The Portuguese government had an unexpected critic when it proposed austerity measures including cuts to fellowships that pay for researchers to do PhD studies abroad. In June, the Portuguese Association of Researchers and Students in the United Kingdom (PARSUK) filed a complaint with the Foundation for Science and Technology, Portugal's main public research funding body. PARSUK showed that university and tuition fees for graduate students at some UK institutions cost more than the Portuguese government would provide after austerity measures; the foundation's president told PARSUK that he would consider scaling back the cuts.

Organizations of southern European scientists working abroad have proliferated in the past few years. Expatriates founded the Society of Spanish Researchers in the United Kingdom (SRUK/CERU) in June 2011 and the Society of Spanish Researchers in the Federal Republic of Germany (CERFA) in June 2012; the Association of Italian Scientists in the United Kingdom (AIS-UK) will be registered soon. The groups aim to help expats with language barriers, advise on the best places to apply for PhD and postdoc positions and organize networking events. But they also want to make a difference at home by influencing policy, enhancing the visibility of people working abroad and improving funding and opportunities.

Credit: GETTY/M. ARCHER

Financial strain has been one motivator: in 2010, total Portuguese science spending declined for the first time in almost a decade. The Spanish government has cut its science budget by 39% from 2009 levels. And this year, Italy approved major cuts to research-institute budgets, with more possibly on the way (see Nature http://doi.org/jrn; 2012). Scientists often leave countries hit hard by recessions: Spain, for example, has seen net emigration since 2011 after years of net immigration, says its National Institute of Statistics. Expat groups can help scientists to find opportunities abroad.

PARSUK was founded in 2008, following Luso 2007, a networking meeting of Portuguese scientists in Cambridge, UK. Since then, the 450-member group has set up annual gatherings at which researchers, politicians and company representatives from Britain and Portugal discuss ways to collaborate and cooperate. “We want to use knowledge gathered abroad to implement new approaches to research in Portugal,” says David Tomaz, president of PARSUK and an immunology PhD student at Imperial College London.

Last month, representatives of SRUK/CERU met a delegation from the Spanish National Quality and Accreditation Evaluation Agency in London to discuss how Spain could optimize distribution of shrinking public funds using aspects of Britain's research-evaluation systems (see Nature 457, 624–625; 2009). The group has spoken to the media and politicians, says Francisco Hernández, a neuroscience PhD student at the University of Cambridge and one of 94 SRUK/CERU members. This year, one of Hernández's blog posts spawned a petition for Spanish tax forms to include an option to give 0.7% of a taxpayer's contribution to research; it has collected almost 300,000 signatures.

Associations also aim to provide practical help. CERFA offers “logistic and administrative advice to people moving to Germany: from finding a house to understanding a health insurance contract in German”, says Raúl Delgado-Morales, president of the group and a biology postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich. CERFA, which has 50 members, plans to draw up a list of Spanish researchers in Germany for collaboration opportunities.

The AIS-UK wants to compile a database of collaborations among Italian and British scientists to raise awareness of the “vast pool of highly skilled Italians trained in prestigious UK universities”, says Emanuele Cotroneo, a biology postdoc at Imperial who backs creation of the group. “Some Italian scientists in the United Kingdom may be willing to return to Italy if they are offered positions appropriate to their experience.” But Cotroneo does not advocate UK brain drain, he says: “We think that strengthening links between countries will facilitate both emigrating and going back.”