Brain drain and brain gain
Looking at how something works.
Brain drain is also called human capital flight. It is the mass emigration of technically skilled people from one country to another. The reasons are familiar: political instability, a lack of opportunities, health risks, personal conflicts. The name sits next to capital flight, in which money, rather than people, leaves in bulk.
The term came into use as technologists, doctors, and scientists moved from developing countries, and from Europe, to richer countries such as the United States. The same movement is a drain for the country they leave and a gain for the country that receives them. Developing countries, India among them, have lived with the drain. Countries such as the United States have lived with the gain.
Brain drain from Europe
A few years before this was written, Europe was one of the places hit hardest. The movement came in two stages. Workers moved from southeastern and eastern Europe into western Europe, and then from western Europe to the United States. That cycle has been slowing. To hold people, the European community launched the Blue Card, on the same idea as the American green card. In the decade before this note, the EU had also become more open to immigrants from Asia, partly to make up for the people it was losing. At the same time it worried about the effect of a larger foreign population on culture and daily life, and it began to tighten the rules.
Asia
China, Pakistan, Russia, and India face the same loss. Unemployment, a growing population, and corrupt political systems push skilled workers to leave. In India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and countries like them, graduates and experienced professionals often cannot find enough room to develop. They leave with a picture of a better future. For the country they leave, that is a real loss.
What brain gain is
Brain gain is the other side of the same movement. The countries skilled workers move to are the ones said to be gaining: the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. They gain because they are rich, because the work is there, and because the facilities and the way of living are better.
A balance
If power and development are to be shared more evenly, the drain has to slow. A country needs its skilled people if it is going to use them. Holding them means giving them work and a life they can accept. For that, richer countries have to help poorer ones with money and resources, so that a person can live well where they already are, and a nation can become one that people do not have to leave.
First written in 2010 on virtual eye.