capital often referred to as talent, is a pillar of knowledge-based economies. The population aging and decline pushed countries and companies worldwide to engage in the “battle for the best and the brightest”. They do so by looking at international talent, also known as Highly skilled migrants (HSMs). Traditionally, global talent management studies have focused only on HSMs’ career and financial satisfaction. Nevertheless, those studies failed to understand how to retain HSMs, as they did not look at them as whole individuals whose overall well-being would affect their intention to stay. This paper discusses how the well-being of HSMs workers in Brainport Eindhoven, a critical Dutch technical hub, has changed during the Covid-19 pandemic and how that has affected their intention to stay or to leave the region. Given the exploratory nature of this work, we use a qualitative method. Our findings show that the Covid-19 measures strongly impacted HSMs’ intention to leave the region.