Author: Critical Ethnic and Community Studies

Brain Drain: Undermining economic and social rights through neocolonialism

Matt Annunziato (GISD Student ’18)

A map of the world showing the country of origin of immigrants of the United States
A map showing the country of origin of immigrants of the United States in 2000 by country of birth (Wikimedia Commons)

“Brain drain” is a popular concept in the modern international neoliberal economy. It occurs when skilled workers are lost from one country to another. Examples include doctors leaving sub-Saharan Africa and tech-professionals leaving south and east Asia.

It is rooted in the international labor market and in skilled workers’ ability to take their talents anywhere they please. On the bright side, it enables workers to find higher wages and employers to pay less for international employees. Unfortunately, this practice can also be exploitative. But what many people don’t realize is that it often affects human rights. Immigration policies in high labor-demand economies that actively attract skilled workers impose huge training costs on source countries. These costs undermine social services and therefore many economic and social rights.

In 2014, The Nation published an article called “Brain Drain and the Politics of Immigration.” The authors of the article call attention to the inverse relationship between US immigration policies, which lure the most talented and qualified candidates from least-developed countries (LDCs) and USAID programs, which (unsuccessfully) try to foster better social conditions and retain talent in the same LDCs.

The policies undermine one another and ultimately encourage conditions in which professionals can make more money by moving abroad.

The policies undermine one another and ultimately encourage conditions in which professionals can make more money by moving abroad.

My sticking point with the article is its assertion that push factors in LDCs are the sole responsibility of the countries themselves.

“Ensuring that skilled workers have opportunities to flourish at home is ultimately a challenge for source countries, not the richer countries that absorb them when they leave,” Natalie Baptiste and Foreign Policy in Focus.

Time after time, we hear discourse on the failings of countries in the global south. Lack of opportunity, low pay for skilled professionals, horrid social and financial situations, and other colonialist views inappropriately tinge our perceptions of these vibrant and diverse spaces. Reality is often different from this colonial mindset. Rwanda, for example, has a Universal Healthcare System even in a context where the GDP per capita is only $702.84 (compared to nearly $57,500 in the US). Cuba’s life expectancy is higher than the US while it spends less than one-tenth as much per person on healthcare. It also manages to send tens of thousands of doctors a year abroad while retaining one of the highest doctor to patient ratios in the world.

We constantly hear information about cash-strapped LDCs, even as their governments and residents innovate and they develop at a much more rapid pace than either the US or Western Europe has developed in the past. The difference between my views and those of Baptiste and Foreign Policy in Focus can be attributed to human rights.

All rights – including economic and social rights – are universal and inalienable. All countries have a responsibility to respect, protect, and fulfill these rights both at home and abroad.

All rights – including economic and social rights – are universal and inalienable. All countries have a responsibility to respect, protect, and fulfill these rights both at home and abroad.

For example, Switzerland’s financial secrecy laws have repeatedly been cited as illegal by the UN Committee that oversees compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. When money is hidden in Swiss accounts, it escapes domestic taxation. This escape directly undermines realization of economic and social rights in those countries. Universal healthcare, equitable education, decent work, and all other economic and social rights depend on public policy that is funded by a robust tax base. Why is luring away taxpayers treated any differently than Switzerland luring away money? Both instances deprive source countries of income.

Even in 2006, the lifetime cost (education paid for by the state and lost returns on investment by the state) of a doctor leaving Kenya was $517,931 – this figure doesn’t even take into account the lost tax revenue that would have been paid by the doctor over the course of their career. As many doctors leave source countries every year, the losses add up and actively undermine the health, education, and work programs in those countries: Health systems lose doctors whose education was paid for as a right by the state, education systems are overburdened by doctors who have no plans to work in their home country, and work initiatives suffer from the lack of an adequate tax base. As the US and other states in the global north draw migrants from source countries, they actively undermine the economic and social rights of remaining citizens.

Although there is a clear connection between the so-called brain drain as a tax burden and violations of international law, there are several other rights at play. Outward migration cannot be restricted, because everyone has a right to the unrestrained freedom of movement (ICCPR article 12). It is also clearly not a negative thing for professionals to seek out higher salaries. But the question remains: Whose responsibility is it to ensure better conditions in source countries?

While duty to reduce push factors ultimately falls on governments in LDCs, they cannot provide for their citizens while they are being actively undermined by foreign governments. Host countries should be held accountable for the way they undermine rights.

