Brain Circulation: Unparalleled Opportunities, Underlying Challenges, and Outmoded Presumptions

Abstract

An emerging global phenomenon of significant proportions, the mobility of high-level personnel affects the socioeconomic and sociocultural progress of a nation and the world. The information era has conquered the barriers of distance and space, opening up a whole array of opportunities and challenges affecting the mode in which the world interacts and coexists. Instantaneous communication and its declining cost, massive capital movement across borders, the growing hegemony of multinational corporations, greater talent demand to maintain global competitiveness and replenish national pool, relative ease in the movement of people, shift in geopolitics, the emergence of the greener pasture paradigm, and the decline of many Third World countries to provide commensurate living standards have catalyzed the global mobility trend of highly trained personnel. This article explores potentials advanced by the mobility of high-level expertise while examining emerging challenges. It also scrutinizes outmoded assumptions embedded in the current understanding of the mobility process.