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Should a Cosmopolitan Worry about the “Brain Drain”?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Devesh Kapur  and
John McHale
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Abstract

Many developing countries are experiencing high rates of emigration of their highly skilled citizens. This essay asks if a cosmopolitan—who we take to be generally supportive of freer international migration—should worry about the adverse effects on those remaining behind in poor countries. We document the extent of skilled outflows, discuss the causes and consequences of those outflows, and offer principles to guide a cosmopolitan policy response. We argue that skilled emigration harms long-run institutional development. The right response, however, is not to shut down the one reasonably liberal element of the international migration regime but to look for ways to make international migration work better for development.

Type
Special Section on Citizenship and Equality
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , September 2006 , pp. 305 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2006

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References

1 This essay is addressed to the cosmopolitan. We have taken a significant degree of concern for nonnationals for granted.

2 The conflicting goals are emblematic of the dilemmas that a “rooted cosmopolitan” (to use Kwame Appiah's phrase) may face in reconciling the local and the global. Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).

3 The estimates are based on the massive data-gathering exercise by Frederic Docquier and Abdeslam Marfouk using population censuses and surveys from all OECD countries. See Frederic Docquier and Abdeslam Marfouk, “Measuring the International Mobility of Skilled Workers (1990–2000),” Policy Research Working Paper 3381 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2004).

4 Vasant Narasimhan, Hilary Brown, Ariel Pablos-Mendez, Orvill Adams, Gilles Dussault, Gijs Elzinga, Anders Nordstrom, Demissie Habte, et al., “Responding to the Global Human Resources Crisis,” Lancet 363 (2004), pp. 1469–72.

5 Delanyo Dovlo and Frank Nyonator, “Migration by Graduates of the University of Ghana Medical School,” Human Resources for Health 3, no. 1 (1999), pp. 40–51.

6 Global Commission on International Migration, Migration in an Interconnected World: New Directions for Action (Geneva: United Nations, 2005).

7 Physicians for Human Rights, An Action Plan to Prevent Brain Drain: Building Equitable Health Systems in Africa (Boston: Physicians for Human Rights, 2004).

8 Celia Dugger, “An Exodus of African Nurses Puts Infants and the Ill in Peril,” New York Times, July 12, 2004, p. A1.

9 See Devesh Kapur and John McHale, “Sojourns and Software: Internationally Mobile Human Capital and High-Tech Development in India, Ireland, and Israel,” in Ashish Arora and Alfonso Gambardella, eds., From Underdogs to Tigers: The Rise and Growth of the Software Industry in Brazil, China, India, Ireland, and Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

10 See Michel Beine, Frederic Docquier, and Hillel Rappaport, “Brain Drain and Economic Growth: Theory and Evidence,” Journal of Development Economics 64, no. 1 (2001), pp. 275–89.

11 See also the critique in Maurice Schiff, “Brain Gain: Claims about Its Size and Impact on Welfare and Growth Are Greatly Exaggerated,” in Caglar Ozden and Maurice Schiff, eds., International Migration, Remittances, and the Brain Drain (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

12 See Rachel Friedberg, “You Can't Take It with You? Immigrant Assimilation and the Portability of Human Capital,” Journal of Labor Economics 18, no. 2 (2000), pp. 221–51.

13 See Martin Klinthall, Return Migration from Sweden 1968–1996: A Longitudinal Analysis (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wicksell International, 2003).

14 See George Borjas and Bernt Bratsberg, “Who Leaves? The Outmigration of the Foreign Born,” Review of Economics and Statistics 78, no. 1 (1996), pp. 165–76.

15 See Barry McCormick and Jackline Whaba, “Return International Migration and Geographical Inequality,” Journal of African Economics 12, no. 4 (2003), pp. 500–32; and Savina Ammassari, “From Nation-Building to Entrepreneurship: The Impact of Elite Return Migrants in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana” (paper presented at the International Workshop on Migration and Poverty in West Africa, University of Sussex, March 13–14, 2003).

16 For an overview, see Kapur and McHale, Give Us Your Best and Brightest, ch. 6 and app. A.

17 Charles Kurzman and Erin Leahey, “Intellectuals and Democratization, 1905–1912 and 1989–1996,” American Journal of Sociology 109, no. 4 (2004), pp. 937–86.

18 For a political theorist's critique, see Melissa Lane, “Ethical and Historical Perspectives on States and Migration” (paper presented at the Second Stockholm Workshop on Global Migration Regimes, June 2004); available at http:\\www.framtidsstudier.se/filebank/files/20060126$133539$fil$gPA4RcJ4UtXCtqsxR1xH.pdf.

19 Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983), esp. ch. 2; and David Miller, Citizenship and National Identity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000).

20 Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 125.

21 Thomas Nagel, “The Problem of Global Justice,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 33 (March 2005), pp. 113–47.

22 Guillermina Jasso, Mark R. Rosenweig, and James P. Smith, “The Earnings of U.S. Immigrants: World Skill Prices, Skill Transferability, and Selectivity” (The New Immigrant Survey, Princeton University, March 2002, unpublished); available at http:\\nis.princeton.edu/downloads/papers/earnings.pdf.

23 World Bank, Global Economic Prospects 2006 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2006), table 2.3.

24 See William Easterly and Ross Levine, “Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 112, no. 4 (1997), pp. 1203–50.

25 See Alberto Alesina and Eliana La Ferrara, “Ethnic Diversity and Economic Performance,” Harvard Institute of Economic Research Discussion Paper 2028 (December 2003); and Gianmarco Ottaviano and Giovanni Peri, “The Economic Value of Cultural Diversity: Evidence from US Cities,” Working Paper 10904 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2004).

26 Ajay Agrawal, Devesh Kapur, and John McHale, “Birds of a Feather—Better Together? How Co-Ethnicity and Co-Location Influence Knowledge Flow Patterns” (paper presented at CEA 40th Annual Meeting, Concordia University, Montréal, May 26–28, 2006).

27 George Borjas, Heaven's Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), argues that the less skilled in the United States have been hurt by large inflows of less-skilled immigrants. Other researchers have come to less pessimistic conclusions about the effect of immigration on the wages of less-skilled native-born workers. See David Card, “Is the New Immigration Really So Bad?” Working Paper 11547 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2005).

28 Perhaps vested in a treaty-based organization such as a World Migration Organization, as proposed by Jagdish Bhagwati, “The World Needs a New Body to Monitor Migration,” Financial Times, October 24, 2003, p. 24.

29 This idea is extensively analyzed in World Bank, Global Economic Prospects 2006, ch. 6.

30 For further discussion, see John McHale, “Taxation and Skilled Indian Migration to the United States: Revisiting the Bhagwati Tax,” in Jagdish Bhagwati and Gordon Hanson, eds., Skilled Migration Today: Prospects, Problems, and Policies (forthcoming).