ABSTRACT
In sum, we should seek a world in which the migration of skilled workers benefits or at least does not harm vulnerable people. This mostly involves the guarantee of just institutions since questions of institutional justice and in many cases institutional reform will only indirectly involve migration. Nonetheless, one reason that people are vulnerable to economic shifts and the flight of talent is the lack of mobility. Global policies in which developed states shape migration flows to recruit talent while excluding low-skilled workers or to forcing them into shadow market or exploitative guest worker programs exacerbate harms. If we are indeed concerned about brain drain and not merely using it as an excuse to maintain exclusionary migration practices or to shirk duties of global distributive justice, we need to examine migration as a whole as well as to explore its interaction with development policies.
