Adversary analysis and optimizing the macro-economic stakes of transnational divide in migration for development

Abstract

"In the traditional discourses on modern international migration, the institutional boundaries in the macro-economic domain of development are drawn in a stereotypical manner of static costs and benefits where the 'sending' countries of the South suffering 'brain drain' are supposed to derive three kinds of economic benefits in return - Remittances, Transfer of Technology, and Value-added human capital through Return Migration. Whose perspective is this? Is it of the North thrust upon the South? Or, is it of the South itself? In the post-modern transnationalisation-through-migration context today, the stakes are no longer static but dynamic; and the comparative advantages of the 'receiving' North countries are much bigger than those 'conceded' by the North. Does the South have a say in assessing these benefits for the North? Only an equitable adversary analysis of the dynamic conflict of interests would be able to bring them up on the surface for a balanced and equitable 'intertransnationalisation' between the North and the South countries. Or else, the North countries would perhaps generate an 'intra-transnationalisation' amongst themselves, and the South countries would be left to remain outside it. One important ingredient in this shift from static to dynamic conflict of interest between the North and the South is the growing temporariness of migration that 'circulatory migration' has brought about to move and replace one generation of human capital with another faster than ever before. I visualize this paradigm shift in terms of a locus of three central issues, viz., to state in generic terms, 'age,' 'wage,' and 'vintage'. These comprise the competitive agendas and strategies of nations - to optimise age-structural changes in population, maximize incomes, and accumulate quality human capital embodying the latest 'vintages' of knowledge - through mobility of both types - the 'finished' (established professionals, scientists and researchers), and the 'semi-finished' (post-graduate students). Is migration a 'non-negotiable sovereign territory' of nations where the North and the South cannot influence each other's decisions and bridge the divide for global development? The issues of dynamic conflicts of interest and their resolution are raised in the context of adversary analysis as a methodological tool for replacing conflict with a win-win outcome - for global welfare on a scale that could be larger than the sum of its two units - the interests of the North and the South." (author's abstract)