International Migration Policies - Week 10

International Migration Policies & Integration - Week 10: Brain Drain

• The week's agenda focuses on the emigration of high-skilled workers, its impact on sending states, and whether high-skill immigration has a positive or negative consequence.
• The week's agenda also includes analyzing brain drain as a curse or boon and its relationship to economic growth.
• The week's agenda includes creating variables in R (a programming language), specifically, changing non-numerical variables to numerical ones.
• The impact of sending countries' migration policies on migrants' rights is also covered.
• Sending governments, while theoretically prioritizing migrant rights, may not always do so in practice due to economic incentives.
• Insistence on rights may hinder migrants' opportunities abroad.
• Migrant rights vary across countries, with some (e.g., Philippines, Latvia) being more protectionist and others (e.g., Latin American countries) being more liberal.
• The Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995 (RA 8042) aims to protect overseas Filipino workers and prevent illegal recruitment.
• The week's agenda includes the trade-offs of too much protection for sending countries, particularly regarding low-skilled workers.
• Receiving countries often seek to limit low-skilled workers.
• Sending countries can lose economic opportunities due to the loss of skilled workers.
• A trade-off potentially exists for sending governments by prioritizing economic benefits over migrant rights.
• This results in potential losses of legitimacy, reputation, and population.

Brain Drain: Curse or Boon?

• The definition of brain drain is the international transfer of human capital resources. This involves the migration of highly educated individuals from developing to developed countries.
• Highly skilled professionals, like engineers, physicians, scientists and often university graduates, frequently migrate between developed countries.
• Brain drain has been historically viewed as hindering the development of poor countries.
• Comparative data reveals a significant rise in high-skilled immigrants in OECD countries since 1990.
• The rate of low-skilled migration in OECD countries from 1990-2010 has only increased 40 percent of the time.
• 2/3 of low skilled emigrants come from developing and transitional countries.
• Motivations for brain drain include, poverty, lack of economic growth, discrimination, repression, and lack of freedom.
• Easier emigration for educated peoples, financial resources, and information from networks also play a factor.

Measuring Brain Drain

• Brain drain has two components: average emigration rate (across all skill levels) and an index that measures the proportion of highly educated individuals emigrating.
• Egypt's brain drain is relatively low (4.5% of their labor force emigrated), while emigration for skilled persons in Seychelles is high (56% of their labor force).
• Even when the absolute number of emigrants is high, brain drain may be less pronounced for some countries when compared to others.

Impact of Brain Drain on Sending Countries

• The classic model of brain drain suggests a negative impact on the sending country's economy.
• This includes the loss of socio-economic potential, tax revenues, and shortages of manpower in key sectors like education and healthcare.
• The result, according to this model is a technological gap between the sending and receiving countries.

Dynamic Model of Brain Drain

• The dynamic model suggests that brain drain can also be positive for the sending country.
• This happens when the benefits of brain gain outweigh the losses from brain drain.
• Brain gain occurs when the outflow of skilled workers induces additional investment in education, leading to future benefits and potentially raising standards of living.
• Remittances also contribute to the economy of the sending country, creating job opportunities and skill exchange.

Arguments Against the Brain Gain Theory

• Scholars argue that the actual impact of brain drain on welfare and growth may be less significant than previously thought.
• The likelihood of a negative impact on welfare from brain drain may be greater than the brain gain.
• High-skilled individuals will emigrate, and this can deplete the sending country's resources.
• Education benefits can also be uncertain, and resources dedicated toward education often produce broader societal benefits.

Empirical Evidence and Data Issues

• Researchers aim to study relationships, such as that between migration opportunities and educational investment.
• Gathering accurate emigration and immigration data can prove challenging, as declarations are not always compulsory or comprehensive.
• Data may include tourists, and determining the skill level of emigrants can be problematic.

Results and Conclusion

• Some evidence suggests support for the brain drain benefit theory, with migration potentially stimulating education investments.
• A positive relationship between migrant levels and economic growth has been found, although not in all cases, and the overall effect might not always be noticeable.

Data on Remittances

• Remittances are transfers of money made by migrants to their home countries.
• Remittances contribute financially to sending countries.
• Other benefits include skilled return migrants creating jobs, transferring skills, and maintaining worker connections from their host countries.

Creating Variables in R

• Methods for creating both qualitative (e.g., opinion on immigrants) and quantitative (e.g., age) variables are presented for use in the statistical software R.
• Also includes how to convert quantitative data into qualitative data, and vice versa.

Literature Review: How to and What Makes a Good Literature Review

• Literature reviews analyze published work in a field.
• The structure should outline the extent to which research has covered a specific area and its justification for being important.
• Literature reviews are NOT just summaries.
• A good literature review identifies the strengths and areas of improvement in past work, incorporating novel ideas and new methods that address potential weaknesses.
• This should also show how research in an area has expanded or evolved over time.

Brain Drain and Economic Growth Overview

• Some argue that brain drain can be beneficial depending on the levels of emigration and other factors.
• This is when investment in education is significant enough in the outflowing country.

The Model of Beneficial Brain Drain (BBD)

• This model focuses on small open economies with overlapping generations.
• Educational investment is a key driver of productivity differences and long-term development.
• The model also emphasizes that individuals' experiences with learning skills may influence future economic development opportunities.

This week focuses on the concept of brain drain and the emigration of high-skilled workers. We will explore its effects on sending states, economic growth, and an analysis of migrant rights amidst varying migration policies. Additionally, we will work with R programming to convert non-numerical variables into numerical ones.