Justice, Fairness, and the Brain Drain

Abstract

The emigration of skilled professionals from developing societies to more wealthy ones has troubling ethical implications. This form of emigration may undermine the efforts of developing countries to build robust political institutions, as those who leave are those most able to demand institutional change and reform in government. Such emigration also represents a regressive transfer of wealth, as those educated by an impoverished society frequently use that education to benefit the more well-off. Gillian Brock and Michael Blake agree that this phenomenon deserves moral attention, but disagree about what states of origin might legitimately do in response. Brock argues that the state has some right to condition exit upon the performance of some specified term of public service; Blake, in contrast, argues that liberalism demands robust rights of exit, even when that exit does not tend to move the world towards global justice. This overview examines their respective arguments, as well as their shared assumptions about both liberal theory and empirical fact.