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Immigration, self-determination, and the brain drain*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2014

LUARA FERRACIOLI
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Abstract

This article focuses on two questions regarding the movement of persons across international borders: (1) do states have a right to unilaterally control their borders; and (2) if they do, are migration arrangements simply immune to moral considerations? Unlike open borders theorists, I answer the first question in the affirmative. However, I answer the second question in the negative. More specifically, I argue that states have a negative duty to exclude prospective immigrants whose departure could be expected to contribute to severe deprivation in their countries of origin. Countries have a right to unilaterally control their borders, but their exercise of this right is constrained by the demands of morality.

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Articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , January 2015 , pp. 99 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2014 

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References

1 See, for example, Wellman, Christopher H., ‘Immigration and Freedom of Association’, Ethics, 119 (2008), pp. 109–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Note that here I refer to inclusion as the granting of permanent residency (and eventual access to citizenship) by the recipient state and exclusion as the refusal of a would-be immigrant claim for admission.

2 Carens, Joseph, ‘Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders’, Review of Politics, 49 (1987), pp. 251–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cole, Philip, Philosophies of Exclusion: Liberal Political Theory and Immigration (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Oberman, Kieran, ‘Can Brain Drain Justify Immigration Restriction’, Ethics, 123 (2013), pp. 427–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Walzer, Michael, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983)Google Scholar; Miller, David, ‘Immigration: The Case for Limits’, in Cohen, Andrew I. and Wellman, Christopher. H. (eds), Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 193–206Google Scholar; Pevnick, Ryan, Immigration and the Constraints of Justice: Between Open Borders and Absolute Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 In particular, it goes further than two recent discussions on the topic of brain drain. It goes further than Kieran Oberman, who argues that exclusion on brain drain grounds can at times be permitted (whereas I argue that, at times, it is morally required). It also goes a step further than Lucas Stanczyk in his essay ‘Productive Justice’, in that I specify the key moral obligation that productive injustice gives rise to at the international level. See Oberman, ‘Can Brain Drain Justify Immigration Restriction’, and Stanczyk, Lucas, ‘Productive Justice’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 40 (2012), pp. 144–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Walzer, Spheres of Justice.

6 Miller, ‘Immigration: The Case for Limits’. Others have focused on socioeconomic considerations, such as the effects that migration would have on poor citizens, or on how migration would undermine the capacity of the egalitarian state to achieve justice. See Macedo, Stephen, ‘The Moral Dilemma of U.S. Immigration Policy: Open Borders Versus Social Justice?’, in Swain, Carol (ed.), Debating Immigration (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 63–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ypi, Lea, ‘Justice in Migration: A Closed Borders Utopia?’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 16 (2008), pp. 391–418CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Wellman, ‘Immigration and Freedom of Association’.

8 Ibid., p. 115.

9 Ferracioli, Luara, ‘Morality in Migration: A Review Essay’, Global Justice Theory Practice Rhetoric, 5 (2012), pp. 110–19Google Scholar.

10 Oberman, ‘Can Brain Drain Justify Immigration Restriction’, p. 427.

11 Here I endorse the position that a minimally decent life is one where the most basic and non-negotiable human interests are secured. There will be, of course, grey areas in employing such a standard but states can avoid injustice by erring on the side of protection in times of uncertainty (even if it risks including some persons who lack a moral claim to be included). I assume that such an approach is preferable over potentially excluding some individuals who do have a moral claim to be included. For a discussion, see Ferracioli, Luara, ‘The Appeal and Danger of a New Refugee Convention’, Social Theory and Practice, 40:1 (2014), pp. 123–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 For proponents of this view, see Cole, Philosophies of Exclusion; Oberman, ‘Can Brain Drain Justify Immigration Restriction’.

13 See Macedo, ‘The Moral Dilemma of U.S. Immigration Policy’.

14 Note that self-determination is not a freestanding reason for a state's right to exclude visitors when granting them short-term access to the territory would not give rise to significant costs. But self-determination is a sufficient reason for barring prospective immigrants from permanently joining the territory because rights to territory are similarly grounded on the value of self-determination.

