RULE OUT THE NEGATIVE SIDES OF BRAIN DRAIN
Author: Yau Hing YU
Environmental department, Leighton Contractors (Asia) Limited, Hong Kong
Email: arhing313@gmail.com
Brain drain means the transfer of talents from a less developed country to a developed one through
temporary or permanent migration. This phenomenon takes place across the continents characterized by
South-to-North migration, chained or permanent migrations are inevitably hindering the development of
countries of origin by vacuuming the talents who have been nurtured and educated there throughout their youths,
leading to an indirectly net transfer of capitals from a poorer country to a well-off one. Recognizing the inherent
gap between Southern and Northern countries in economy and social stability, this paper shows how brain drain
can be utilized constructively and how the fundamental weaknesses of less developed countries can be tackled.
Politically, Southern countries should strive for enhancing national security and formulating measures to tackle
local issues such as corruption and democracy; secondly, clear direction of development is indispensible to
especially propagandize to attract migrants and foreign investments, frequent connections with emigrants can
definitely fuel the effectiveness; in the area of localism, national consciousness and cultural attractions are key
elements in promoting return migration or even north-to-south migration, that is, making the country livable,
vibrant, attractive and comfortable to stay and work.
Keywords – Brain Drain, Migration, Development Theme: Migration and Diasporas
2 | P a g e
RULE OUT THE NEGATIVE SIDES OF BRAIN DRAIN
Introduction
In the 21st century, globalization has significantly attributed to the reduction of limitation of human
migration, potential migrants are able gather more information on country of destination and transportation
when compared with few decades ago. According to the OECD & UNDESA (2013), internal migrant stock in
2013 has increased by half to 231.5 million with reference to 1990, while Eurasian and African emigrants
accounted for 10.6% and 59.6% of the entire share respectively, contributing to substantial amount of global
migration source.
Brain drain was one of critical consequences towards the Southern countries, which generally has poorer
level of development. As developing countries, talents and high-skilled labour force are of importance for
economical growth and capacity building. Human resources is, apart from fuel and territories, one of the most
important elements countries have been striving for throughout the ages, and history has shown that
considerable numbers of German scientists were brought to winning countries after the falling of Hitler’s rule during the 2nd world war. The magnitude of development is largely dependent to the how talents were held by a
country. Nowadays, countries like Canada are implementing immigration policy to attract skilled workforce,
while less developed countries like Mexico has also tried to increase its local employment opportunities through
spawning new maquiladoras and providing high standard of education, so as to counteract the loss of the talents.
More developed countries has already embraced with higher salaries, a more fruitful working experience,
better career paths, and sometimes working conditions as well, which the less developed countries lack from the
start and the variation of the above conditions fuel the brain drain process. Less developed countries should
compete with more developed countries through solidify their political regime and facilitating specific modes
for development and cultural promotion, they are discussed in ‘Reasons and Solutions’.
Scope of Work
Brain drain in Eurasia and African is discussed with the focus on South-to-North migration, while relevant
examples and case studies are provided. In addition, recognizing the broad categories of migration, the research
area was trimmed to labour migration, seasonal migration and impelled migration and forced migration,
excluding other classes of migration such as asylum seekers and the stateless. Assumption was made that the
cases were undertaken as documented and orderly migration. Apart from that, only political, developmental and
nationalistic issues are analyzed.
Methodology
Data and information collected from literature review on migration related topics, and contemporary
Results - Reasons and Solutions A. Political status
National and public security
Emigration is motivated by seeking for an improvement in way of living or living standard, especially
while facing continuously political instability. Forced migration takes place during wartime when battles are
ongoing, and their hometown are under attack that they remained worried about their lives, safety of family
members and properties.
Contemporary events have demonstrated the positive correlation for citizens to leave their countries of
origin due to deteriorating national security. Ukrainian crisis has made thousands of death and wounds while
substantially destroying their houses, roughly 730,000 locals fled their homeland to Russia due to endless armed
conflict in eastern Ukraine (Miles, 2014). While in Iraq and Syria, hundred thousands of impelled migrants have
rushed to Turkey due to endless civil war in their countries, along with the conquer of Islamic State of Iraq and
Greater Syria (ISIS). Political instability brings about casualty of civilians, leading to immediate effect of
fleeing; moreover, the pushing factor can be long-lasting after the outbreak of an incident since people would
start to loss their confidence to the local authorities on their ability in maintenance of social integrity, which
further strengthens the motivation of emigration.