For example, when the US lures a doctor away from Kenya, it should repay Kenya for the doctor’s education and for the state’s lost return on their investment.

For example, when the US lures a doctor away from Kenya, it should repay Kenya for the doctor’s education and for the state’s lost return on their investment.

Better yet, USAID funding should follow a more rights-based formula than the current model. USAID vaccinations only go so far when it refuses to pay for a right-to-health based system. In other words, when the US increases pull factors here, it also needs to help reduce push factors abroad. Continued neo-colonial exploitation of southern labor should not continue.

When paying attention to rights it is clear that developed countries have a duty to fund economic and social rights everywhere. We need to shift our discourse from one of “aid” and “immigration” to one of rights.

Regardless of one’s location, everyone deserves a life of dignity. All US policies should reflect these values.

How to make it in a global city (chances are you can’t…)

Jack Carolan
PhD student in Urban Planning

An image of a renovated home in East Austin, Texas.
A renovated home in a gentrifying neighborhood of East Austin, Texas (Wikimedia Commons)

“If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere,” said someone once about the prospect of making a living in New York City.  Whom exactly they were referring to is becoming more and more unclear as the dynamics of not just New York, but other global cities continue to evolve and change.  

I used to hear that statement and assume it was referring to young adults, just out of college, and living on their own for the first time. What I failed to acknowledge though in my initial interpretation is the fact that New York City isn’t just made up of young adults fresh out of college trying to make it on their own for the first time. On the contrary, New York City and other global cities are made up of an extremely diverse group of people of varying backgrounds and income levels. However, the concept of “making it” in NYC or other global cities is becoming more and more unlikely given the rise of the global elite and increasing rates of gentrification.

…the concept of “making it” in NYC or other global cities is becoming more and more unlikely given the rise of the global elite and increasing rates of gentrification.

The term gentrification originally appeared in 1964 when sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term to describe the process she witnessed in East London wherein a number of middle class people began to move into older, low income, working class districts, and began renovating the buildings in the neighborhood which led to the displacement of the original occupants (Hamnett, 2003). While the essence of that definition still holds true to this day, it is no longer the middle class who are doing the displacing but instead the emerging global elite class.  

It can be argued that the driving force behind urbanization and city growth is profit (Busa, 2017). Therefore, from a bottom-line perspective, it makes sense why those in power push for the redevelopment of “underperforming” areas and neighborhoods into high end luxury living spaces for those with the most capital. This process is magnified in global cities such as New York City, London, and Paris. In these global financial capitals where there is an immense concentration of wealth, gentrification is occurring at an alarming rate. Many large areas of these cities are turning into playgrounds that only the ultra-wealthy can afford. Is this what we want our cities to look like?

This new class of global elites is not just reshaping our cities physically but socially and culturally.  This new form of immigration is having a major impact on not just low and middle-income residents but even upper-middle and upper-class residents are finding it harder and harder to make it in the cities they used to thrive in.

Gentrification has been historically-viewed as a more localized issue where existing middle-class residents displace existing low-income residents. This is no longer the case. It is no longer an issue of being displaced to a different part of the city but being displaced out of the city all together.

As a PhD student in the Urban Planning program, I find this issue to be extremely interesting as well as important. I love cities and the unique character and “feel” each city has.  That “feel” and character is predominantly a reflection of the people and cultures who inhabit each city. With the new trend of global elites taking over large areas of our cities, it is going to be near impossible for 99% of the population to feel anything other than I don’t belong here.

With the new trend of global elites taking over large areas of our cities, it is going to be near impossible for 99% of the population to feel anything other than I don’t belong here.

The idea of being able to “make it” in the city is becoming less and less of a reality for not only more and more people but also people of different racial, ethnic and social groups. However, there are steps that can be taken to try and stave off this new wave of gentrification. It is imperative to become an active community member and to make your voice heard when it comes to planning and development issues in and around your communities. Groups such as Right to the City are advocates for social justice and fair housing and have chapters here in Boston as well as across the United States.  I also believe that it is important to strike a balance: I don’t believe that redevelopment is bad, but it needs to be done with community engagement and in a way that is fair and equitable for all.   

