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Migration DOES deliver substantial benefits

Wednesday 26th May 2010

People who migrate from developing countries greatly increase their own income and bring many benefits to their families and communities back home, a study has shown.

The project by the Global Development Network (GDN), an international organisation headquartered in India, and UK think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) also found that negative impacts on development such as "brain drain" were usually counter-balanced by other positive impacts.

The report says migration should not be viewed as a "problem" for development. While migration can create challenges, it allows people with few alternatives to improve their standard of living, to send money back to their families and their communities, and to enhance wider development outcomes through so-called "spill-over effects", such as increased business creation and higher savings.

The project involved field work and research in seven countries – Colombia, Fiji, Georgia, Ghana, Jamaica, Macedonia and Vietnam. Using an innovative methodology, almost 10,000 households were surveyed to build up the most extensive picture of the impact of migration on developing countries ever compiled.

Another important conclusion of the project is that such are the incentives to migrate that sending out tough signals to deter movement or introducing overly restrictive "fortress-style" policies are not likely to work. The authors argue that strategies to facilitate and regulate the movement of people from developing countries, through well-managed schemes, will work better than policies that seek to "control" migration too tightly or frustrate all opportunities to migrate.

Project coordinator Laura Chappell, a Senior Research Fellow at ippr, said: "There are lessons for policy makers in this report. An important one for Western governments is that a fortress approach to migration from the developing world is unlikely to be successful.

"As long as there are such imbalances in the global economy, migrants from poorer countries are going to want to come to countries where the economic opportunities are greater. The evidence shows that they and their families will generally benefit if they do so. In these circumstances, policies mainly designed to keep migrants out or kick them out may well be destined to fail. Managed migration can be achieved but it needs to take into account migrants’ aspirations as well as concerns of local electorates."

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Mike Jones

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