Apart from warfare, prolonged criminal offences make people step back from inhabiting. Citizens in less
developed countries inevitably have lower salary level and literacy rate, some would take the risk and involve in
illegal actions which are deemed effective as a mean to supplement the ordinary income, including drug
smuggling, human trafficking and kidnapping, all these contribute to an image of sin city that would scare off
the citizens. In South Africa, there are averagely 50 people murdered every day with high occurrence of robbery,
rape and various criminal offence, Dodsan (2002) described that crime and lack of security are the biggest ‘push’ factor for emigration in South Africa, 60% and 49% of South African men and women desire to leave South
Africa for more than 2 years, while near half would prefer to return only in yearly basis.
Therefore, it is essential for a country to maintain its integrity as well as national and public security to
prove that the community are safe to stay at, it does not only lower the tendency of emigration but also attract
foreigners to come, provided that it is equipped with certain degree of developmental basis, which is discussed
in Section B. Local governments of suffering countries, regional organization and international bodies play the
key part in restoring the chaotic circumstances through joint efforts and mutual support, as to remove the
countries from the list of failing state1, or prevent them to fall into. National and transnational crime should be
handled promptly in a proactive manner, fighting against illegal acts before their network turns sophisticated and
resources become ample.
Corruption
4 | P a g e Apart from national security, political situation of a country is highly influencing whether a person would
stay at their homeland. Government efficiency, corruption, degree of democracy, degree of freedom, taxation
and parliamentary composition are factored in, among the elements above, corruption is one of the most
significant driving force for citizens to leave. This statement is coherent with the finding of Dimant et.al. (2013)
showing corruption adversely affected level of national economic activity with escalation of inequality and
poverty that potentially led to decision of emigration.
Social equity has been the core value treasured by considerable numbers of people in contemporary
society, from the Baltic to the Pacific, from Taiwan to Sudan, except for those minorities like North Korean that
have limited access to internet and international affairs. People nowadays are eagle for fairness and justice;
however, corruption has dominated some Asian countries. For instance, some developers in China claimed
farmland for development by provision of bribes to government officials, which in turn confiscated the land for
the developer. Corruption made the citizens feel insecure about their rights, even coming under assault or
discovering certain criminal offences, rare do they seek help from police officers since they have lost confidence
to the judicial system, police are seemed to be counterpart of gangster and law enforcers bear the image of
bribery, people have higher tendency to leave their homeland as being desperate on the protection by
government.
Therefore, it is utterly important for a regime to establish its unique anti-corruption department and
authorize it to investigate any level of governors or parties. Globally, anti-corruption system exist in most of the
countries but the major problem falls into its implementation, either the relevant departments act only as the art
of public relation for having no solid power or the department itself already involve in briberies. Oppositely,
locals would start to believe their right, precise and life are well secured under regulations until anti-corruption
is strictly exercised, businessmen are also confident to the legislative system that their investments would be
protected. It is the fundamental step to retain the talents in a country while providing legitimate basis for citizens
and foreigner investors.
B. Developmental basis
Economic prosperity, including employment condition, poverty, technological basis and international
trading, of country of origin decide its ability in holding human capital. Talents want to find better job and attain
higher income through working in more development countries, seasonal migration may turn into permanent
migration especially when the migrants attain the right of abode abroad and remain hopeless about the
employment prospect in their own countries. Therefore, government leaders should have clear goal of
development and key centre of development, demonstrating that, even with existing poverty, the country has
been forward-looking to make progress.
