Empirical evidence from Southern Europe have shows that Third World academics who migrate to other countries, especially to First World countries, gain very little because they mainly do unskilled work which does not teach them anything.  Only a minority gain new skills while working abroad. The majority do not learn anything new because they only do unskilled work.

 Similar studies on migration from Africa to Europe and the Middle East have also identified deskilling of migrants as a major problem. Even among those migrants who are able to acquire new technical or industrial skills and experiences, few may be able to apply them in practice back home due to lack of infrastructure needed to make effective use of their new skills. Most migrants are largely in low-grade positions in the industry and work mainly on mass-production lines. They are often frustrated and this has hampered their learning.  They learn very little beyond, for example, how to empty dustbins in Munich and turn a screw at Renaults. 

In a study conducted by Todisco (2002:34), it was established that in advanced countries, immigrant workers are made to do jobs that  are unhealthy, dangerous and exhausting. The jobs are essential to the economic system but are normally shunned by locals. The local workers are only too willing to delegate these tasks to the new arrivals, especially if the immigrants are impoverished and obliged to accept. 

In First World countries, the relative number of old people is increasing, and the poor health that comes with old age has obliged many to look for permanent assistance.  The younger generations in those countries find it more convenient to leave the demanding task of nursing and caring for old people to immigrants. In many factories, labour-intensive and dangerous jobs such as manning blast furnaces in steelworks are given to immigrants.  The same is true for construction work, agriculture and animal husbandry. 

Research has also established that skilled job seeking Africans in the Americas and Europe end up in the worst paid unskilled jobs, which have no relevance to their academic achievements.  These professionals soon lose their competencies and end up not being able to make commensurate contributions to neither their, nor the host country’s development efforts, resulting in “brain waste”.

Research conducted in Zimbabwe revealed that most professionals who leave the country for the Diaspora have been forced to abandon their professions for menial, difficult and dangerous jobs that promote the well-being of the people of the developed world.Some highly educated men and women from Zimbabwe are working as child minders or looking after the sick and the elderly in old people’s homes in the North, while others work as waiters, general hands and commercial sex workers. Those who fail to make it in the Diaspora are said to be living like vagabonds in the streets (Financial Gazette 25 July 2002 p 3; The Herald, 3 March 2007 p 3;). 

One Zimbabwean, Nelson Katsande, who left his job as a sales representative at a manufacturing company in Harare where his company perks included among other things, a company car, paid holidays, and free professional development courses narrated his ordeal when he left his job and left for England to pursue a degree in marketing where he was chucked out of college for non-payment of fees and had to look for a job in a nursing home for the elderly and infirm:

“Shamwari (my friend), life is difficult for me.  I look after an elderly man who cannot do anything on his own.  I have to feed him, take him to the toilet, bath and dress him.  I regret coming here.  Now I have backaches as I have to lift the old man daily.  All my dreams of a better life here are shattered.  I have no social life and miss home dearly.” (http://www.herald.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=5215&cat=10).

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He is not the only one in this predicament.  Many professionals who left their lucrative careers for a “better” life abroad are living in misery.  Doctors, engineers, managers, teachers and once prosperous businessmen have all been reduced to nothing.  Most of these professionals are cleaning the streets of London, with the majority absorbed in the “care” industry, looking after the elderly.   Life in the Diaspora is not as rosy as perceived.  Those who were high flying engineers, managers, academics, businessmen in Zimbabwe, have only become “carriers” in their new life in England.  They have gained extensive experience in a wide range of jobs, such as street cleaning, “bottom” cleaning, and garbage and warehouse cleaners.

Tutored by colonialism to love things foreign, Africans have always had the desire to go abroad to better themselves.  The mentality of Africa’s elite ought to be addressed.  In their wish for a better life, they aid the brain drain. The resources “wasted” aside, these elite are generally the people responsible for the development of African educational systems and come back to lead African organizations thereby perpetuating Eurocentric values and attitudes.