Tracking Talent Migration

If you are interested in global talent flows, then you should check out The World Bank blog, People Move. The latest "Migration and Remittances News Roundup" yields this gem from the Washington Post:

Skilled Chinese workers are helping India expand its infrastructure at a frenetic pace, even as the two Asian giants compete for economic dominance.

Their presence in a nation of more than a billion people with staggering unemployment may appear incongruent. But the government says Indian workers lack the technical skilled needed to transform the country into a 21st-century economic powerhouse.

India might be the center for the key geopolitical issue of the 21st century, the war for talent. Ironically, you can find Indian infrastructure workers in the Middle East (e.g. Dubai). The labor economics would seem to indicate that the export of such workers is efficient thanks to the availability of Chinese immigrants.

Americans seem ignorant of these migration patterns. That an opportunity for an enterprising region looking for edge in the war for talent. In most American universities, geopolitics is still a taboo subject. We are sorely lacking in this kind of understanding (as the absurdity of the Marcellus Shale tax debate indicates).