Brain drain
Globalization, skilled migration and poverty alleviation: brain drains in context
Brain drain as an internal problem
Authors:
R. Skeldon
Publisher:
Sussex Centre for Migration Research, 2005
The paper provides an analysis of skilled migration and identifies main global trends. It goes on to examine the globalisation of education and of health as reflected in the movement of students and health personnel. The paper examines the case for a two-tiered health training system, one for global markets and the other for local markets. Retention and return of the skilled are examined through the potential for outsourcing in both education and health care.
The author makes the case for understanding that any brain drain is as much internal within any country as it is among countries and that the skilled migration system should not be seen in isolation from other types of migration.
The paper recommends that migration policy management must be directed towards domestic migration - emphasising that how the circulation and longer-term migration of the relatively well educated from villages to cities impacts on poverty and overall development remains one of the most intractable of issues; and that internal brain drains and how these are linked, if at all, with the transnational flows that have dominated the concerns over the loss of skills must be an essential part of any real policy-relevant discussion of the brain drain issue.
