By: Ahmed Hassan and Christine Awny 

Many young people seek an ideal life and believe that this ideal will only be in Western countries and is not fit to be in the Arab countries. Therefore, Egypt has suffered over the years from the migration of highly qualified and distinguished minds, which leads to depriving Egypt of the fruits of the scientific and knowledge superiority of its youth. "Brain migration" is the movement of highly qualified individuals from their country to another, with the aim of obtaining permanent residence and work elsewhere.

The number of immigrants varied according to the age groups according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, where the highest category was between 30 and 40 years old, and this category represented about 50% of the total immigrants, and one of the factors affecting the number of immigrants is the sector in which they work, where the vast majority of immigrants work Immigrants in the private sectors, at a rate of more than 260 immigrants, according to the 2021 statistics.

Factors attracting young people to the West 

The crisis here does not lie in immigration only, but in the reasons that drive some to emigrate. Which are often illusions that have nothing to do with reality, as many of those who take this decision have false information and ideas about the countries to which immigration takes place, especially the European ones. And many young people flee from Arab countries to Western countries so that they can be independent from their families only and enjoy more freedom, not knowing that in front of this independence they will have many difficult responsibilities, as all countries, wherever they are, have negatives as well as positives.

There are other factors that push young people to migrate, including the economic level, especially since many of them do not find a job easily. Unemployment rates in Egypt have reached more than 5 million unemployed males and 16 million females, according to the statistics of the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics in 2021, and the unemployed person according to the agency is Those who are able to work between the ages of (15-64) and do not work, in addition to the fact that the existing research environment in Egypt does not correspond to the aspirations and dreams of young people, especially in the modern era.

Ahmed Zewail and the immigrant mind

However, brain drain may have some advantages, as it helps bring hard currency to Egypt, or achieve great successes and attribute them to the mother country.

Ahmed Zewail, despite his emigration to the United States of America, remained proud of Egypt in international forums, so that before his death he asked to be buried in Egypt. Master`s degree in light science from the Faculty of Science at the same university, then he traveled to the United States on a scholarship and obtained a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in laser science, and his achievements continued until his death in 2016.

 Brain drain and widening gap

However, there are also negative effects on countries, and they are reflected in various fields of life, especially the economic field, and if all thinking minds go abroad, the technological and scientific gap between developing and developed countries increases, and thus causes a shortage of manpower and qualified human cadres for the labor market.

According to the International Organization for Migration; The percentage of labor migrants around the world amounts to 164 million people, and some studies carried out by the League of Arab States, UNESCO and the World Bank showed that the Arab world contributes to a third of the brain drain from developing countries and that 50% of doctors, 23% of engineers and 15% of the total Arab talent They migrate to Europe, the USA and Canada.

These numbers constitute a great shock to some and cause the emergence of a negative type of scientific exchange, because it is characterized by a one-way flow towards developed countries, according to what the "UNESCO" organization described. They justified this by saying that in the brain drain, the transfer of the most important element in the elements of production, which is the human element.