The Social Science Library » The “Brain Gain” Hypothesis: Third World Elites in Industrialized Countries and Socioeconomic Development in their Home Country

The "Brain Gain" Hypothesis: Third World Elites in Industrialized Countries and Socioeconomic Development in their Home Country

Author(s)	Hunger, Uwe
Abstract	The basic idea of the “brain gain” hypothesis is that intellectual and technical elites from the Third World who emigrated to an industrialized country represent a potential resource for the socio-economic development of their home country. To date, development and migration theories state that the emigration of elites from developing countries has almost exclusively negative impacts on the Third World. This loss of important intellectual and technical resources is labeled with the catchword “brain drain.” By modernization theory as well as by dependence theory, this “brain drain” is considered to be one of the most important causes of the under-development in the Third World. The “brain gain” hypothesis expands this perspective by predicting long-term positive effects in case of a return or network building processes of the emigrated Third World elites. In addition, the new hypothesis attempts to show how such a resource loss (“brain drain”) can be converted into a long-term resource profit (“brain gain”) for the developing country. Thus, “brain drain” is not seen as the (dead) end of a negative development that intensifies the economic and social crises of developing countries. Instead, it is considered a temporary stage within a long-term process with the possibility of a final resource profit for the developing country.
IssueNo
Pages	1-23
Article	Access to Article
Source	The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, UC San Diego
VolumeNo
PubDate	2002
ISBN_ISSN
Browse Path(s)	Anthropology —-Social/Cultural Anthropology ——–Migration, Displacement, and Resettlement

The “Brain Gain” Hypothesis: Third World Elites in Industrialized Countries and Socioeconomic Development in their Home Country

Globalization