Volume 3, Issue 1 - Symposium: Brain Drain and Emigration, Guest Editor: Eszter Kollar

The basic needs of desperately poor people frequently activate normative concern. An important part of addressing deprivation is the availability of skilled personnel able to provide what would fulfill needs. Sadly, developing countries, where neediness is most dire, experience severe shortages of just such personnel. For instance, about 4.25 million more health workers are needed to supply basic health for all. These shortages are exacerbated by the departure of high numbers of skilled personnel from developing countries seeking better prospects for themselves in developed ones. What, if anything, may developing countries defensibly do to solve problems associated with high skill migration? In our just published book, Debating Brain Drain: May Governments Restrict Emigration? , I develop an account of the responsibilities skilled citizens of poor, developing countries have to contribute to deprivation reduction, especially when they wish to leave such countries. In this overview article I discuss the structure of that project. I focus particularly on my case that carefully designed compulsory service and taxation programs can be justified under certain kinds of conditions.

In my chapters in Debating Brain Drain , I offer some reasons for thinking that states may not seek to prevent the emigration of their own citizens – even when those citizens have rare and desirable skills, and might use those skills to improve the lot of their fellow citizens. These arguments are developed in response to those contrary arguments given by Gillian Brock in her own chapters. I try to establish my conclusions by arguing against the empirical and philosophical bases of arguments in favor of the right to prevent exit. I suggest, on the former front, that suppression of the right to exit might well work against the interests of the poor, rather than in their favor. On the latter front, I argue that any proposals for “compulsory service” are both unfair and illiberal. States are not entitled to perpetual allegiance; rather, they must justify their uses of coercive power with reference to the interests and rights of those over whom that power is exercised. Preventing the emigration of a citizen is, on the best understandings of liberal political philosophy, morally prohibited.

This paper engages with Michael Blake and Gillian Brock’s recent book “Debating the Brain Drain” by examining the conditions under which freedom of movement can be justifiably constrained and criticising their analysis on how the asymmetries of migration (exit and entry, domestic and international) ought to be assessed form a normative perspective.

This paper is a contribution to the discussion of Gillian Brock and Michael Blake’s book “Debating Brain Drain.” It argues with Gillian Brock and against Michael Blake that a liberal state may make access to medical education conditional on public service of a reasonable duration after the completion of state supported education. Blake rejects this position on grounds that are broadly Rawlsian. This paper argues that such conditionality can be a reasonable limitation on liberty pursuant to the general satisfaction of a lexically prior basic needs principle, which includes a human right to health. Therefore such conditionality can be consistent with Rawlsian egalitarian liberalism generally.

This article addresses Michael Blake and Gillian Brock’s DEBATING BRAIN DRAIN. It argues, contra Blake, that the rights to exit may legitimately be subject to delay. It argues, contra Brock, that such delay is better conceived in terms of a general and reciprocal obligation on citizens that takes the form of compulsory public service.

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.

In this paper I first argue that when answering the question of whether or not governments may restrict emigration, Brock and Blake are staking out positions not astronomically far from one another. Despite the ostensibly large philosophical gap between the two, both think that certain governments may restrict emigration when such restriction is agreed to in a morally binding contract. Secondly, both authors think that there are specific “circumstances” or “conditions” under which a contract that restricts emigration can be morally binding. This second part of the paper will pose some questions that explore these various circumstances or conditions. The ultimate aim of the paper is to help point the debate in the right direction so as to further develop an answer to the question of whether or not governments may restrict emigration.

Several commentators focus substantial criticism on my proposals that require skilled citizens in poor developing states to assist those countries for short periods or with additional taxation measures. In particular, they are skeptical about any so-called fair contracts between governments and students that can defensibly bind students to perform service and pay taxes. They worry that the conditions and terms of these contracts cannot make for morally binding agreements. In Section 1 I review some key points from my overall argument strategy, indicating why the mechanism of fair contracts is a good focal point within the context of the debate. In Section 2 I consider and respond to several of the criticisms that aim to undermine the idea that students can enter into fair contracts that cover compulsory service and taxation programs. In Section 3, I consider prospects and pitfalls concerning extending some core lines of argument, mainly in response to Lea Ypi’s creative ideas.

Darrel Moellendorf, David Owen, and Lea Ypi have offered some subtle and powerful criticisms of the view I defend in Debating Brain Drain . I here focus on two broad category of criticism. The first is that my use of metaphor is faulty. I try to demonstrate that the right to emigrate is similar in moral strength to the right to freely exercise one’s religion, and not morally akin to the (non-existent) right to be free from paying taxes. I defend the proposition that the taking of money from people is morally distinct from the taking of time; we have reason to regard the latter sort of taking as more difficult to justify. The second category of criticism focuses on the theoretical assumption of my view, and argues that the liberalism I endorse begs important questions: it might be at such a high level of abstraction that it cannot answer the most important questions of political ethics, or it might assume so much about the nature of liberalism that it is dogmatic and unpersuasive. I argue, in response, that a political theory need not answer all political questions in order to be of use, and that the insistence on liberal rights represents not dogma but valid moral concerns.

In the classic article, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice,” G.A. Cohen states that “a large part of the fundamental egalitarian aim is to extinguish the effects of brute luck on distribution.” This canonical formulation pinpoints what is distinctive of the luck-egalitarian mandate. But it also indicates that that mandate, so stated, is incomplete. The primary task of the paper is to extend what is explicit within that mandate, and in doing so, to bring it closer to completion. To that end, I defend – in the spirit of Cohen, and by arguments he pioneered – a new, expanded conception of luck-egalitarian compensation. I propose, accordingly, an amendment, seemingly friendly, to Cohen’s statement. But, in fact, my proposed amendment, and its rationale, reveal a major lacuna in the normative underpinnings of Cohen-style egalitarianism. I thereby show that, contrary to what is widely assumed, important foundational work remains to be done for the luck-egalitarian project.