Goran, who is 28 years old, graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb. After extending his studies for an additional year, he worked for just under two years at an IT company located on Radnička Street in Zagreb. Ten months ago, he moved to Dublin, to work for a similar company. They recruited him through LinkedIn. He had little doubt about the move, enticed by a new opportunity and a new country, though he retains the option to return, which is not in his current plans. Goran's move provided Ireland with a finished product. A person in whose education it did not invest a cent, and who will contribute to the growth of the Irish economy through his work, tax payments and consumption. To be fair, Goran will send a significant portion of his disposable income to his mother, father, and younger sister in Nova Gradiška, while setting aside some for summer vacations on the island of Brač. In terms of personal transfers within the EU, Croats lead with 7.6% of GDP in 2022.
This example sounds like a cliché for a reason. Goran represents a typical Croatian emigrant. He is young and highly educated, and he perfectly illustrates the situation in Croatia related to two ugly phrases – human capital and brain drain. If we ignore the reluctance to put man and capital in the same phrase (and the fact that brain drain can evoke the image of the slow dripping of cerebrospinal fluid from the skull), we are talking about extremely important trends for the economy and society.
Human capital refers to the economic value of a worker's experience, skills, and knowledge, which is widely recognized as a factor that enhances economic competitiveness and growth. Before the adoption of the term 'human capital,' the concept was often referred to as 'human value'. On the other hand, brain drain refers to the emigration of skilled persons whose skills are in demand in their country or place of origin.
According to the dominant narrative, global migration has been increasing over time, but this is actually not true since the figure has been relatively constant since the 1960s, revolving around 3%. However, the structure of those who migrate is changing. In global terms, there is a significant increase in the migration of those with tertiary education, whose number rose by almost 130% between 1990 and 2010, while in the same period the number of those with low qualifications increased by 40%. Brain drain is harmful to the development of the country for a number of reasons. Highly skilled emigrants are often difficult to replace as those who stay behind sometimes lack the appropriate skills. In addition, the highly educated population plays a central role in today’s knowledge economy, especially through their contributions to innovation and scientific discoveries. This type of migration can be seen as an economic transfer from poorer countries to richer ones, since the brain drain is often financed by the education costs of the government of the country of origin, that is, with the money of its taxpayers.
In Croatia, this issue is particularly pronounced. Croatia, together with Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia, is most exposed to emigration of highly qualified population. Although statistical data on the educational and professional structure of emigrants are not available in the Republic of Croatia, according to Eurostat, in the first four years of EU membership, the number of highly educated Croats in other member countries increased by as much as 66 percent, which is the second highest growth rate in the EU.
According to the Fragile States Index for 2022, Croatia is the worst country in the European Union in terms of brain drain. Brain drain results in a significant reduction of available human capital. The latter can be replaced by remigration of emigrants, i.e. circulation of brains (another excellent phrase) and attraction of highly qualified foreign labor force. In other words, we can try to bring back our Goran from the beginning of the story and/or we can try to attract some other Gorans (or a Rejesha or Kamala) from abroad. The first option has an advantage because our Goran would return home and there would be no integration costs, but I will deal with the second option because foreign workers receive lots of press in Croatia today. In Croatia, approximately 9% of the total number of workers are currently made up of foreign workers, and it is assumed that this number will continue to grow. Although foreign workers mostly work in construction and tourism as a low-skilled workforce, in the context of the problem of brain drain and lack of human capital in Croatia, it is crucial to try to attract a highly qualified workforce. We are not talking about those who, like Baby Lasagna in the song Rim Tim Tagi Dim, this year’s Croatian entry to the Eurovision Song Contest, leave the cow in their village and go to the city, but about attracting those who have options to choose, at least to some extent, where they will use their talents, knowledge and skills.
Why would someone move to Croatia? If you can live in Paris, why would you live in Zagreb? That is a skeptical position. Others will reiterate that this is the most beautiful country in the world. We are most usually not even aware of what we have – clean air, sea, safety, and a custom of laid-back coffee drinking in innumerous cafes. Who wouldn’t someone want to live here? I will leave the cultural and ideological-value discussions for another occasion and turn to the consideration of potential options for attracting brains, in the context of the fact that Croatia currently does not have a designed policy to attract highly qualified foreign labor. In 2021, the quota system was removed, which led to a large influx of foreign workers, but in the future, more and more attention will have to be paid to the structure of migration. In other words, it is important to have adequate public policies that will address this challenge which is also an opportunity.
How then to attract highly qualified foreign workers? Some of the ways of attracting highly qualified labor force include packages that companies offer and in this sense they are not in the domain of direct influence of the state, but with public policies we can work to create an environment that enables professional development, but also the realization of personal well-being. According to an OECD study, the availability of affordable housing and high-quality broadband internet play a key role in attracting international talent, but it seems that the problem requires somewhat wider consideration. Therefore, in the process of creating a smart immigration policy for the highly qualified foreign labor, it would be useful to conduct research on the main factors that attracted highly qualified workers who came to Croatia, as well as the reasons why they decide to stay. For a start, it would be interesting to consider the following options:
- Adjusting the immigration process, i.e. issuing residence and work permits for those with higher education. Different models of this type exist in several countries (for example, a scoring system depending on the level of education and some other characteristics). Of course, I'm not advocating the copy-paste option, but we are often too eager invent our own wheel. It is more efficient to adapt someone else’s, that is, to apply the copy-edit-paste option, taking into account the specifics of our historical and cultural context.
- Facilitating and speeding up the process of recognition of foreign qualifications. This is generally a big problem in the current system, in which more resources, both financial and human, should be invested. We want to ensure that the qualifications of foreign workers are adequately validated in order to ensure the same standard of services and products regardless of the origin of the workers.
- Support with integration. This point includes free language courses and other initiatives that will support integration. Some companies and cities already offer Croatian language courses, which is not necessarily useful only for highly qualified foreign workers, but for them additional support could be achieved through connections and partnerships with existing higher education institutions, taking into account their area of expertise so that they could further develop and cultivate it.
- Emphasis on quality of life and services. Emphasis on quality of life and natural beauty has proven successful in the case of advertising and attracting digital nomads, and some of these tactics could also be applied to attracting highly qualified labor from abroad, although these are only partially overlapping categories. Good access to services, from education to health, also plays an important role in attracting and retaining educated residents, but these are the areas that face numerous challenges in Croatia.
- Help with the rest of the family of a highly qualified foreign worker. One of the biggest tragedies of the last wave of emigration, after Croatia’s entry into the EU in 2013, is the fact that it is not individuals who left, but entire families. This is generally one of the factors that must be taken into account when creating public policies for attracting and retaining highly qualified labor. We cannot look at a highly qualified foreign worker only as an individual, but we must also consider those cases in which he or she will want to come only if it is possible for the rest of the nuclear family to come as well.
Only some of the options are listed in this brief overview. The list is not exhaustive and requires additional, detailed consideration of these and other possibilities through dialogue with all interested stakeholders. Migration is often politicized before it is thoroughly analyzed, but if we are wise, we will analyze what can be done, and, in the often heated debate on migrations, try not to add fuel to the fire, but to bring brains to Croatia.