Clear developmental goal
As poorer developments mean higher demand in infrastructures and business opportunities, they are part
of the main benefits for being a less developed country and should be well utilized in sustainable manners.
facilitate brain gain. Taking an example on Kazakhstan, a developing country with population slightly more than
16 million, recognizing the importance of talents and specialist, Kazakh president Nazarbayev has formulated a
developmental blueprint called ‘Kazakhstan 2025 Strategy’ describing a clear path of national growth along the way to 2050, which is critical to attract specialists for immigration. Singapore is another bright example in
transforming from a nation with lacking resources to a worldwide hub with advanced technology, its first Prime
Minister Lee Kwan Yew set out an overarching goal to build a modern economy, with the emphasis on
low-skilled manufacturing in 1960s and technical field in 1980s, prior to encouragement of diversified industries
(OECD, 2010), immigrants played an important role throughout that brought about workforce and technology. .
Key centre of development
While having long term strategy, it is essential to have key centre of development in place, that is, a city or
town with the particular focus to invest, and usually being the capital or politically critical city. As in developing
countries like China, although immediate improvement on poverty gap cannot be fostered while having
Shenzhen, Hainan and other cities as Special Economic Zones, they create a way to switch external migration to
internal migration. For instance, farmer in Yunnan province may go to Shenzhen to seek for job rather than
permanently working abroad, the labour forces of China can then be restored. It is worth noting that brain drain
can also be beneficial to country of origin, which is discussed at the next section.
C. Nationality National consciousness
While countries are trying to retain the intelligentsia, it is not to be missed that temporary brain drain can
boost the technological and systematic experiences from other countries. The exposure in foreign countries is so
valuable that innovations can be brought to the country of origin in case of return migration, enlarging the
national assets through information sharing as well as introduction of technologies and brand-new perspectives.
Nevertheless, problem arises when temporary migration is switched into permanent status. As the
migrants left their hometown and studied abroad especially before high-school, as exemplified by migration of
Uzbekistani to Russia, it is likely that they have extensively immersed themselves with Russian culture and
would enter the Russian job market easily after their graduation. Even the individuals come back to Uzbekistan
right after the studies, they would found themselves as a third culture solitary for not living under Uzbek ways
during their young ages, which is the period that national identity are mainly shaped. Re-emigration to Russia is
highly possible and chain migration maybe facilitated while recognizing the higher living standard there. In all,
there would be a net flow of national asset from Uzbekistan to Russia.
As a result, it is highly essential for a nation to maintain frequent connection with emigrants, diasporas
and expatriates while emphasizing the matter of national identity. One of the strategies of Kazakhstan 2050 is to
target Mongolian and Chinese Kazakhs for circular migration through economic and cultural incentives.
Provided that a sending country is equipped with sound developmental basis as discussed in Section B,
propaganda should be fostered to depict its employment and development opportunities along with continuous
6 | P a g e that they are always welcomed back home.
Cultural attraction
Cultural promotion is the way to facilitate export of national culture and costumes leading to the interest
of people to stay and work. Korea is one of the prominent cases in promotion of its music, fashion and way of
living, and its culture becomes popular across Asian territories. Cultural attraction is not only prospering the
tourism and related industries, but also giving a viable and livable image to diasporas and foreigners, so that
they would find the country a location for joy other than making a living.
Therefore, nations should consider cultural promotion as one of the main strategies to keep itself
competitive in inhabitation for migrants and foreigners, with the target fully express its unique civilization on
heritage, dinning habit and any others features.
Conclusion
Human capitals serve as the foundation of national flourish due to the ability to provide workforce and
innovations, it explains the vigorous competition on specialists between different countries through education
and economic incentives. Nonetheless, Southern nations have undergone various conflicts and economic
recession, leading to unfavorable living conditions that either put the nations on the edge of failing states or
bring about prolonged economic depression and social instability, massive brains of intelligentsia are drained to
more developed countries for the sake of improvement of living standard.
Thus, comprehensive reform based on national weakness can clearly distinguish between cumulative
degeneration and blooming power. With stable political status, ambitious development plan and sound national
culture broadening, locals would gain confidence to remain in their hometown; return migration is encouraged
under stable political situation; diasporas would be aware the homeland of their ancestors; foreigners regard the
land with high esteem and prosper business opportunity.
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