Medical Brain Drain: Free-Riding, Exploitation, and Global Justice
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Merten Reglitz
Abstract
In her debate with Michael Blake, Gillian Brock sets out to justify emigration restrictions on medical workers from poor states on the basis of their free-riding on the public investment that their states have made in them in form of a publicly funded education. For this purpose, Brock aims to isolate the question of emigration restrictions from the larger question of responsibilities for remedying global inequalities. I argue that this approach is misguided because it is blind to decisive factors at play in the problem of medical brain drain and consequently distorts the different responsibilities this problem generates. Brock’s strategy, if successful, would effectively lead to punishing emigrating workers from poor states for the free-riding and exploitation that is committed by affluent states – which is a counter-intuitive result.
Acknowledgments
For comments I thank Daniel Callies, Art Held, Eszter Kollar, Darrel Moellendorf, and two anonymous reviewers of Moral Philosophy & Politics. I particularly would like to thank Eszter Kollar for organizing the workshop that this commentary was presented at. This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) funded Cluster of Excellence ‘Normative Orders’ at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main.
©2016 by De Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Symposium on Brain Drain: The Merits and Limits of Furthering Normative Solutions in Source Countries
- Debating Brain Drain: An Overview
- Debating Brain Drain: An Overview
- Sharing the Burdens of the Brain Drain
- Can a Liberal State Make Access to Medical Education Conditional on Public Service?
- Compulsory Public Service and the Right to Exit
- Medical Brain Drain: Free-Riding, Exploitation, and Global Justice
- Brain Drain, Contracts, and Moral Obligation
- Solving Problems Associated with the Brain Drain: Fair Contracts, Legitimate States, and Appropriate Policy Measures
- On Money, God, and Dogmatic Liberalism: A Reply to my Critics
- Additional Article
- Luck, Love, and Extreme Skiing: Distributive Injustice without Unfairness
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Symposium on Brain Drain: The Merits and Limits of Furthering Normative Solutions in Source Countries
- Debating Brain Drain: An Overview
- Debating Brain Drain: An Overview
- Sharing the Burdens of the Brain Drain
- Can a Liberal State Make Access to Medical Education Conditional on Public Service?
- Compulsory Public Service and the Right to Exit
- Medical Brain Drain: Free-Riding, Exploitation, and Global Justice
- Brain Drain, Contracts, and Moral Obligation
- Solving Problems Associated with the Brain Drain: Fair Contracts, Legitimate States, and Appropriate Policy Measures
- On Money, God, and Dogmatic Liberalism: A Reply to my Critics
- Additional Article
- Luck, Love, and Extreme Skiing: Distributive Injustice without Unfairness
