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International Scholarships in Higher Education pp 209–234Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Global Migration of Talent: Drain, Gain, and Transnational Impacts

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Abstract

According to United Nations data, the number of international migrants worldwide reached 244 million in 2015. Among these migrants, recent data suggest a steeply increasing trend in the proportion of highly skilled emigration to total emigration, including international student mobility. In this chapter, we review the ‘brain drain’ debate and present relevant data on ‘talent mobility’ within the context of globalization and knowledge-based economies. We also discuss the main winners and losers from talent mobility and present examples of policies and programs employed by source countries to incentivize return. Finally, we conclude by developing a set of policy implications for mitigating ‘brain drain’ and capitalizing on the growing potential of diaspora and transnational communities to stimulate economic development and social change in their countries of origin.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    There are also important source or sending countries in the OECD such as Mexico, Poland, and Turkey.

  2. 2.

    There are many empirical papers on migrant remittances, skilled and unskilled, although data on the uses of remittances in sending countries is more anecdotal. See, for instance, Rapoport and Docquier (2006), Docquier and Rapoport (2012), Yang (2008), Gibson and McKenzie (2011), and Easterly and Nyarko (2009).

  3. 3.

    Summarized in Collier (2013, p. 221): “Lifelines keep people going (remittances), but they do not transform lives”.

  4. 4.

    There are inadequate data on the socioeconomic background of skilled emigrants, and international students as a subset, which points to another area for future research. Collection of such data will permit more systematic analysis of the impact of socioeconomic background on return rates and remittances. Some scholarship programs (e.g. The MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program) are beginning to collect this information for their scholarship recipients.

  5. 5.

    “By 2020, substantially expand globally the number of scholarships available to developing countries, in particular least developed countries, small island developing States and African countries, for enrolment in higher education, including vocational training and information and communications technology, technical, engineering and scientific programmes, in developed countries and other developing countries” (United Nations 2015).

  6. 6.

    The case study that follows this chapter by Qiang Zha and Dongfang Wang provides a detailed exposition on the Chinese Government Scholarship Program.

  7. 7.

    For more on these programs and others, see Kaczmarczyk and Lesińska (2012).

  8. 8.

    Other professional diaspora networks include the South African Network of Skills Abroad (SANSA), Chinese Scholars Abroad (CHISA), the Arab Scientists and Technologists Abroad (ASTA), African Diaspora Network, and the Silicon Valley Indian Professionals Association (SIPA) (Thorn and Holm-Nielsen 2008).

  9. 9.

    “Preventing outflows of workers and students is not easy. It also prevents the acquisition by these individuals and to some extent by the source country of knowledge available abroad. In fact, from a policy point of view and at least in the short run, promoting emigration by workers and students (the latter probably more than the former) in order to acquire high levels of education and skills may very well be a cost efficient way to improve the quality of domestic human capital, as opposed to establishing say, universities or research institutes in the source country” (Solimano 2008, p. 186).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Robin R. Marsh

  2. Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia

    Ruth Uwaifo Oyelere

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  1. Robin R. Marsh
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA

    Joan R. Dassin

  2. University of California, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, Berkeley, California, USA

    Robin R. Marsh

  3. The Association of Commonwealth Universities, London, United Kingdom

    Matt Mawer

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Marsh, R.R., Oyelere, R.U. (2018). Global Migration of Talent: Drain, Gain, and Transnational Impacts. In: Dassin, J., Marsh, R., Mawer, M. (eds) International Scholarships in Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62734-2_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62734-2_11

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