Migration of physicists to other academic disciplines: Situation in the Netherlands

Abstract“Field switchers” are an interesting group of people to study if one wants to find out to what extent and the ways in which the various scientific disciplines influence each other. In this paper we present and discuss the results of an inquiry that was conducted at Dutch universities among one particular type of field switchers, namely migrated physicists. By migrated physicists we mean physicists working in universities but not in physics departments. Although migrated physicists form a very heterogenous group one can draw some general conclusions about their attitudes, characteristics and capacities. Migrated physicists apparently continue to feel themselves to be physicists, and they think that physics or natural sciences should play a greater role in their “adopted” fields. At least in the case of physicsts, field-mobility seems to be linked with general mobility Migrant parform a useful and important sevice.