Talking about Kennispark: understanding expat campus stories to explore global science spaces’ symbolic attractiveness for highly skilled migrants

There is increasing interest in the way that international highly skilled knowledge migrants (expats) begin to identify with place-specific characteristics of particular regions, and how these global citizens acquire particular connections and entanglements in particular localities, creating spill-over effects that drive innovation-based regional economic development. Part of the debate has been tied up with Richard Florida’s (2002) idea of creative classes, with an implicit understanding that these workers have a predominantly cosmopolitan identity that is attached to particular lifestyles and professional interests that are best exercised in urban locations rather than necessarily being tied to particular places. When considering how global science spaces (GSSs) can offer assets and facilities to attract expats, there is a tendency to think of this in purely economic terms (e.g. career development and job opportunities) However this makes it hard to understand the popularity of the rise of the GSSs if all these places offer is a kind of specialised suburban estate (Forsyth & Crewe, 2010) for existing hightechnology opportunities. If what attracts expats is the particular atmosphere and cosmopolitanism of place, how can GSSs attract expats beyond the employment and career opportunities they offer? Additionally, if expats are attracted to a simple atmosphere of particular spaces, how can people deliberatively create physical spaces that attract and retain these knowledge migrants?