Human capital flight
[28] Although the term originally referred to technology workers leaving a nation, the meaning has broadened into "the departure of educated or professional people from one country, economic sector, or field for another, usually for better pay or living conditions".
"[34] Hein de Haas, Professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam, describes the brain drain as a "myth",[35][36] whilst political philosopher Adam James Tebble argues that more open borders aid both the economic and institutional development of poorer migrant sending countries, contrary to proponents of "brain-drain" critiques of migration.
[100] After Justinian closed the Platonic Academy in 529 AD, according to the historian Agathias, its remaining members sought protection from the Sassanid ruler, Khosrau I, carrying with them precious scrolls of literature, philosophy and, to a lesser degree, science.
As they dominated Spain's financial service industry, their expulsion was instrumental in causing future economic problems, for example the need for foreign bankers such as the Fugger family and others from Genova.
Following this abandonment, two of the three pioneers of modern architecture, Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius, left Germany for America (while Le Corbusier stayed in France).
"The Martians" were a group of prominent Hungarian scientists of Jewish descent (mostly, but not exclusively, physicists and mathematicians) who escaped to the United States during and after World War II due to Nazism or Communism.
Many more left because of communism: Hungarian Nobel-prize winners: György von Békésy, Szent-Györgyi, Harsányi and Hersko and others like Viktor Szebehely, Zoltán Bay, Alexandre Lamfalussy (economist), Mihaly Csikszentmihaly (Flow) The process didn't stop, since the region that used to be the Western Block quickly recovered from the economic crisis caused by the World War and stabilized as reconstruction was completed so the bulk of businesses and capital flocked there, creating a systematic barrier.
[119] In the last months of and post World War II, both the American and Soviet governments forcibly recruited and transported thousands of former Nazi scientists to the US and USSR respectively to continue their scientific work in those countries.
[122] Yuri Andropov, then the CPSU director of Relations with Communist and Workers' Parties of Socialist Countries, decided on 28 August 1958 to write an urgent letter to the Central Committee about the 50% increase in the number of East German intelligentsia among the refugees.
The country has lost 19.5% of its qualified population and is struggling to absorb sufficient skilled immigrants to compensate for losses to Australia, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, United Kingdom and Austria.
[149] Central and Eastern European countries have expressed concerns about extensive migration of skilled labourers to Ireland and the United Kingdom following the creation of the Schengen Agreement.
[citation needed] (Ireland itself previously experienced high rates of human capital flight to the United States, Great Britain and Canada before the Celtic Tiger economic programs.)
[150] However, with the rapid growth of salaries in Poland, its booming economy, the strong value of the zloty, and decreasing unemployment (which fell from 14.2% in May 2006 to 8% in March 2008[151]), the flight of Polish workers slowed.
More often they are from bigger cities.According to Johannes Wachs, "The exodus of skilled human capital, sometimes called brain drain, out of Russia may have a significant effect on the course of the war and the Russian economy in the long run.
According to a report on "migration and brain drain" in the Western Balkans, published in 2024, "young people leave these countries not only because of low salaries and economic issues but also because of corruption, crime, political instability and lack of security.
[citation needed] Then South African Deputy President Thabo Mbeki said in his 1998 "African Renaissance" speech: "In our world in which the generation of new knowledge and its application to change the human condition is the engine which moves human society further away from barbarism, do we not have need to recall Africa's hundreds of thousands of intellectuals back from their places of emigration in Western Europe and North America, to rejoin those who remain still within our shores!
Africarecruit is a joint initiative by NEPAD and the Commonwealth Business Council to recruit professional expatriate Africans to take employment back in Africa after working overseas.
[167] The trend for young doctors and nurses to seek higher salaries and better working conditions, mainly in higher-income countries of the West, is having serious effects on the health care sector in Ghana.
[184] Better possibilities for job markets is thought to be the motivation for absolute majority of the human capital flight while a small few stated their reasons as in search of more social or political freedom.
However Roxas, having spent his last three years as the secretary of finance and chairman of the National Economic Council and a number of other Filipino companies, was particularly concerned with the country's financial (rather than health) problems.
Seeking access through the Exchange Visitors Program (EVP) sponsored by the US government, workers were encouraged to go abroad to learn more skills and earn higher pay, sending remittance payments back home.
[208] With continuously rising demand for nurses in the international service sector and overseas, the Philippine government aggressively furthered their educational programs under Ferdinand Marcos, president at the time.
A 2021 study found that migration opportunities for Filipino nurses led to a net increase in human capital in the Philippines, thus contradicting the "brain drain" thesis.
[217] Although it is important to note along with such discrepancies that the costs of living are also higher in the US, and that remittance payment transfers back home are not free, there is still evidently a large economic pull to studying as a nurse and migrating overseas.
[223] Sri Lanka has lost a significant portion of its intellectuals, mainly due to civil war and the resulting uncertainty that prevailed in the country for the thirty-year period prior to the end of the conflict in 2009.
[citation needed] With rapid GDP growth and a higher degree of openness towards the rest of the world, there has been an upsurge in Chinese emigration to Western countries—particularly the United States, Canada and Australia.
During the 1990s, some alleged a brain drain from Canada to the United States, especially in the software, aerospace, health care and entertainment industries, due to the perception of higher wages and lower income taxes in the US.
In the mid-2000s, Canada's resilient economy, strong domestic market, high standard of living, and considerable wage growth across a number of sectors, effectively ended the brain drain debate.
[248] The data show a trend of such people moving away from the Rust Belt and northern Great Plains region towards the West Coast, Southwestern and Southeast United States.
A New Method of Exile" states that the Venezuelan refugee crisis was caused by the "deterioration of both the economy and the social fabric, rampant crime, uncertainty and lack of hope for a change in leadership in the near future".
