Latin Analysis: The Latin American “Brain Drain”
Alistair Berg
The term “brain drain” (BD), also referred to as the “Human Capital Flight” (HCF) phenomenon, alludes to a massive amount of people, usually skilled, specialized, and/or highly-educated individuals, who flee their home countries to other nations. Commonly, these people move to more-developed countries, in the search for financial and social stability.
This has been a problem that many countries have had to deal with in the past. Yet, during the last years, there has been an alarming increase of “brain drain” within the entire Latin American region which, experts suggest, contributes to their economic growth stagnation.
Why are “talented” people leaving?
Social mobility has always been a consequence of several factors caused by the first and second globalization. Nevertheless, from the 1970s, the phenomenon of highly educated people leaving their home countries became an alarming situation in Latin America. This happened due to several reasons as growing criminality, rising unemployability, economic instability, amongst others. Particularly, the countries which have suffered the most from BD are Mexico, Colombia, and Cuba, as, according to OECD data, these have lost around 866, 345, and 345 thousands of highly-trained professionals respectively. The preferred countries to which people from these countries migrate to are the US, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. The population of educated immigrants has become so big, that some developed countries have diasporas which are made (almost exclusively) by scientists.
At first, many economists argued that this phenomenon had been beneficial for the Latino states, as the immigrants sent large amounts of capital as remittances in Euros, Pounds Sterling, or Dollars which were worth more than the national currency. Thus, it benefitted the finances of the nations which “exported talent”. Nevertheless, the rise in HCF became so substantial, that it ceased to be a financial gain for Latin American governments, such that experts stated that the boost in brain drain would result in a stagnation of scientific and technological development, as well as this would negatively affect the short-term and long-term economic growth.
Naturally, not all nations in Latin America are suffering from this flight of high-skilled professionals. States as Peru, Chile, and Argentina (despite the recent economic crisis) due to an increase of government spending in education, multinational companies entering these nations’ markets, and stable standards of living, resulted in these countries not only being able to retain their highly-educated nationals, but have also been capturing that of their neighboring countries. Still, rates of BD have continued to increase such that, the number of Latinos who left their countries for more-developed nations grew an unprecedented 155% from 1990 to 2007.
How are countries trying to solve it?
Indeed, nations have recognized that the HCF phenomenon is an issue that requires urgent attention if nations aim to ameliorate their economic development prospects. Yet, it is not possible for all to solve the problem, as countries with high BD rates as Venezuela and Cuba – given the authoritarian regimes under which those operate and the humanitarian crises that both face – are not likely to retain their human capital until they recover some of the lost social and economic stability. However, other countries have been applying several measures to try to reduce the preoccupying levels of immigration of professionals to other states.
Both Mexico and Colombia, have tried to create and retain more highly-educated professionals by significantly increasing their spending on education. Particularly, these two countries have followed strategies suggested by several international developmental scholars, which consist of increasing the investment in postgraduate education for their nationals, such that they can study abroad in developed nations to acquire “top” (western) education. Then, when students finish their degree overseas, they are conditioned to come back to use the acquired skills in their home country. Nevertheless, despite these programs having been implemented for several years, both nations still lead the ranking of talent-exporter nations, as many students who leave to obtain a master’s or Ph.D. degrees, never return home.
The situation in which students fail to meet their promise of returning to their country has become so grave in Mexico, that the current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), has even threatened to withdraw all public spending from the programs that support postgraduate research abroad. Due to social and political pressure, this has not happened. Yet, governmental spending on such programs has been reduced I over 75% as a means to reduce the talent-exporting process, as he considered it has been “unnecessary” spending for the country and that the institutions in charge of such scholarships and monetary support for Mexican academia were inefficient and corrupt. However, these measures have been widely criticized by national analysts, as withdrawing money from education will result in a decrease of highly educated professionals considerably, such that the problem of research and development stagnation will not be solved.
On the other hand, Colombia has opted for less-extreme measures to try to retain its highly-skilled professionals. This is the case as it has opted to make its loan-conditionalities more stringent for students to force them to come back to their country and work (preferably) in the public sector. Yet, similarly to Mexico, the high levels of talented migration are still on the rise.
Many political experts have stated that it is true that countries with high rates of HCF should keep investing in the education of their nationals parallelly to keep working to attract multinational companies to enter the local markets as well as support entrepreneurship in the region. Nevertheless, it has also been recognized that, given the increasing social mobility originated by the second globalization, the phenomenon of people moving to other countries is not likely to disappear. Hence, it has been suggested that these matters should also be prioritized within the international realm, as multilateral agreements on migration should consider the latter phenomenon to create migration agreements that would make social mobility less “problematic” for individuals. It is also argued that, given that countries prioritize the development and investment in different industries, increasing international agreements on migration could also support social mobility such that nations could balance the offer and demand of experts in different subject areas.
However, it might seem as nations are still reluctant to discuss HCF as a priority on international matters. Albeit this situation is not expected to be discussed in a more global-like manner due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the arranging of other urgent issues. Yet, analysts continue to argue that, despite nations’ reluctance to speak more openly about it, the migration of skilled people from Latin America is not an issue that is forecasted to decrease any time soon.
