  The comprehension of the mechanisms behind the mobility of skilled workers is
of paramount importance for policy making. The lacking nature of official
measurements motivates the use of digital trace data extracted from ORCID
public records. We use such data to investigate European regions, studied at
NUTS2 level, over the time horizon of 2009 to 2020. We present a novel
perspective where regions roles are dictated by the overall activity of the
research community, contradicting the common brain drain interpretation of the
phenomenon. We find that a high mobility is usually correlated with strong
university prestige, high magnitude of investments and an overall good
schooling level in a region.
