Easing the Strain: Understanding brain drain and where policy can respond

Development on the Move Working Paper 3

It is clear that many countries across the globe are increasingly seeking to attract highly skilled migrants, with trends looking set to continue despite the global downturn. This competition for highly skilled workers is provoking concerns about 'brain drain'.

There is evidence that at high levels 'brain drain' becomes 'brain strain' - it starts to damage a country's development. Therefore it is important to understand the factors that cause brain drain in order to see whether and how policymakers might intervene in order to pre-empt the phenomenon.

ippr and GDN, as part of their 'Development on the Move' project, have attempted to synthesise theresults of a number of surveys of migrants and people intending to migrate, in order to develop a typology of factors driving brain drain.

Analysis of the surveys shows that there are five categories of common factors, across different groups of skilled migrants and different contexts, driving the desire to migrate: wages; employment; professional development; networks and socio-economic and political conditions in the home country. Of course, they are not of equal importance to all migrants and potential migrants.