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
Migrant | A 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.
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Seasonal Migrant | A 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.
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Internal Migrant | A migrant who has moved within his or her country of birth, crossing a boundary between provinces, districts, municipalities or other political or administrative units.
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International Migrant |
A migrant who has moved outside their country of birth, crossing an international boundary.
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Refugee | An 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.
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Asylum-seeker | An international migrant whose claim to refugee status is yet to be determined.
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Economic migrant | A migrant who moves for economic reasons and who has no legitimate claim to refugee status.
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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 2731).
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:
- To raise awareness - within Parliament, Government,
and the wider public - of the development dimension in ongoing
debates about migration;
- To examine the nature of the relationship between
migration and development, especially poverty reduction;
- To identify examples of best practice, where
migration has been made to work for poverty reduction;
- To examine the coherence of UK policies relating
to migration with policies on other development-related matters;
- To make policy recommendations as to ways in
which UK and European Union (EU) policies relating to migration
might effectively and coherently factor in development and poverty
reduction 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