Social Mobility, Brain Gain, and Brain Drain.

• Author: Elkhouly, Sayed M. Elsayed

LITERATURE REVIEW

The GTCI attempts to offer an approach to talent competitiveness issues that is comprehensive, action oriented, analytical, and practical. The GTCI is a composite index, relying on a simple but robust Input-Output model, composed of six pillars: four on the Input side, and two on the Output side. Input sub-index is composed of four pillars, Enable (Pillar 1), Attract (Pillar 2), Grow (Pillar 3), and Retain (Pillar 4). The Output sub-index is composed of two pillars that describe the current situation of a particular country in terms of skills for both Labor and Vocational (Pillar 5) and Global Knowledge (Pillar 6).

The Global Talent Competitiveness Index has identified openness as "a key ingredient to talent competitiveness" (GTCI 2014). Openness has two dimensions: external openness which involves business attraction and people attraction (brain gain and brain drain), while internal openness is focused on removing barriers to entering the talent pool for groups such as those from underprivileged backgrounds (social mobility). The talent ingredients are skills, people, and jobs.

Skills have become more mobile across space and time as learning opportunities have spread between geographies (e.g., through online education and training) and between generations (through lifelong learning and mentoring, for example). People have become more mobile across borders because of improvements in transport, but also in telecommunications (allowing in particular a global sharing of knowledge about opportunities and living conditions abroad). Finally, jobs have become more mobile thanks to the advent of global virtual teams such that "jobs will go to where people are, rather than people going to where jobs are." Such a massive redefinition of mobility (and of the relationship between different types of mobility, notably between goods, services, capital, and labor) is making talent attraction a key objective for all kinds of economies, whatever their level of development. International mobility of talent is a core dimension of any national (or regional) strategy, as it will largely determine the ability of countries, regions, and cities to connect to globalized value chains and develop successful strategies for sustainable growth.

The definition of social mobility is the object of some discussion. Although there is a common thread that runs through all of these discussions, the actual definition varies from study to study. There is agreement that social mobility refers to "movements by specific entities between periods in socioeconomic status indicators" (Behrman, 2000) and that it aims to quantify "the movement of given [entities] through the distribution of economic well-being over time, establishing how dependent one's current economic position is on one's past position, and relating people's mobility experiences" to the overall conditions of the economy in which they operate (Fields, 2000).

Certain terms such as "brain gain" and "brain trust" have also entered the domain. The term 'brain drain' was coined in the UK to describe the emigration of scientists and technologists from Europe to North America in the post-war era. The term brain drain, however, is the most prevalent form, built on certain preconceived context that have become molded and outmoded over the decades...