15 For functionalist accounts of legitimacy, see Wellman, ‘Immigration and Freedom of Association’; Stiltz, Anna, ‘Nations, States, and Territory’, Ethics, 121 (2011), pp. 572–601CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Cole, Philosophies of Exclusion, p. 311.

17 See United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Human Development Report (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 109Google ScholarPubMed; Hidalgo, Javier S., ‘The Active Recruitment of Health Workers: A Defense’, Journal of Medical Ethics, 39 (2013), pp. 603–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Ruhs, Martin, ‘The potential of temporary migration programmes in future international migration policy’, International Labour Review, 145 (2006), pp. 25–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Bhagwati, Jagdish and Hamada, Koichi, ‘The brain drain, international integration of markets for professionals and unemployment: A theoretical analysis’, Journal of Development Economics, 1 (1974), p. 40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 UNDP, Human Development Report, p. 72.

21 World Bank, Global Economic Prospects 2006: Economic Implications of Remittances and Migration (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006), pp. 126–27Google Scholar.

22 Kapur, Davesh, ‘Remittances: The New Development Mantra?’, G-24 Discussion Paper Series 29 (2004), p. 7Google Scholar.

23 El-Khawas, Mohammed, ‘Brain drain: putting Africa between a rock and a hard place’, Mediterranean Quarterly, Fall (2004), p. 47Google Scholar.

24 Chopra, Mickeyet al., ‘Achieving the health Millennium Development Goals for South Africa: challenges and priorities’, The Lancet, 374 (2009), p. 1023CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

25 Brock, Gillian, Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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27 UNDP, Human Development Report, p. 108.

28 Brock, Gillian, ‘Feasibility, Nationalism, Migration, Justification and Global Justice: Some further thoughts’, Global Justice Theory Practice Rhetoric, 4 (2011), p. 71Google Scholar.

29 Kapur, Davesh and McHale, John, Give Us Your Best and Brightest: The Global Hunt for Talent and its Impact on the Developing World (Washington DC: Centre for Global Development, 2005), pp. 163–76Google Scholar.

30 A difficulty arises when the emigration of skilled workers raises the living standards of part of the population while giving rise to severe deprivation in another segment of the population. Or when the benefits and burdens of migration are unevenly distributed among regions within a country, with one region particularly badly affected and another particularly well benefited. It seems to me that in those cases, we must not lose sight of the fact that some people are suffering severe deprivation, and that this cannot be justified simply by reference to the fact that some are doing much better as a result of emigration.

31 It is true that migration comes in degrees, and that not only permanent but also long-term migration can be morally problematic when it comes to securing the access of vulnerable populations to basic health care and education. Note, however, that I am not suggesting that temporary migration is always morally unproblematic. In order for states to discharge their duty not to contribute to harmful brain drain, they must be careful not to implement temporary arrangements that can easily become long-term or permanent. This can be done through the creation of strong financial incentives for return. For a discussion, see Ruhs, Martin, ‘The potential of temporary migration programmes in future international migration policy’, International Labour Review, 145 (2006), pp. 29–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Mills, Edwardet al., ‘Should active recruitment of health workers from sub-Sahara African be viewed as a crime’, The Lancet, 371 (2008), p. 685CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Ibid.

34 Bhargava, Alok and Docquier, Frédéric, ‘HIV Pandemic, Medical Brain Drain, and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa’, World Bank Economic Review, 22 (2008), p. 365CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Teson, Fernando R., ‘Brain-Drain’, San Diego Law Review, 45 (2008), pp. 899–932Google Scholar; Hidalgo, ‘The Active Recruitment of Health Workers: A Defense’.

36 UNDP, Human Development Report, p. 109.

37 Brock, ‘Feasibility, Nationalism, Migration, Justification and Global Justice’, pp. 66–76. For an interesting discussion on the ‘privatization of public goods’, whereby emigrants take with them the benefits of social cooperation, see Brassington, Iain, ‘What's Wrong with the Brain Drain (?)’, Developing World Bioethics, 12 (2012), pp. 113–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Barry, Christian and Øverland, Gerhard, ‘The Feasible Alternatives Thesis: Kicking Away the Livelihoods of the Global Poor’, Philosophy, Politics & Economics, 11 (2012), pp. 97–119CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Javier S. Hidalgo has defended the active recruitment of health workers on the grounds that employers ‘do not enable harm when they recruit health workers abroad’, in ‘The Active Recruitment of Health Workers: A Defense’, p. 606. He is certainly right about but the fact that employers do not enable harm, but he has failed to consider whether recipient states enable harm by granting visas to hundreds or thousands of workers coming from resource-deprived settings.

