Reverse migration, brain drain and global justice

Abstract

This paper contributes to the discussion of the ethics of brain drain against the background of the book Debating Brain Drain co-authored by Gillian Brock and Michael Blake. Whereas Gillian Brock argued in this book that a plausible response of global justice would, under certain conditions, permit that developing countries impose taxes or demand compulsory service from their professionals who emigrate, Michael Blake rejects such claims in his defence of the right to emigrate. Extending this debate to the context of reverse immigration, I attempt in this paper to establish if the arguments provided by both scholars are capable of accounting for the cogency or otherwise of preference in reverse immigration. My proposal is that the arguments provided by both Brock and Blake require further contextualisation to make them capable of deciding the question of preference in reverse immigration.