Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, Human Rights, Labour, Migration & Refugees, Population

MIGRATION: Is There an Upside to the “Brain Drain”?

Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Oct 25 2005 (IPS) - Some of the world’s smallest and poorest nations have lost an astonishing 89 percent of their skilled workers to richer countries, but may still gain financially from foreign remittances, the World Bank said Tuesday.

In a new study, “International Migration, Remittances and the Brain Drain”, the Washington-based public lender argues that international migration is likely to increase in the future, but that it carries some financial benefits to developing countries.

The 288-page study finds that diverging demographic trends between the developing and developed countries and a rapid decline in transportation and telecommunications costs are making it increasingly difficult for governments to curb international migration.

“As a result, international migration and its related issues are likely to occupy an increasingly prominent place on the global agenda for the foreseeable future,” the report predicts.

Poor nations with limited numbers of educated and skilled workers are increasingly losing engineers, doctors, nurses and sometimes artists who prefer the better pay and standard of living in rich nations.

“The report reveals the brain drain is massive in small and poor developing countries,” says World Bank economist Maurice Schiff.

According to the report, the top 10 emigration rates in terms of the proportion of the country’s total educated workforce are from Africa, the Caribbean, and Central America.

Many Central American and island nations in the Caribbean had more than 50 percent of their university-educated citizens living abroad in 2000.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, more than 40 percent of all migrants are skilled workers. And although the share of skilled workers in the total labour force in Sub-Saharan Africa is only four percent, close to 20 percent of all skilled workers have emigrated out of Sub-Saharan African countries, excluding South Africa.

In Asia, skilled workers account for nearly 50 percent of all emigrants.

The study shows that 89 percent of skilled workers in Guyana leave the country, while the rate in Jamaica is 85 percent, 84 percent in Haiti and 47 percent in Ghana, 37.4 percent in Laos and 39 in Kenya.

But World Bank economists say that the larger the country, the less of a problem the brain drain is. Countries such as China and India only have about three to five percent of their graduates living broad. Similar numbers were recorded similarly large countries like Brazil, Indonesia and the former Soviet Union.

“On average for countries with more than 30 million people, the brain drain is less than five percent of all college educated people,” said Schiff.

“The reason is that they have a large population of skilled people, so that even with a large share of skilled people in the migrant population, their share in the skilled population is nevertheless small,” he said.

The report also studies the situation in destination countries, mostly rich nations. It finds that in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, migrants are about 20 percent of the labour force, while they are 11.7 percent in the United States and only 6.7 percent in the European Union.

The report notes that it is not only workers from poor nations who seek brighter futures overseas. Millions of people from the European Union live abroad, but mostly within other EU countries, making net brain migration to the EU close to zero, when it is quite high for the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Analysing the links between migration and development, the report says that there are significant potential gains from the “liberalisation” of immigration policies, and that these would accumulate to sending countries, receiving nations and the immigrants themselves.

The report says the money the migrants send back “does help alleviate poverty in their former home”. The nearly 200 million people living outside of their native countries will send remittances estimated at around 225 billion dollars for this year, according to a forthcoming Bank publication, Global Economic Prospects 2006.

The World Bank’s Chief Economist François Bourguignon says the household survey evidence presented in the study demonstrates a direct link between migration and poverty reduction.

The report quotes a survey of Filipino households that shows the remittances they receive have translated into less child labour, more child schooling and more hours worked in self-employment.

The study also cites the example of Guatemala, where remittances reduced the severity of poverty. The biggest impact was on the severity of poverty, with remittances making up more than half the income of the poorest 10 percent of families.

But according to a study by the Washington-based Centre for Global Development (CGD) released earlier this month, the billions of dollars that migrants send home each year only partly compensate for developing world losses that come as a result of the brain drain.

“The idea that the migration of a significant fraction of a country’s best and brightest is not particularly harmful and may even be beneficial to the country is simply unwarranted,” the CGD study said. “If people of talent and drive are essential for building institutions, then their loss can have severe consequences.”

The World Bank acknowledged some negative impact for migration, noting that international migration comes at a price.

For origin countries, these costs include the loss of skilled migrants’ positive impact on society and the resources used to educate them. Migrants are also likely to suffer from the separation from family, friends, and culture, and from the lack of effective legal protection in their new countries.

Costs for destination countries include the perceived threat to cultural identity and the effect of migrants’ competition for the same jobs as natives, the Bank says.