References

Busa, A. (2017, September 19). The trouble with elite cities [Web log post]. Retrieved March 28, 2018, from https://blog.oup.com/2017/09/the-trouble-with-elite-cities/

Hamnett, C. (2003). Gentrification and the Middle-class Remaking of Inner London, 1961-2001. Urban Studies, 40(12), 2401-2426. doi:10.1080/0042098032000136138

Isolated in the city: The precarious position of migrant workers in Singapore

Taina Teravainen, TCCS ’19 Student

A picture of the Singapore skyline

Singapore is small in size, only 279 mi², but it is densely populated with approximately 5.6 million people living in this space. Over 245,000 people in this figure are “foreign domestic workers:” women who live in their employer’s homes, cook their meals, wash their clothes, and care for their children and elderly. “Foreign migrant workers,” on the other hand, make up the over 296,000 men who migrate to Singapore to labor in the booming construction industry.

As a Singaporean, I have often seen men squat by the side of the road with yellow hardhats waiting to be ferried back to their dormitories in the open-air back of lorries. In the evenings, they can be spotted playing cricket or having a beer in pockets of unused grassy spaces. The women gather en-masse on Sundays in public spaces that they rarely get to visit, except on their single day off. They have picnics with friends, attend religious services, and send remittances to their families in their home countries. This day off isn’t a certainty though.

Due to the precarious situation foreign domestic workers live in, the exploitation they face includes denial of time off, forced work without sufficient rest, and docked or withheld pay for months on end.

Due to the precarious situation foreign domestic workers live in, the exploitation they face includes denial of time off, forced work without sufficient rest, and docked or withheld pay for months on end.

When I asked my mother about how much time off the domestic worker of our extended family hired received, she said that the worker had chosen to forfeit her day off for increased pay. This is more than just industriousness, I know, but rather a necessity. She has her own children and parents in her home country who depend on the money.

Following independence from British colonial rule in 1965, Singapore’s rapid industrialization has firmly cemented its spot as a global financial centre and, in turn, created a segmented labor market that is filled by cheap and disposable labor from peripheral countries such as Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, China, The Philippines, and Myanmar.

While these workers provide essential labor and services for increasing production and economic growth in Singapore, they are also denied pathways toward citizenship and are viewed as unable to integrate to Singaporean society. This seems at odds with the Singapore government’s party line that the Singaporeans live in multiracial harmony and raises the question: Who gets to be included in this vision? The racial language used in anti-migrant sentiments raised by local Singaporeans, who themselves are mostly only a few generations removed from their immigrant ancestors, certainly does not support it.

Who gets to be included in this vision? The racial language used in anti-migrant sentiments raised by local Singaporeans, who themselves are mostly only a few generations removed from their immigrant ancestors, certainly does not support it.

Of course, similar migration structures exist in the U.S. and other countries worldwide, but because of land size, Singapore seems to exist as a microcosm of the larger problem of exploitation of migrant workers and a racial hierarchy that stems from it. While living in the small citystate ensures that locals are never too far from encountering a foreign worker, it remains easy enough to avert one’s gaze and one’s thoughts from the abuses that go on within boarded-up construction sites or other people’s private homes, especially if societal rhetoric is that migrant workers are to remain outsiders and less-than, always. More needs to be done by the government, the employers and local Singaporeans to confront the neoliberal ideologies that reduce migrant workers to their labor and erases their personhood.

“Sak Pase/ Que lo Que:” Haiti & The Dominican Republic

Jeannette Mejia,
TCCS Student (MS Candidate ’19)

A young boy looks out of a forest on a hilltop in the Dominican Republic

In 2013, the Dominican Republic ruled to revoke the citizenships of Dominicans of Haitian descent. The attempt and actions of the Dominican government to expel Haitians or Dominicans of Haitian descent, time and time again, is one that is fueled by anti-Haitian sentiment.

These sentiments are not new and follow a long history of anti-blackness in the Dominican Republic. This anti-blackness arose from colonization of Hispaniola in 1492 by the Spanish regime, the subsequent enslavement of the African peoples forcibly brought to the island, Haiti’s declaration of independence in 1804, and the Dominican Republic’s thirty years of dictatorship under Rafael Trujillo.

The colonization of the island by France and Spain split the island into two – the eastern hemisphere of the Dominican Republic and the western side as Haiti. This division did not cause anti-Haitian sentiment per se but it did separate people who share the island. The interests of the United States, which sought to annex the country in the late 1800s, in addition to the colonial interests of France and Spain further deepened this division of the island and its inhabitants.

