C.

A debate yet to be resolved- the benefits and risks

Now we come to the much expected part on the benefits and risks of migration,
in particular, youth migration. Before I go into detailed discussion, I would like to
summarise my points in the table below.

What is happening Benefits Risks

1. Increased mobility More opportunities Brain drain
of young people
2. Heightened level More motivated Stress, animosity
of competition
3. Absence from More independent Lack of emotional support
family
4. The need to adapt Increased flexibility/ Difficulties in catching up/
to a new system possibility of a better possible discrimination
match
5. More interaction Deeper understanding/ Dilution of local culture/
with people from stronger bonds/ peace clash/ integration issue
different
backgrounds
6. Employing migrant Win-win situation Exploitation
workers to cut
cost

1. Increased mobility of young people

Instead of being restricted by what their birthplaces have to offer, young

migrants can tap into education and work opportunities beyond their hometown.
This means that they will have more choices and thus a better chance that they
will be able to find a good match and thrive as individuals. This is especially
essential to highly capable young people who are exceptionally strong
academically or otherwise but do not have opportunities at home to further their
development or make good use of their talent.

However, some sceptics may perceive brain drain as a possible problem caused
by this increased mobility. Well, while it might be unwise to dismiss the problem
of brain drain altogether, I feel obliged to point out that, those holding this
sentiment seem to have assumed that the global flow of population results in a
zero-sum game, which is, of course, untrue. When young talents migrate (or
maybe simply move) from their home countries to more developed countries,
they obtain knowledge otherwise not available to him, and has the rare
opportunities to gain an in-depth understanding of the developed countries’
advanced social and legal systems that enable them to prosper economically and
lead in the academia. These young people, if later they decided to go back to
their home countries, will become priceless assets to their nation. For example, if
not for early pioneers like Deng Jiaxian who went to U.S. to study nuclear science
and then came back, China might never even have a chance to build its own
nuclear arsenal.

2. Heightened level of competition

Young migrants heighten competition in several ways. First of all, they add to the
absolute number of the pool of talents in their countries of destination. With
relative fixed number of places offered in the top universities, research
organisations, and private firms within a region or country, larger size of the
candidate pool means higher selectivity, i.e. higher level of competition.

Besides, youth migration also greatly heightens competition in the countries (or
places) of origin of the migrants. The rationale goes this way- previously, due to
the constraint put by the local educational or economic system, there was certain
kind of ceiling on how proficient and competent a person can be (or rather, needs
to be); now, since they have access to education and work opportunities beyond
their hometown (or homeland), the ceiling is drastically lifted up and the need to
work hard arises again.

So, what are the implications? The easiest that people can think of might be the
stress experienced by those engaged in the ever more heated competition. Yes,
stress will certainly increase but we should never forget the bright side of
increased competition. Basically, competition spurs people to work hard, to rise
higher, to be their personal best and I do believe this general increase in
motivation level and subsequently, achievement level, can more than compensate
the increased stress.

3. Absence from family

While some young people migrate because their parents do so, there are many
others who go to a foreign land (or an unfamiliar part of his country) alone in
pursuit of better education, better jobs, and ultimately, better life.

For this group of young migrants, their (possibly prolonged) absence from family
becomes something noticeable. The down side of this absence is obvious. First of
all, for those still in the formative years of their life (in the case of international
students), without their parents to watch out for them and offer them guidance,
they might go astray and do badly in their studies or even become delinquent.
Second, without families around, they might experience a lack of emotional
support and often feel lonely and low. Last but not least, for a young migrant,
living alone without his family at the side also means that his family can do very
little to provide him with direct assistance in sourcing opportunities for him, or in
settling dispute that he is involved in.

Nevertheless, the absence of family can also be a blessing as migrants will be

trained to stand on their own since early in their life. Such experience will
immensely improve their competency in sourcing for and making good use of
opportunities, in settling complicated disputes, and in managing their time and
commitment well. This benefit, if unable to completely offset the risk brought
about by the absence from family, is indeed considerable.

4. The need to adapt to a new system

I suppose it is obvious that when a young person migrates, he obliges himself to

a new system (educational, social or otherwise) which might or might not
improve his standing.