40 Shachar, Ayelet, ‘Race for Talent: Highly Skilled Migrants and Competitive Immigration Regimes’, New York University Law Review, 81 (2006), pp. 148–206Google Scholar; Ruhs, Martin, ‘Migrant Rights, Immigration Policy and Human Development’, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 11 (2010), pp. 259–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Oberman, ‘Can Brain Drain Justify Immigration Restriction’, p. 449.

42 Ibid.

43 See Marchiori, Lucaet al., ‘Brain Drain in Globalization: A General Equilibrum Analysis from the Sending Countries' Pespective’, Economic Inquiry, 51 (2013), pp. 1582–602CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Note that if the government of the sender state is not taking the most basic steps to ensure that the skills are actually employed to the benefit of the people, then it cannot be said that a recipient state will enable any deprivation to take place. Employment is, however, not sufficient, since workers must be sure to receive a fair wage and other aspects of decent working conditions. The rationale here is simply that it would be unreasonable to expect skilled workers to accept jobs where they would be exploited, and so again, potential recipient states would not be enabling harm in any meaningful sense.

44 For a discussion on how international organisations play a role in obscuring the responsibility of recipient states in regards to the negative effects of brain drain, see Levatino, Antonina and Pécoud, Antoine, ‘Overcoming the Ethical Dilemmas of Skilled Migration? An Analysis of International Narratives on the “Brain Drain”’, American Behavioral Scientist, 56 (2012), pp. 1258–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 According to Christian Barry and Gerhard Øverland, much of what is normally perceived as contribution to severe deprivation at the international level is more accurately defined as instances of enabling harm. They call attention to how enablers of harm contribute to harm ‘in a quite different manner than those who do harm in ways involving a spatiotemporally continuous causal process’, in ‘The Feasible Alternatives Thesis: Kicking Away the Livelihoods of the Global Poor’, p. 106.

46 There may be epistemic uncertainty in some domestic contexts due to reasonable disagreement over whether the local conditions are appropriate and whether or not brain drain is contributing to a relevant degree to human deprivation. In such context of uncertainty, it may be appropriate for recipient states to continue including workers until it becomes reasonably clear that their inclusion is in fact playing a significant contributory role in rendering vulnerable populations unable to assess basic services.

47 Singer, Peter, ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1 (1872), pp. 229–43Google Scholar.

48 For a discussion of the development-migration nexus, see Vammen, Ida Marie and Brønden, Birgitte Mossin, ‘Donor-Country Responses to the Migration–Development Buzz: From Ambiguous Concepts to Ambitious Policies?’, International Migration, 50 (2012), pp. 26–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Here I have primarily defended the conditions under which states have a moral responsability to exclude skilled workers who would like to be included. However, there is still an important question about how individual states should go about implementing the duty to exclude. To this question, I would say that much of implementation is likely to be context-dependent, with motivational, institutional and diplomatic considerations playing different roles in different domestic context. Still, the duty to exclude is a duty that falls on each individual state not to contribute to harm abroad. The fact that states are already well equipped to control their borders adds plausibility to the assumption that it is feasible for them to act even when others are not doing so.

50 Weiner, Renee, Mitchell, Graham, and Price, Max, ‘Wits medical graduates: where are they now?’, South African Journal of Science, 94 (1998), pp. 59–63Google Scholar. See also Khan, Taskeen, Thomas, Leena S., and Naidoo, Shan, ‘Analysing post-apartheid gender and racial transformation in medical education in a South African province’, Global Health Action, 6 (2013), pp. 75–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The latter study shows that although blacks are 79 per cent of the population of South Africa, they only accounted for 31 per cent of medical graduates in 2011.