A map showing the split of Haiti and the Dominican Republic from 1921.
A 1921 map of the island of Hispaniola showing the division of Haiti and “Santo Domingo” (ie pre-independence Dominican Republic) (Wikimedia Commons)

Additionally, the United States’ perspective towards Dominicans not only impacted the ways that Dominicans viewed themselves, but it also had an impact on how the rest of the world viewed people of the island. For example, in 1871, several U.S senators visited the Dominican Republic and noted that most citizens of the country were “mixed” both of African and Spanish descent and that the white blood was dominant in the country. They concluded that this mixture made it a white nation. Subsequently, this complex racial identity was both internalized by Dominicans and exported as the understanding of Dominicans in countries of power.

Black Dominicans, in short, came to see themselves not just as Black but as “white Black” while Haitians became viewed as “just” black. This conception gave Dominicans, as well as other nations, a sense of superiority over Haitians. The “negrophobia” that emerged out of the internalized identities given to people of the Dominican Republic underlie the anti-Haitian sentiments that still so heavily impact the country today.

Today, the Dominican government still tries to expel Haitian citizens and Dominicans of Haitian descent. I pose that one of the reasons that this phenomenon is still occurring is due to the internalized anti-blackness initiated on purpose by countries of power, such as the United States, and the internalized identity of whiteness also imposed by these countries. The effort to remove Haitians, who are in fact Dominican, only benefits the former colonizer and invader of the country.

Silvio Torres, The Tribulations of Blackness: Stages in Dominican Racial Identity (1998): https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2634170.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A6dcb212d1d8c48bce77adf7f35406ade

Special feature: What is transdisciplinarity and what does it have to do with social justice?

Rosalyn Negrón
Associate Professor of Anthropology, College of Liberal Arts and Core Faculty Member, TCCS

Editor’s note: Every few posts, we publish a “Special Feature” article exploring a topic that is particularly timely or in greater detail than usual. We are happy to share with you this post written by TCCS Core Faculty Member, Rosalyn Negrón.

An image of a Mandelbrot set

It may be helpful to think of disciplinary integration along a continuum.

Disciplinarity – or the application of a specific disciplinary lens, with little engagement with other disciplines – is at one end.

Next, we have multi-disciplinarity, in which multiple disciplines are brought to bear on an issue but do not commingle. Think of a patient who complains of chronic headaches and is examined by a neurologist, ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialist, musculoskeletal specialist, and a psychologist. Each makes their diagnoses, but they are not in conversation with each other. Even if they do share information, they each adhere to the diagnoses and treatment plan that makes sense given their expertise, the conventions of their specialty, and habitual practice.

Next along the continuum we find interdisciplinarity, which is what most people think of when they think of integrating disciplines. A note on integration: Each discipline or field comprises concepts, theories, and methods that tend to logically fit together, forming a coherent set of ways of thinking and doing among its followers.

So, when we talk about integration among disciplines, it may involve the use of key concepts and conceptualizations from one discipline in the context of another discipline. Or it could involve borrowing a method developed within one discipline in research guided by the theoretical frameworks of another.

Typically, what we mean by interdisciplinarity is that disciplines are unpacked and their component parts are brought into conversation with each other: theories, concepts, and/or methods. In some cases, particularly in the context of collaborative research, interdisciplinary integration may involve bringing together the “whole” of a discipline in the sense that each participant brings a particular worldview shaped by their disciplinary upbringing.

Returning to the medical example, interdisciplinarity is what happens if the neurologist, ENT specialist, muscle doctor and psychologist meet to discuss the headache sufferer’s symptoms and treatment plan. The neurologist shares her concern that in addition to the headaches, the patient is having difficulty with hand-eye coordination. Noting this, the muscle doctor shares that the patient has multiple contracted muscles in the upper back, which may explain the headaches and the poor coordination. This all squares with the psychologist who attributes the symptoms to chronic stress. Concurring, the eye and ear doctor suggests massage in targeted areas of the face and neck. Together they develop an integrated treatment plan that includes massage, stress management exercises, and muscle relaxants.

Perhaps I got carried away with the analogy, but the point is that interdisciplinarity involves exchange, boundary-crossing, and unification of knowledge. Whether embarked on by a lone researcher or through a team process, interdisciplinarity demands translation skills and the ability to make connections between disparate ideas.

… [I]nterdisciplinarity involves exchange, boundary-crossing, and unification of knowledge. Whether embarked on by a lone researcher or through a team process, interdisciplinarity demands translation skills and the ability to make connections between disparate ideas.

