When people left southern Europe with cardboard suitcases, people spoke of the “drama of emigration”. It was, of course, a drama for many, but it served to alleviate the demographic pressure on a national or even regional economy that could not provide work for everyone, and emigration also brought an immediate economic return: remittances from emigrants who, thanks to the work and wages they found elsewhere, refinanced the meagre domestic economies of the family members left behind. Today, when emigrants put their trolleys in the airplane’s overhead compartment with a university degree in their pocket, this phenomenon is called “brain drain” and seems to be more of a problem for those who stay than for those who go. Any remittances from skilled emigrants are crumbs for the nation that lets those young people escape who will generate GDP elsewhere and whom the country of origin has helped to educate with its usually free and universal education system.
According to a recent study focusing on the Italian situation and using, among others, Istat data, 377,000 is the official number of young Italians aged between 20 and 34 who went abroad to work in the decade 2011/2021. But the official Italian figure only reports citizens who, once settled in the foreign country, are registered in the Anagrafe degli italiani residenti all’estero (Aire), i.e. in the official registers of the respective consular offices. However, this is an optional registration that not everyone does. And in fact, if we cross this figure with those of other foreign authority registers in which workers are obliged to register in order to access essential services, such as the same employment or rental contract, or even the opening of a bank account, we discover that for every officially expatriate worker, there are at least two other expatriates “in the shadows”.
That said, we must also warn of the rhetorical risk that always lurks behind certain kinds of discourse. Just as there is a toxic anti-immigration rhetoric, usually from the right or extreme right, which presents the immigrant not as what he or she could really be, i.e. a valuable contribution to an industrial system in need, but as a criminal or (at best) a worker willing to do anything to “steal” work from the young natives; Similarly, there is a less toxic, less right-wing and politically more cross-cutting rhetoric, but with a high risk of whining, on the brain drain that sees in the expatriation of the most qualified professionals the sign of a stagnant economy, unable, for example, to raise wages and thus be competitive in the labour market.
This is not a misunderstanding of the phenomenon. The migration balance is like the trade balance, and it is no coincidence that we speak of net exporters or net importers. When the balance is largely negative, when emigration becomes a haemorrhage of talent, the problem cannot be ignored. And in Italy, according to the study cited, for every brain that arrives, seven more leave. It is an unbalanced balance, and the causes of the evil are easy game for the opposition to attack this or that government. That is why in Italy the Meloni government (right-wing) is trying to bring back the brains, while in Portugal the Costa government (left-wing) is trying to do so with tax cuts, which do not always work unless they are accompanied by a good dose of what the Portuguese call “saudade”, homesickness, the added value that wages lack. Because, especially when wage differentials are very high (and in some cases it is enough to jump from Lombardy to Switzerland to take advantage of this), it is quite difficult to convince the worker to return home.
But what we wrote some time ago about the falling birth rate also applies to the brain drain: it is not an entirely negative phenomenon in itself. It is worrying because of its cumulative and self-reinforcing effects on the quality of the national labour market and, once again, on the ever-shaky pension system. But even in this case, the positive cause exists and cannot be ignored, nor can it be combated with disruptive measures such as those that emerged in the heat of the recent Portuguese general election campaign, when the Socialists went so far as to suggest that young Portuguese doctors would be fined if they did not spend a minimum number of years working in their home country after graduating.
No wonder some prefer to speak of brain circulation rather than brain drain. In English, brain drain is associated with brain gain or brain sharing. So, what is this brain drain if not the logical consequence of the freedom of movement and choice enjoyed by the younger generation from their first years at university? What is the Erasmus programme if not a good precursor to the brain drain? At least within the borders of the European Union, we should no longer considered a “drama” the expatriation of a young graduate who sometimes must travel only a few hundred kilometres, from Lisbon to Madrid, from Genoa to Marseille, much less than an American who graduates in New York and goes to work in Los Angeles. And what will a “foreign” country really be for a young European, born of an Italian mother and a German father, whose studies (and life) are divided between Italy, Germany and a third country of his choice, perhaps that of his future wife?
The challenge of the free movement of brains must be met with all possible and most appropriate instruments. Starting with the simplest instrument (at least in theory), which Joe Biden proposed a few years ago to those who asked him how to respond to the shortage of workers in the US market, following that other great phenomenon we are witnessing today in the richest countries, the silent resignation, that is, the great resignation of those who no longer see themselves in their profession (what used to be called alienation) and refuse to work. Biden said to the bosses in a whisper, but with his mouth very close to the microphone: “Pay them more”!
