Brain drain is a serious problem in Malaysia and the World Bank reports that the situation for the country will only intensify in the coming years.
A question often asked is: Why do citizens leave their country? Globalisation and the pull of wealth where the grass is greener alone does not really explain the situation within the region.
This is because globalisation, explained an American professor, has caused a kind of backlash where people are becoming more “provincial, and inward looking in a very bad, nationalistic way”.
He said the rise of chauvinism may be one of the reasons why people who become objects of the behaviour are leaving their countries.
“If a country is dominated by Sunnis, the Shiites will leave, or if it is dominated by Chinese then the others would go,” he said when interviewed at an international conference themed 'Decolonising Our Universities' which was held in Penang from June 27-29.
“When chauvinism take over, there exists a mythology called 'nationalism', that there is a Malaysia or Japan or China but the reality is every country in the world is multi-ethnic,” he added during the event organised by Universiti Sains Malaysia and Citizens International, a Penang based-NGO.
Progler is currently professor and associate dean at the College of Asia Pacific Studies at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan.
He has published two books with Citizens International in Penang - 'Encountering Islam: The Politics of Knowledge and Scholarship' in 2008 and 'Books For Critical Consciousness: Forty Reviews' in 2010.
Originally from New York, Progler was asked to comment on the recent World Bank report on the country's accelerating brain drain where one million out of the country's 27 million citizens live abroad.
The report stated that a third of them are highly skilled individuals. This is alarming considering the fact that one in 10 Malaysians left the country in 2000, double the world average.
'Group that holds power not sharing properly'
Progler said that one of the reasons that are driving everyone else out is when a certain group that holds power is not sharing it properly, or becoming chauvinistic about their piece of the power.
He cited the example of Iran, whose government has a “conservative, almost pyschotic interpretation” of Islam, a very minority position, but existing laws and rules are driving people out.
“The Iranians have a much worse problem with brain drain than you guys do because the government is backwards,” he toldMalaysiakini.
“So you'll have to take a look at what backward, repressive policies of those in power (in your country) might be that are driving people away,” he suggested.
Describing those who leave as the “walking wounded”, Progler said that humans leave a situation which has wounded them, for example, people change their religion when they have been wounded by their existing religion.
“People leave their country because they have been wounded in some ways by their countries,” he added.
Malaysia's race-based policies, perceived by some to be prevalent until today, has been often blamed for the phenomena of brain drain.
The government has responded by setting up the Talent Corporation Malaysia (TalentCorp) under the Prime Minister's Department to initiate and facilitate initiatives to ease the retention and mobility of talent back to the country.
It does this by working closely and building partnerships with leading companies and government agencies.
Meanwhile, the three-day conference in Penang heard various papers presented by top-notch academics in the region, from Iran to China, on the topics of decolonisation in various aspects, especially university education.
Danger of communities becoming ultra-nationalist
When asked if decolonisation posed a danger of communities becoming ultra-nationalist, Progler agreed and describes such groups as “racist supremacist”.
He is quick to add though that there is nothing wrong about feeling proud of one's culture like some of the Africans feel.
“But it is another thing to bludgeon people with it or use it as a basis for discrimination. There's a difference between proud and chauvinistic,” he countered.
When asked how to address the problem, Progler proposed that “You have to police it and I haven't seen any of it here”.
He admitted that eventually, a country cannot prevent people from leaving.
“What are you going to do? Force somebody to work in a job for two years before they can leave? Then you'll find all sorts of corrupt ways to buy off ministers to get out of that (situation),” he quipped.
“That's what people do to get out of the military service. Those kind of course or mechanism aren't going to work,” he stressed.
Malaysiakini
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