One can think of national borders as barriers for arbitrage, preventing factor price equalization.
A simple economic model could be built that predict that the gap between countries will actually get smaller.
Through migration, migrant from poor countries will be better off because of their increased income. Those who were left behind will be better off because of i) remittances, and ii) higher wages at home because less workers are available. Population in receiving country will have access to cheaper labor.
The above is largely true for low-skilled as will as highly-skilled workers (see also a discussion here).
Of course, as usual, the devil is in the details. For a start, a famous economist-turn-columnist took a dig at his former colleagues:: you want to import human capital, human came.
Thanks Ujang. What intrigued me was the opportunities to the locals to pursue higher value activities. This will drive the education industry to support it. Younger generation's expectation will be higher as well.
On the other hand, people in the exporting countries might see these low-skilled jobs as good opportunities and set their expectations 'only' that high. This is the gap that I had in mind.
Perhaps there's nothing wrong with that. These workers are fulfilling demand in the receiving countries.
I just think, or hope, that the Indonesian government must have thought of something; that in a decade we do not export labors to China or India.
I'll check out the discussion.
oh yea, it will get bigger
nice post bung. I wonder whether you want to write something on the high-skilled workers (the so-called 'brain draid', which is when our best- minds work overseas, and its subsequent result 'brain gain', when these best- minds return home?)
Foreign Policy magazine reported that China and India once suffered from the 'brain drain' when their best-minds studied and worked overseas, but then after a certain period of time they returned home ('brain gain'), bringing their networks and experiences.
There's also argument that's it's rather brain circulation than brain drain. The advantage of India and China is that they've reached the critical mass in the U.S., while Indonesian students don't stay long enough to build international networks and experience. Most would network with 'anak pejabat' and cash in the short term benefits by going home early.
Indonesia awaits your return, 'Lips.
It's just ironic to me that Indonesians see expats who work in Indonesia as people who are here because they're smarter. While when Indonesians work abroad as maids or construction workers (read: also expats, they are being looked down because they are, like you said, low-skilled.
And the paradigm of this 'low-skilled' Indonesians abroad had taken the 'high-skilled' Indonesian workers' price down the drain.
How sad.
And no, I think these low-skilled workers won't add values once they come back. They'll only add money in their bank accounts for two months or so before their families start ripping them off for unimportant stuff such as a huge wedding party in the kampung.
*sigh*
Hi miund. I've never thought of "taken the price down the drain", but I agree that perception of Indonesia is, unfortunately, rather low in these receiving countries.
One phenomenon I see here is that these workers try to act like Malaysians (or at least speak with Malaysian accent), to avoid being tagged as "Indon", and possibly treated differently. You're right - that's sad.
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