Select Committee on International Development Sixth Report


1  MIGRATION: PUTTING DEVELOPMENT IN THE PICTURE

Migration: Development challenges and opportunities

  1.  The history of migration is the history of peoples' struggle to survive and to prosper, to escape insecurity and poverty, and to move in response to opportunity. The economist J.K. Galbraith, described migration as "the oldest action against poverty".[1] Worldwide, 175 million people, or just under three percent of the total, live outside their country of birth.[2] Migration may be the exception rather than the rule, but it is increasing. It is already very important - in terms of economics and politics, domestically and internationally - because of the links it establishes between countries.

Figure 1: Meaning of terms used in this report

MigrantA person who lives or has lived away from their place of birth for a period of one year or longer, having crossed the boundary of a political or administrative unit with the result that he or she does not automatically enjoy the same rights of citizenship and residence as someone who is a citizen or permanent resident of that place.
Seasonal MigrantA migrant who - in an exception to the one year or longer criterion for a "migrant" - moves to and fro between home and another place on a seasonal basis.
Internal MigrantA migrant who has moved within his or her country of birth, crossing a boundary between provinces, districts, municipalities or other political or administrative units.
International Migrant A migrant who has moved outside their country of birth, crossing an international boundary.
RefugeeAn international migrant who has fled his or her home country because of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, and who has been granted refugee status by a receiving state according to the United Nations 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees.
Asylum-seekerAn international migrant whose claim to refugee status is yet to be determined.
Economic migrantA migrant who moves for economic reasons and who has no legitimate claim to refugee status.


  2.  Migration presents serious challenges. The places and people left behind - the home societies - face the challenge of coping without the migrants and their skills. The places where the migrants move to - the host societies - need to adapt to the influx of new people. The migrants themselves have the challenge of moving, and of working to realise their dreams of a better life. But there are opportunities too, from migration and from the resource flows which migration can generate. Even a slight relaxing of restrictions on the movement of workers - increasing the proportion of migrants in developed countries' workforce to just 3 percent - would deliver global gains of $150 billion per year, some of which could be spent on poverty reduction.[3] More radical liberalisation offers economic gains which far exceed those which a successful conclusion to the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) "Development Round" might achieve.[4] The current volume of remittances sent home by international migrants is estimated to be $93 billion per year; with the addition of unrecorded remittances the total amounts to perhaps $300 billion.[5] This compares to global aid of $68.5 billion per year. Migrants have the chance to employ their energies and enterprise in pursuit of a better life. Host societies have the opportunity to benefit from an influx of skills. Home societies can benefit from resources remitted by people who have moved away, and from the return of migrants, armed with new skills and ideas.[6]

  3.  Overall, the challenge is to manage migration so that when people choose to migrate their experience, and that of the people they leave behind, is positive; the benefits are maximised; the costs are minimised; and both costs and benefits are shared equitably between home and host societies.[7] From a development perspective, the challenge is to respond to the flows, in this case of people, and the resources which they may remit, to deliver benefits in terms of poverty reduction in developing countries and thereby to make globalisation work for the poor.[8]

  4.  Determining what would be equitable and development-friendly outcomes from migration, and still further delivering them, is far from easy; migration produces costs and benefits, the distribution of which adds yet more complexity. Although migration is a global phenomenon, different people, in different places, have different stories to tell. They will weigh up the costs and benefits of migration differently too.[9] From Hargeisa, Somaliland, the dominant story may be one of civil war, a struggle for independence, refugees and their gradual return, and the vital role which migrants' remittances play in sustaining their home country; from Nairobi, Kenya, that of a capital city receiving economic migrants from rural areas, and economic migrants and refugees from neighbouring countries, all in search of a better life. From the UK, the stories are of increased cultural diversity, a health service dependent on foreign-born nurses and doctors, but also of desperate attempts to enter the UK in the back of lorries, and of workers exploited by gangmasters and dying in the sands of Morecambe Bay. Too rarely in the UK is the narrative about the impacts on developing countries themselves.

  5.  Our priority as a Committee is international development, but we appreciate that governments' migration policies are driven by a range of sometimes competing objectives. It is for governments to decide whether more or less migration is desirable and to design policies to meet their objectives. Our focus is on the quality of migration - what can be done to maximise its developmental benefits - rather than the quantity. In weighing up the costs and benefits of migration, policy-makers - even as they pursue national interests - must remember that different people in different places have different experiences, and stories to tell, about migration. Policy-makers should also bear in mind that national policies have global repercussions, which will lead in turn to challenges at the national level. As Goal 8 of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) reminds us, the UK has a responsibility - along with the rest of the international community - to establish a global partnership for development. Despite the silence of the MDGs on migration (see paragraph 144), the UK's global developmental responsibilities need to be taken account of in the design of UK policies relating to migration.

  6.  This report is not about the costs and benefits to the UK of migration. Our priority is poverty reduction in developing countries, and specifically to ensure that the UK Government and its partners are working effectively in pursuit of the internationally-agreed MDGs. We broadly support the "managed migration" approach: the UK should be neither a fortress nor an open house.[10] It seems to us that on balance, migration is economically beneficial to the UK, but not by a huge amount.[11] We agree with Martin Wolf, the Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times, who argues - interestingly, for someone who is fond of promoting trade liberalisation on the basis of its economic benefits - that decisions about the desirable level of migration into the UK cannot be made on the basis of economics alone. There are important social, cultural and political costs and benefits to consider, and there are important distributional questions about which economic and social groups reap the benefits or suffer the costs of migration (see paragraphs 27—31). Ultimately, decisions about migration are more a matter of values than of economics. Martin Wolf's conclusion in considering the costs and benefits of immigration to the UK is that "it is not a choice between wealth and poverty, but of the sort of country one desires to inhabit."[12] We largely agree, but it is also about the sort of world that one wants to live in, and the relationship of one's country to the world.