All of these are key to a transdisciplinary research approach as well. But before moving too far ahead, it’s important to note that there is some debate about whether interdisciplinarity (ID) and transdisciplinarity (TD) are really different things.

In my own teaching, I do make a distinction between ID and TD that draws on what TD writers have identified as unique aspects of TD. I’ll describe a few of these aspects here.

First, on our continuum of disciplinary integration, TD is understood to be at the end of the spectrum where the highest levels of integration happen. Thus, a fully realized TD approach would result in the creation of new ideas, new modes of thinking, new concepts, and/or new methods. Again, this applies to TD work being done by a lone researcher or team research. TD, then, is thought to be transformative and transcendent. The level of integration is such that the knowledge produced goes beyond each of the disciplines.

The level of integration [in transdisciplinary research] is such that the knowledge produced goes beyond each of the disciplines.

Notice that in the ID (interdisciplinary) medical example, the psychologist continues to be a psychologist, the neurologist continues to be a neurologist, and so on. They are all still primarily oriented towards flesh and bones interventions, though the psychologist pushes them in the direction of centering stress as key to solving the patient’s problem. Together, the treatment approach offers a more holistic solution to the patient’s headaches, but they don’t come up with anything new that transcends each of their specialties.

In a TD approach, through a highly-engaged, and often lengthy process, the specialists would work to create a space where the boundaries between their specialties could give way to yield new insights about the patient’s condition – and maybe even transform how they view themselves as practitioners. They develop a patient model that goes beyond meat and bones, to consider spirit and community, for example.

The neurologist offers the latest science on how meditation helps to rewire the brain. Creativity piqued, the muscle doctor imagines the contracted muscles caused not just by stress, but as the outcomes of repetitive motions made habitual through a rushed and automated lifestyle. He likes the neurologist’s “rewiring” metaphor and suggests that muscles too can be rewired, of sorts, and muscle awareness developed. The psychologist ponders what a cognitive behavioral therapy might look like to help the patient change habitual movements of the body and the mind. They come to find that the word “patient” orients them towards a view of the person as a static, sick, organism. They decide that instead they will use the word “being”, because as a verb it reminds them that the headache sufferer is, like any person, in a constant state of change and with dynamic potentials for healing.

Um, ok, I admit, maybe referring to a patient as a “being” is a little strange. But my point is that such a conceptualization of the patient would offer a fundamentally different view and put specialists on a path towards a truly innovative treatment plan. Notice that this approach begins to come to terms with the immense complexity of the human individual.

I wrote earlier that there were a few aspects of TD that I would take up here. The first was that TD entails a high level of integration. Two other aspects evident in the TD medical example are what Patricia Leavy calls transcendence (going beyond disciplines) and emergence (developing new ways of thinking and doing). A fourth aspect is that through transcendence of disciplinary boundaries and developing new frameworks, TD practitioners can address problems or issues of “real-world concern.” Here the medical analogy breaks down a bit, but there is a way in which the movement from flesh/bone (medical) models to community/spirit models does serve to situate the problem (headache) within the context of the everyday “life-world”, as some transdisciplinarians like to call it.

Here is where we can shift to the question, what does TD have to do with social justice?

Briefly, the links between TD and social justice research work on at least two dimensions. First, TD research is problem or issue-centered and is particularly appropriate for addressing urgent and vexing problems.

Inequality is one such sprawling and intractable problem, and the solutions to various manifestations of inequality develop not just in academic and disciplinary chambers, but in relation to and engagement with real-world people and experiences.

Therefore, TD is not merely about integrating disciplinary perspectives but also about integrating views beyond the disciplines and the academy.

 

Students talking with each other in a classroom.
Students in “Transdisciplinary Research Methods” class work on a group project analyzing the trandisciplinarity of a research project.

TD engenders intense collaboration and collaboration is also at the heart of social justice work. This is a second dimension. Inherent to collaboration is the need to work across perspectives, agendas, expertise, and ethno-racial and cultural backgrounds.

What I suggest is that collaborative engagement does “double-duty” for social justice seekers. There is the interactive, participatory, collaborative problem-solving work. But there is also the internal work, the personal transformations that emerge through TD engagement. The transdisciplinary individual working towards social justice develops heightened abilities to bridge, to reconcile contradictions, to understand across difference, and to imagine new possibilities.