Juglares — The Role of Geographic Mobility, Gender, Age, Institutional Research Profiles, and Local Labor Market on the Career Performance of the Scientific Workforce in Colombia

This study examines whether geographic mobility within Colombia functions as a mechanism for improving career performance. Using open administrative data from the Colombian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (MinCiencias), the analysis tracks 40,485 researcher–assessment observations across six national evaluation calls between 2013 and 2021. Researchers are classified into ordered ranks: Junior, Associate, and Senior, allowing career performance to be analyzed in relation to inter-city mobility and a set of lagged individual, institutional, and local labor market characteristics. Within-country mobility in Colombia is rare and not associated with accelerated promotion. Ordinal regression models reveal that the effects of mobility differ across career stages. Junior researchers who move are more likely to remain Junior, while Associate researchers who relocate face an increased risk of being reclassified downward rather than progressing to Senior rank. Institutional context emerges as a stronger correlation of career outcomes than mobility itself. Local labor market conditions also matter, but primarily for early-career researchers. Mobility appears more disruptive than rewarding in the short to medium term, particularly for researchers in early career phases. These results imply that policies promoting mobility without accompanying institutional support risk exacerbating instability and regional concentration, rather than fostering equitable development of scientific capacity.