First, we have to acknowledge that they don’t enter the new systems on fully
equitable terms. In terms of policies, it is almost universal that favour is given to
locals while restrictions are imposed on migrants. For example, in China, under
the hukou system, in most of the cities, a migrant is only entitled to a fraction of
the benefits and rights that a local is entitled to. Such benefits include social
security, healthcare, education for children, job opportunities, and housing. In
Singapore, foreigners pay much more than permanent residents for government
good (e.g. in my school, school fee for foreigners is nearly 4 times as much as t
school fee for permanents), and permanents residents themselves pay a higher
price than Singapore citizens. Also, certain educational opportunities are reserved
for citizens and PRs only.

This problem seems serious indeed because it effectively means that a migrant is
disadvantaged in many ways right from the start. However, there is always a
bright side of the story and adapting to a new system is no exception. First of all,
we may well agree that restrictions and favouritism is everywhere in society and
there are indeed hardly any times when people feel that they are competing on
fully fair terms. Given this, it could make more sense to learn how to strategise
under constraint rather than simply hoping for the world to be fairer to you.
Following this thread of thinking, we may say that the process of adapting to a
new system makes young migrants more flexible in dealing with everyday life and
challenges better poised to thrive despite difficulties.

5. More interaction with people from different backgrounds

It is self-evident that migration brings people of different cultural, socio-

economic, educational and sometimes, ethnic, backgrounds together and
promotes interaction between them. This is especially true of young migrants,
who are, in most cases, just as representative of the diversity as the older
migrants but are generally more open-minded to build close relationship with
people from different backgrounds.

Through the course of interaction, they become more aware of the diversity
among them, better at understanding and acting according to the subtleties and
differences that set them apart. The implication is profound: as they become
more literate of each other’s thinking habit and modus operandi, communication
becomes much more efficient and the possibility of strife of misunderstanding is
also greatly diminished. Imagine the Islamists have a better knowledge of the
rest of the world’s value systems and the their benevolent nature and also
imagine more people in the west really take the time to read Quran, and to
explore the cultural roots of many Islam practices that seem so bizarre on the
first sight, I believe the conflicts between them will be much fewer and much less
violent than they are now.

However, there is always the possibility that, certain impatient and often poorly-
educated people, locals or migrants, without taking the time to understand the
difference, are intolerable of the differences, considering any practice or belief
different from their own unorthodox. In such cases, bitter confrontation or even
violence might ensue.

Not to exaggerate the severity of this problem, such people form a very small
minority and as migration becomes ever more prevalent, they might be forced to
rethink their attitude and perspectives, and act more rationally.

6. Employing migrant workers to cut cost

In many countries (or cities), companies are willing to employ migrants because
they demand less salary and are more willing to work hard. The same goes for
the graduate schools of many world-class institutions of higher education. While it
might not be very nice to think this way, the cheap (or even free) labour offered
in laboratories by hard-working foreigners do explain part of the fact that they
admit large number of students from overseas every year while they only admit a
very limited number of overseas students into their undergraduate schools at the
same time.

Moral debate aside, here we focus on the practical merits and risks of this
practice. First, we may reasonably assume that these cheap workers (or
students) have migrated on a voluntary basis and most of them are aware of
their gains and losses by migrating. As we know, the basis of voluntary action is
that both party feel they benefit from this interaction and this is just the case in
the employment of cheap migrant workers. To the owners of businesses (or to
the professors), migrants provide a viable and economical alternatives to locals.
To the migrants themselves, the take-homes are satisfactory or at least
acceptable compared to their pay back home (or what they can learn back
home).

I would not run into the generalisation that every migrant worker is paid fairly by
his employer but it is evident that most of them do feel satisfied and that’s why
we see the current wave of influx of migrant workers to the industrialised
countries, the rich Gulf States and relatively prosperous cities in developing
countries rising higher and higher without subsiding.

To sum up, while youth migration certainly bring both benefits and risks, by and
large the benefits outweigh the risks as it essentially means a re-match of human
resources and geographic-related resources for more efficient creation of social
good, as well as sharing of information and establishment of connections on a
massive scale that will greatly improve the effectiveness of global cooperation
and coordination.