Recommended reading
Brain drain and beyond: returns and remittances of highly skilled migrants
The migration of the highly skilled to "developed" countries: what are the consequences for the developing countries?
Authors:
A. Tanner
Publisher:
Global Commission on International Migration, 2005
What consequences do the recruitment immigration policies of the developed world and the strongly increasing international migration of the talented have on the societal problems of the developing world? This article focuses on acute, emigration-induced problems, and on the lack of, and limitations to, migrant return and remittances for the small, developing and vulnerable sending country. It questions how often is global migration actually a win-win scenario?
Three specific aspects of global migration that may diminish the "win-win" point of departure are focused on more closely:
- the acute consequences of large flows of highly skilled immigrants with families from critical branches of a poor and small country to a developed country, within a short period of time
- the actual probability of permanent return to a sending country
- the occurrence, the continuity and the actual macroeconomic effects of remittances to a sending country.
The article concludes that, despite the article's sceptical look at skilled emigration, return and remittances, there is likely to be plenty of situations where, ideally, merely the surplus of the educated leaves (such as from India and China), then either a) they stay in the host country for a limited time period, gather sufficient money, cumulate ideas and create networks, and then return, to utilise the money, ideas and networks for the good of the repatriate himself and for the sending country alike or b) such migrants stay longer in the sending country creating and maintaining networks, contacts and remittances to the sending country (e.g. Philippines). However, this is not always the case, and migration that started as the positive skilled migration may thus be contributing in the long run to a more sinister kind of migration, namely asylum, from regions where brain drain-induced political and economic instability is turning the region into turmoil. [adapted from author]
