Memorandum submitted by Nigel Harris,
Professor Emeritus, Development Planning Unit, University College
London
I. MIGRATION
1. It is now generally agreed that the European
labour force is set to decline over the next three decades- to
different degrees in different countries and at different times.
Efforts are underway to increase the employment of adults currently
not working, to raise retirement ages, and increase intra-European
migration, but, even if these measures are successful, the deficits
in labour supply will still be economically deleterious. Much
public attention has been devoted to the problems of scarcity
of skilled and highly skilled workers, but the educational systems
of Europe are continually upgrading the native-born workforce
so that there are steadily fewer workers willing to undertake
low-skilled jobs—and the shortage of complementary low-
skilled workers can severely reduce the capacity of the skilled
to attain optimal levels of productivity.
2. The present system of migration controls,
put in place in the 1970s, is no longer capable of accommodating
both the dynamic but unpredictable domestic demands for workers
of different skills, and the global demand for work in Europe,
an incapacity illustrated in the perpetual changes in statute
and regulation. The system is increasingly costly, bureaucratic,
opaque and arbitrary. Intensifying controls only increases the
criminalisation, brutalisation and militarisation of the process
of entering Fortress Europe.
3. In sum, the workers are needed and developing
countries have available a ready supply of willing and literate
workers. Furthermore, there is evidence of major potential gains
to the world economy from lowering migration controls.[86]
The reluctance of Europeans to avail themselves of this obvious
remedy arises from fears that the workers would want to settle
and would impose burdens on systems of social security, housing
etc. However, in terms of long-term settlement, contrary to popular
opinion, many migrants, possibly a majority and particularly the
low-skilled, do not want to go into permanent exile,[87]
but only to secure access to work, to earn in order to support
families left at home or meet other major expenses (to marry,
purchase a house, pay for hospital treatment or education etc).
This is particularly important where purchasing power values are
markedly different between source and destination countries—a
poorly paid worker in Europe has a middle income at home, provided
he or she is able to spend the incomes earned abroad at home.
Most migrants would seem to prefer to circulate rather than settle
(of course, this generalisation is powerfully affected by conditions
at home).[88]
Circulation is the most ancient form of worker migration, and
there are many schemes which have worked with great reliability
in this field (not least, employer-run contract labour schemes).[89]
4. However, the effect of immigration controls
is, perversely, to force migrants to settle, to accept exile until
such time as they can secure citizenship and thus the freedom
to circulate.[90]
It has been commonly noted that Spanish, Portuguese and Greek
migrant workers settled permanently in Germany until their countries
entered the European Union and they won the right to return home
without jeopardising their freedom to circulate and return to
Germany if they wished. Thus, preserving the freedom to circulate
is a condition of workers being willing to return home (as a number
of European governments have found in the disappointing results
of schemes to encourage return). However, the modern nation-State
is ill-equipped to accommodate circulation. Governments assume
and seek to preserve a sharp distinction between a clearly defined
body of citizens, the basis for the exercise of democratic franchise
and the privileges of nationality, and those who are foreigners
and should leave. The instinct of government is to enforce either
departure or "integration", incorporation into the historic
nation.
5. However, despite the problems attached
to the idea of migratory circulation, it provides a way both of
spreading the benefits of migration over much larger numbers of
people and meeting the fears of Europe's native-born population.
Furthermore, the decline in international transport costs—and
in ordinary communication—makes feasible the keeping of
family and other social relationships intact while a worker is
working abroad, and thus the social basis for return.
II. DEVELOPMENT
6. In the 1990s, the dynamic of Europe's
labour market attracted much larger numbers of regular and irregular
workers from outside Europe—globalisation has, as it were,
become inescapable on the streets of Europe's big cities. The
by-product of this change has been an extraordinary increase in
the flow of worker remittances to their home countries (increasing
rapidly and now—including estimates of unofficial transfers
in cash and kind—worldwide, possibly between two and four
times the levels of official development aid). In development
terms, this is a remarkable and unexpected increase in the revenues
of developing countries. In addition, remittances are, in contrast
to other revenue and investment flows, counter-cyclical (they
increase in a recession), do not generate counter-flows (payments
for imports, profits on foreign investment), and go directly to
those in need in some of the poorer localities (Suro, 2003).
