Brain Drain und Brain Gain in Australia (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Australia, New Zealand, grade: 1.7, University of Münster, language: English, abstract: Australia is an inclusive and tolerant society, a nation build up by multicultural people from different homelands and cultural backgrounds. It's national identity is minted by this cultural diversity in all spheres of Australian life. Therefore Australia persues the policy of multiculturalism. Since World War II the former "white australia policy" has disintegrated more and more. So the ethnic-discriminating policy changed into the open minded policy today. "This policy evolved from profound changes to Australian society resulting from a major influx of migrants and has been maintained and furthered on a non-partisan basis by successive governments." (DIMIA 2001: 1) However even Australia perceives the pressure of Demographic changes. The change in the demographic structure because of declines in fertility rate requires an elementary Impact on Australia's economy.
Recent demographic changes have implications for many fields of economic life, including workforce structure, retirement incomes, health expenditures, and consumption of goods and services. (cp. PC-GOV 2004)
Like in other Western high-income countries, Australia tries to compensate for some of the problems caused by demographic change by concentrating on (highly-)skilled workers; the magic words are "brain-gain and brain-drain".
Both terms apply to scientists, physicians , medical practitioners, engineers and other professionals from less-developed countries moving to work in high-income countries. The effects of gaining and draining have a positive impact on the affected countries of getting highly-skilled workers or losing the important brains, the "education-sector" invested time and money in.
This short report is a preliminary estimate of the Australian brain-gain and tries to give some of the main facts of this recent phenomenon.