Tunisia’s Brain Drain: Observations
By: Emna El Mokhtar
Tags: Migration, Tunisia, North Africa

A descriptive study of Skilled Migration in Tunis, range from 1990 to 2019

After the revolution, we hoped, as North Africans, that the sparkle of the Arab Spring will make room for rays of sunshine into our lives.

Now there are many ways to measure whether that hope turned out to convert into a somehow tangible reality or not, one of those measures is immigration, more specifically in this article, Skilled Migration, more known as Brain Drain.

Being Tunisian, the daughter of the country that started it all and somehow managed to keep the basics of democratic transition after the revolution, I grew up in my teenage years, which were just after the revolution, nurturing that sense of hope and looking forward to a Tunisia where the first dream of the elite ( educated and motivated ) would NOT be to leave the country at the first presented opportunity.

Years went by, the youthful years are now further and further away, just like my aspirations and bubble like created expectations.

In the last couple of years, Tunisia have seen a number of natural and social calamities:

Bombing in the Bardo Museum and Soussa Beach

Death of infants in the hospital

Murder of political figures

Intermittent shutdown of the Phosphate factory (an important industrial source of income to the country)

Shaky and inefficient reforms in the educational system

“The Millions that we take are the most energetic, educated and certainly the most dissatisfied people, that if they did not immigrant, they would be the agents for change to improve the lots of these people in these countries”

This is where the alarms went off as to the question: What is the true impact of these skilled migration on third world countries?

At this point of the conference, I asked myself if it’s the developed countries’s fault after all, that these skilled people are leaving, aren’t they free of their choice? At the end of the day, they’re the ones who make the intentional choice of leaving, and they’re making it for reasons caused by internal conflicts of interests.

And here comes a counter-argument, or a side to the problem that we cannot overlook:

“Unfortunately, our immigration system tends to entice very type of people to abandon their country”

10 years ago, North Africa:

Overview of the state of demographic growth, migrants stock growth and key socio-economical factors overall the Norther African Region, specifically: Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco

Why: These 3 Mediterranean countries have a long common history, with a general societal resemblance and a common interest.

Libya has not been considered given the scarcity of its according data.

Rates of emigration by education and gender 1990–2000

Adult population by skill and gender (25+) 1990–2000

source: WorldBank.org, source: A gendered assessment of the brain drain — Frédéric Docquier, Lindsay Lowell, Abdeslam Marfouk

2016, 5 years after the Revolution, do still Tunisians believe in the Jasmin dream?

Who is migrating? Where are they migrating? What are they doing where they migrate (skilled)?

In this part, we’ll dive into the data concerning Tunisia, we will compare some of its indicators with the previously mentioned Maghreb countries so to open a window of interpretations.

Revolution’s effect over the migration pattern?

Migrants distribution before/after revolution (2007–2014)

Source: Institut de recherche pour le developpement france, Developpement Institution et Mondialisation, Université de Dauphine Paris — Rapport: Migration patterns and labor market outcomes in Tunisia

Migrants by Major European Country Distribution (2001–2014)

% Potentially leaving ?

source: www.arabbarometer.org Arab Barometer Report: Migration in the Middle East and North Africa June 2019

We will look into more specific data concerning the skills of these Tunisian migrants in the different regions of the world.