Migration and society in Italian

Nineteenth on the list is la fuga dei cervelli, and it is worth setting beside « brain drain » rather than simply swapping one for the other, because the two pictures face opposite ways. English names the vessel. A drain is a hole in the bottom of something, and the country is what empties; the brains are passive, carried off by gravity, and the phrase stuck partly because it rhymes. The Italian names the contents. La fuga is a flight, an escape, what a prisoner makes, so the brains are the ones doing it, on purpose and under their own power. The same noun covers a leak — una fuga di gas, una fuga di notizie — but even there what moves is what was inside, never the container. The proof stands one field away. Money leaving a country is la fuga di capitali, the very same word, while English drops its drain at that point and says « capital flight ». One language holds a single image for both; the other keeps two and changes horses between them.