Mitigating the costs of departure. Brain drain, disadvantage and fair burden-sharing

ABSTRACT

In this article we aim to assess how the negative effects of brain drain can be mitigated in a fair way. We particularly focus on the policies of extraterritorial taxation and temporary compulsory service for highly skilled migrants in developing countries, which are most thoroughly defended by Gillian Brock. We argue that while Brock is right in pressing for policies seeking to combat the damaging effects of brain drain, she fails to properly characterize the complex strands of disadvantage that run through this phenomenon, placing an unfair redistributive burden on highly skilled migrants. By contrast, we maintain that any fair distribution of such burdens can only flow from a comprehensive account of existing comparative disadvantages, without regard for migratory status. The resulting policy implications are that a considerable part of the tax burden required for mitigating brain drain should be borne by citizens of developed countries, and that compulsory service in developing countries should be rejected.

KEYWORDS:

• Brain drain
• compulsory service
• disadvantage
• distributive justice
• taxation

Acknowledgments

We thank an audience at the ASPP General Conference held in Newcastle in 2019 and two anonymous reviewers for useful comments on initial versions of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ The term brain drain is somewhat controversial. Although we are sympathetic to the concern that using the term ‘drain’ may, in the minds of some, already presuppose a judgement on its overall impact and desirability, we do not think that completely giving up the term is warranted. Rather, we use this footnote to clarify that in this article we understand brain drain simply as a synonym for the emigration of highly skilled professionals, without any pre-judgment of its consequences.

² Defining who the skilled are is important, especially for the design of policies regarding brain drain. Although the bulk of the debate in the literature is focused on medical workers, the problems raised by their emigration may also be identified in the case of other professions (e.g. scientists, engineers, professors). One possibility is to employ a standard definition of skilled workers, equating this category with that of graduates of tertiary education. Nevertheless, as the discussion in this section makes clear, the salient features that can be said to plausibly raise the prospect of regulating emigration only partly relate to the level of education, and partly to: (1) the fact that the skills have been acquired with the help of public funds, and (2) the fact that the state is unable to meet some basic needs of those left behind.

³ Regarding (1), the effort to disincentivise immigration by highly skilled professionals from developing countries can be targeted at two levels: (a) the highly skilled themselves or (b) their would-be employers. Given the current state of the labour market in developed countries, it is not clear how highly skilled immigrants can be stopped from accessing it without any coercive restrictions on movement. One possibility may be to offer the would-be employer of these immigrants differential benefits if she refrains from hiring them.

⁴ If this line of reasoning is correct, then it will conflict with most cosmopolitan theories of global justice, which tend to support a regime of significantly more open borders that the one currently in place. See Carens (2013) for a prominent defence of this view.

⁵ This last point should be noted, as one objection raised in the debate of brain drain is that of the unfair distribution of electoral rights – specifically, the fact that in many states those that emigrate still hold their right to vote in source countries and this seems to conflict with the widely accepted tenet that, in the words of Brock, ‘those who have a say in determining the life of a community should also be prepared to help support that community financially’ (Brock and Blake 2015, 52).

⁶ This condition is important only for compulsory public service. If it doesn’t hold, then Brock can still argue on the basis of the other considerations in favour of taxation.

⁷ The third and final connective ground proposed by Brock is that of capacity, which refers to the agents who would be most effective and most able to bear the costs associated with rectifying the problematic situation. We do not analyse this feature further because: (1) it is not (at least as directly) related to the value of fairness, and (2) not only does it not damage our case against Brock and in favour of the policy proposals outlined in the fourth section, but considerably strengthens it since developed states are – on both grounds of effectiveness and ability to bear costs – better positioned to rectify brain drain-related negative effects than developing ones.

⁸ The recent development of limitarianism as a partial theory of justice by Ingrid Robeyns (2017), which mainly seeks to map out the appropriate duty-bearers in redistributive processes (Volacu and Dumitru 2019, 250) could signal a shift in this regard, but there is still quite a long way to go before the problem of duty-bearers becomes more central in this literature.

⁹ And which is captured by Brock’s Causal or contributory connection ground for assigning remedial responsibility.

¹⁰ And which is captured by Brock’s Benefit ground for assigning remedial responsibility.

¹¹ For a more robust defence of the well-being value account see Parr (2018, 312–313).

¹² Surely, there are multiple accounts on which the envy test might be failed either for the average citizen of a developing country and for the low skilled worker of a developed country. While a comprehensive assessment of injustice should factor in all such disadvantages (e.g. in opportunities for gaining material wealth, opportunities for job satisfaction prospects, opportunities for gaining social status through occupational choice etc.), we cannot pursue such a broad exercise here. Rather, we will strictly be concerned with the disadvantages most intimately related to the brain drain problem and to those which would be brought about by measures aimed at mitigating it.

¹³ Except in the case of an exit tax, whereby the developing state would charge emigrants with a one time fee on departure. But we largely set this proposal aside here, since it is highly doubtful that such a tax alone could prove effective in raising a significant amount of revenue to spend on public services.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian Ministry of Research and Innovation, CNCS – UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P1-1.1-BSH-2-2016-0005, within PNCDI III.