Flight of the flamingos: a study on the mobility of R&D workers

Abstract

Fears about the impact of a brain drain of the highly skilled from South Africa have significant media and political attention over the last two years. Against this background, the National Advisory Council on Innovation (NACI) commissioned the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) to conduct a study on the broader question of the mobility personnel in the research and development sector. That mobility has become an area of concern is hardly surprising: South Africa is now open for business and is part of the world community, a community that itself is subject to the benefits and vagaries of globalisation. This project has approached the issues of brain drain, brain gain, brain circulation and brain development not as disasters, but as component realities of mobility that must be managed for what they are both good and bad.