  7.  For the UK, the impact of immigration depends in large part on its nature: who the migrants are; what skills they bring; where they are from; how long they stay; and what they do whilst in the UK. This simple logic, and the entry-points it suggests for policy intervention, applies more widely. The developmental impact of migration depends upon the nature of the migration; the nature of the migration is itself shaped by the actions of migrants, and the policies pursued by authorities in home and host countries or regions.

The inquiry and the report

  8.  We recognise that it is difficult to divide migrants - legally or analytically - into various categories, and as a Committee we are continuously concerned about refugees. But our primary focus has been on economic migrants as it is economic migration that links migration and development most clearly.

  9.  Our inquiry has been driven by five objectives:

  10.  Chapter two of this report sets out our understanding of the complex relationship between migration and development, before then outlining how policies could be designed to deliver greater development benefits. The argument made is that the impact of migration depends upon the nature of the migration in question, and on the links which migration establishes between home and host societies. Chapter three identifies a range of ways in which policy can shape and respond to migration, to make it work better for development and poverty reduction. Looking in turn at different stages of the migration journey, issues explored include the so-called "brain-drain", trafficking and smuggling, migrants' rights, and temporary mobility schemes. Chapter four examines further ways in which policy might shape and utilise the links which migration establishes between home and host societies, focussing on remittances and the role of the diaspora. Chapter five considers migration management, partnerships and policy coherence, arguing that to make migration work for poverty reduction, more effective partnerships are needed at bilateral and multilateral levels, and that policy coherence needs to be increased. The report's recommendations are primarily for the UK Government. There are however points directed to other governments, both in the developed and developing world, to multilateral organisations such as the United Nations and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), to civil society organisations including migrants' organisations, and to the private sector.

  11.  The Secretary of State for International Development has welcomed this inquiry, acknowledging that the Committee, along with the Department for International Development (DFID) and others, is seeking to improve its understanding of the migration-development nexus[13] We trust that this report will help to inform DFID's work, and thereby contribute to successful development outcomes, for host countries, for migrants, and for the vast majority of the world's poor who are left behind by migration.


1   J.K. Galbraith, The nature of mass poverty, Harvard University Press, 1979, p.7; Q 87 [Tony Baldry, Chairman of the International Development Committee]  Back

2   Ev 211 [International Organisation for Migration (IOM) memorandum] Back

3   Terrie L. Walmsley and L. Alan Winters, Relaxing the Restrictions on the Temporary Movement of Natural Persons: A Simulation Analysis, Centre for Economic Policy Research Discussion Paper No. 3719, 4 Nov 2002,p.3. Available at: http://www.gtap.agecon.purdue.edu/events/Board_Meetings/2003/docs/Walmsley_Mobility.pdf Back

4   Dani Rodrik of Harvard University states that "liberalizing cross-border labor movements can be expected to yield benefits that are roughly 25 times larger than those that would accrue from the traditional agenda focusing on goods and capital flows". Dani Rodrik, Feasible Globalizations, John F. Kennedy School of Government Working Paper Series RWP02-029, July 2002, pp.19-20. See http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~.drodrik.academic.ksg/Feasglob.pdf Back

5   World Bank, Global Development Finance: Harnessing cyclical gains for development, 2004. Available at http://www.worldbank.org/prospects/gdf2004/ Back

6   Ev 247 [Oxfam memo] Back

7   Ev 247 [Oxfam memo]. See also Philip L. Martin, Sustainable Migration Policies in a Globalizing World, International Institute for Labour Studies, International Labour Organization, March 2003. Available at http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/inst/download/migration.pdf Back

8   Her Majesty's Government (HMG) , White Paper on International Development, Eliminating World Poverty: Making globalisation work for the poor, 2000 - see http://www.dfid.gov.uk/policieandpriorities/files/whitepaper2000.pdf; Ev 124 [DFID memo]; Q 21 [Masood Ahmed, Director General for Policy and International, DFID]; Ev 169 [Centre on Migration, Policy and Science (COMPAS) University of Oxford memo]; Ev 205 [International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) memo)];Catherine Barber, Making Migration 'Development-Friendly', Unpublished MA dissertation, 24 March 2003 - copy placed in House of Commons library. Back

9   Highlighting the fact that people assess migration differently, Newsweek suggested that: "The migrant worker is many things to many people. For conservative politicians and Trade Union organisers in industrial countries, he is the illegal migrant - who deserves a one way ticket back to whatever country he came from. For immigration advocates and business groups, he is a vital pillar of today's globalized economic order, whether a legal resident of his new country or not. For the political leaders of developing countries, he is a modern day 'hero' who sends home a hefty portion of his paycheque to help support his family members and keep his old community afloat"(Newsweek International, 19th January 2004)  Back

10   The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, Controlled Migration, speech given at the London Business School, hosted by the CBI, 27 April 2004. Available at http://www.labour.org.uk/tbmigrationspeech/ Back

11   Q 32 [Sharon White, Director, Policy Division, DFID] Back

12   Martin Wolf, "Economics alone will not settle the immigration debate", Financial Times, 14 April 2004. Back

13   Q 327 [Rt Hon Hilary Benn, MP, Secretary of State for International Development] Back


 
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