Debating Brain Drain
May Governments Restrict Emigration?
Gillian Brock and Michael Blake
Reviews and Awards
Gillian Brock is joint recipient of The 2014 Amartya Sen Prize Contest
"This book contributes to one of the central questions of our time, and deserves to be read by a wide audience." Gabriele Vogt, University of Hamburg
"The authors provide an interesting set of arguments for their positions and responses to each other's critiques in a very readable format...Recommended." --Choice
"...this volume is overall a lively and challenging work that has much to teach most any reader. It will be particularly valuable in courses on political philosophy, where it will spur difficult debate while enabling the instructor to pick up the threads and use them to explain many of the most important issues in the field. For that reason this volume is particularly highly recommended." --Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Online
"...an important book. Both authors take seriously the dangers that unfettered individualism in migration may bring. The book presents a nuanced counterweight to arguments for open borders that are simply based on individual gains, and which neglect the social consequences that can derive from such migration." -- Developing World Bioethics
"Debating Brain Drain does an excellent job at raising some of the key issues that are essential to understanding the nature of brain drain, the normative challenges it poses, and what sorts of strategies can be legitimately deployed to defend against its supposed harms. Both thinkers offer compelling and sophisticated arguments to justify their respective positions. The back-and-forth between Brock and Blake is extraordinarily helpful for readers attempting to understand the nuanced views that both theorists offer." -- Contemporary Political Theory
"a welcome addition to the literature on justice in global migration...Debating Brain Drain is a highly engaging book. Brock and Blake deserve praise for the seriousness and sensitivity with which they approach the controversial and underexplored topic of restrictions on emigration. In virtue not only of this but also its provocative arguments, Debating Brain Drain ought to be regarded as an important contribution to the development of a new direction in the study of the normative dimensions of global migration." -- Ethics
"an interesting exploration of an issue that falls in the intersection of social philosophy, political philosophy, and applied ethics. The issue is whether it is ever justifiable to restrict emigration from a country, especially of the highly educated. Gillian Brock and Michael Blake have written a well-balanced book on the subject, with both sides getting a fair exposition...Brock and Blake have given us a wealth of pertinent arguments to consider. They are to be commended for their valuable work." -- Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review
"Gillian Brock and Michael Blake offer a rich, nuanced, thoughtful, and compelling debate regarding whether it is permissible, just, and wise for developing countries to enact restrictions on the right of skilled workers to emigrate" -- Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations
"Debating Brain Drain is an excellent book and I have learned much from both Gillian Brock and Michael Blake's contributions." -- Journal of Medical Ethics