They used to mention globalisation as something good, something wonderful, something we did not have here, and also something that EU membership would bring us. Or that it was because of it we had to join the EU.

What we are experiencing now is one direct effect of globalisation: exodus, of people, of money and of capital.

We are now experiencing a wholesale exodus of our best talents, young people mostly, mainly with university credentials, who are finding it advantageous to go and do further studies abroad (easier now, due to EU membership), or take up an appointment there both because such appointments are available (again, due to EU membership) or, as in the case of doctors, because living conditions in Malta are still very meagre and also because their career prospects in Malta are blocked for the next 20 years or so.

Some of them will come back after their post-graduate studies, but others will not. They will set up house over there, start families or bring their families there and get used to living abroad so much that they will not want to come back. As one can also see from a cull of weblogs, and also from private correspondence, many are leaving Malta with anger in their hearts at this country which could not find a place for them or which did not provide them with the opportunities that other countries offer people who are not their citizens.

A second exodus is that of money. This exodus goes in the direction of the EU and even beyond the EU. While property prices in Malta go up and up, the same amount of money with which one buys an apartment here, can buy a sizeable house in places like Hungary or Latvia, and even more in countries outside the EU such as in the Balkans or Ukraine. Lm4,000, one is told, can buy a three-bedroomed house in Macedonia and people are doing just that – buying property there, now that property prices in Malta are so high.

The third exodus is that of capital. Obviously, we will never get to know the whole extent, but companies already in Malta are now busily relocating to mainly third world countries where they find cheap labour, less rigid regulation and, they say, a far more welcoming atmosphere than they find here. Factories and industries that were here have relocated to China or Romania, and many Maltese industrialists are now opening shop in Tunisia rather than Libya.

All this constitutes bad news for Malta. The outflow of money, capital and people, especially the last, is bad news for any country, let alone for a small country that depends on its citizens as its main and almost only resource. It would be bad news even if the inflow of money, capital and human resources was anything comparable, which it is not. No amount of people from EU countries, let alone the asylum-seekers and the illegals present in numbers, can replace the Maltese citizens who relocate abroad. In a way, we feel that our country has let these people down.

There are some arguments one can make in at least partial mitigation. Unfortunately, the companies who seek workers for their cost value and who are thus attracted to relocate to China where a worker costs 22c for the Lm3.41 that a Maltese worker costs (the figure is exact) or where there is no Mepa to intrude or Health & Safety to regulate, may argue that they are relocating where there are better opportunities but they can never shake off the perception that they are relocating because they are allowed to get away with things they would never be allowed to get away with in Malta or in Europe. Had it been otherwise, they would have relocated to the EU, which to our knowledge none of them has.

The issue becomes even more complex when one reflects on the outflow of human resources. In the 1960s, when the British colonial rulers were trying very hard to cut down on the huge number of workers at the dockyards, forced emigration was cruel but necessary. There was absolutely no way that a still not independent Malta could feed and find work for all those thousands. The sight and sound of people leaving Malta on the slow boats to Sydney was one of the

cruellest experiences of many people. Yet the people who migrated did well, even those who stayed only for just a few years.

In the case of the present migration flow, the people who are leaving come from the higher levels – the university graduates, the professionals. As referred to earlier, there is almost no way that Malta can provide them with the post-graduate courses, and even more the careers, the opportunities, that the big open spaces out there can. We can only wish them well and good luck in their future careers.

In a way, but only in a way, this will also provide more opportunities for those who come next. Consider the doctors, for instance: up to just a few years ago, the intake to the MD courses was rigidly numerus clausus and restricted to 50 every two years. Nowadays, the course is unrestricted and begins every year, and still most of the newly-graduated doctors find it is in their interest to resign and relocate abroad, to the extent that our health centres have to be kept closed because of a lack of doctors. Obviously, the more doctors we can produce, the more many of them will be tempted to go abroad, until slowly the number of those who choose to remain here somehow grows. Meanwhile, however, people from classes which never used to have children at university, let alone joining the professional classes, will be doing just that, and that, surely, is a good thing.

So, there are some silver linings in these clouds, but there is a lot, a real lot which is just dark clouds, the dark side of globalisation we were never told existed.

Regardless of all that has been said so far, there is a lot, really a lot, that the country, its government, must do to stem the outflow, the exodus. There is nothing that says, for instance, that we must be far more welcoming, helpful, perhaps even less restrictive in certain matters, to those who want to invest and to expand. Just as the right sort of attention is crucial to attract business such as tourism or financial services, so too the right sort of attention and helpful attitude can help attract industrialists and keep those industries already here still here. And without breaking the bank, even though here the question of relativities lurks, does anyone really think that a consultant, that is a doctor who has done his post-graduate courses, can be expected to work for a salary of circa Lm9,000 without devoting most of his waking life to private business – or relocating elsewhere as soon as he or she has the chance? It is attitudes like this that create revulsion, anger and pain. There are people and capital we will inevitably lose, given the globalised world in which we live, but there is still a lot, really a lot, that can be retained if we shake off this fatalistic approach, and an attitude of “take it or leave it”!