Global circulation of skills: Where are we heading to?

Abstract

The brain drain is dead… long live the brain gain!

No one would challenge today the idea that the international exchange of knowledge, just as the transnational movement of goods and services, has positive effects. In fact, we can retrospectively establish a cause and effect relationship between the skill transfer and input of the expatriates of some developing countries recently emerging to the status of middle-income economies and their impressive upward move on the global wealth ladder. For this reason, the evaluation of migratory circulation definitely needs to be revisited, because of its impact on both geopolitical hierarchies and global social relationships.

Is brain gain the long awaited win-win solution? Which policy instruments can promote exchanges which are both efficient and equitable and peaceful? Current transformations show potentials as well as risks we have never seen before.

Biography of the Speaker

Jean-Baptiste Meyer is senior researcher at the Institute of Research for Development. He has carried out research and higher education programmes with the National University of Colombia, the University of Cape Town and the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Buenos Aires. His works include: El nuevo nomadismo cientifico : la perspectiva latinoamericana (ESAP 1998), Scientific Diasporas (IRD editions, 2003), La société des savoirs : trompe l’oeil ou perspectives (Harmattan 2006), A sociology of diaspora knowledge networks (forthcoming 2011). He is currently coordinating the CIDESAL European research and development project, on diaspora incubators, developing new methods and instruments for global mobility understanding and management. Jean-Baptiste Meyer is co-leader of the French-Swiss scientific cooperation project on “Migration Agreements, Associative Practices and Transnational Communication for a Global Migration Governance” between the World Trade Institute (WTI) and the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) Montpellier, co-funded by the programme Germaine de Staël.