7. Governments in developing countries,
after some reluctance, have become eager to harness this new source
of revenues for development.[91]
The four hundred or so home-town clubs of the Mexican diaspora
in the United States have mobilised to finance development projects
in their home localities—to pave a road, build a health
clinic, primary school etc. Mexican local, State and Federal governments
have, in some States offered three dollars to match each dollar
remitted by a worker abroad, and re-aligned domestic anti-poverty,
health and educational programmes (Progresa, now Opportunidades)
to magnify the effect of remittance flows (Escobar et al, 2003;
O'Neil, April 2003). The Mexican government after long years of
shame at the scale of emigration of its citizens, has moved to
track their destinations, keep in touch, supply Mexican identity
cards (for irregular migrants), facilitate cash transfers and
offer advice. Other countries have developed schemes to utilise
the scarce skills of their most highly skilled citizens abroad
to upgrade universities and the professions, and to start industries
of high technology (Lindsay Lowell, Dec. 2001; Findlay, 2001).
8. However, migration can remove from the
labour force of a developing country the most skilled, energetic
and enterprising workers, making very much more difficult the
task of conquering poverty. It would be quite wrong for Europe
to purchase the welfare of its inhabitants at the cost of developing
countries. However, there are means, discussed below, to turn
circulatory migration into a positive reinforcement for development
efforts.
III. AID
9. Official aid programmes to developing
countries play a great variety of roles, from supporting macro
economic balance and reforms, financing responses to emergencies,
and projects. Project aid has a mixed record of achievement and
can, in certain circumstances, lead to the subordination of the
perception of the developing country's requirements to the interests
of the donor. This does not happen with remittances which carry
no political strings. Furthermore, the lack of local development
agents can jeopardise the outcome of aid projects. Donors employ
governments in developing counties, consultants and, increasingly
NGOs to play the role of local implementing agents. However, with
circulatory migration, there could be an immense number of development
agents in returnees. Aid programmes could then be employed to
reinforce the efforts of returnees, of remittance flows and, as
now, the efforts of developing country governments and NGOs.[92]
10. Enhancing human capital is widely seen
as one of the most important issues in economic development and
circulatory migration can contribute to this aim. On the one hand,
temporary migration includes a large number of students who come
to Europe to study. In many cases, they are also allowed to work.
On the other, if we were to think of all circulatory migrants
on the model of students (including in study, work-experience,
on the job training, and enhancement of professional skills),
then migration could simultaneously meet Europe's requirements
for workers and enhance the human capital of developing countries
through returnees. In addition, treating all migrants on the same
basis would militate against the current tendency to create a
two class system in which the highly skilled are able to move
fairly freely, work and settle, but the low skilled are expected
to be tied to the soil of their native place. Aid programmes in
conjunction with host country educational institutions, could
be enlisted to organise the training, education and professional
development programmes of migrants, track returnees, and offer
follow up programmes in the student's country of origin, of aid
and support for development projects.[93]
IV. LESSONS FOR
EUROPE
11. There are many issues not resolved here—for
example, how far families can migrate with temporary workers,
how far extensions in the period of work are permitted, how people
who wish to stay on a more permanent basis are to be permitted
to make the transition from migrant to settler, how conditions
of work and pay are to be regulated, monitored and policed, how
migrants are to be accorded health protection during their work
period (whether within or without existing social security arrangements).
Ideally, employers should be obliged to bear the risks and costs
of recruitment and repatriation, but this may not satisfy European
electorates. Partnerships between home and host country governments,
relevant trade unions and NGOs may be a formula for establishing
a fair, well-regulated and well-policed system of circular migration.
12. However the central principle remains—to
turn migration from a problem for both Europe and for developing
countries into an opportunity for the reduction of world poverty.
V. MIGRATION
AND ANTI-GLOBALISATION
13. Between about 1970 and 2050, Europe
is undergoing wrenching processes of social and economic change
involved in the emergence of a single integrated world economy.
European electorates have accepted much of this process already
in terms of deindustrialisation (and the relocation of part of
manufacturing capacity to Asia), in trade and capital movements,
and now the "out-sourcing" of services. Major reforms
in Europe's social security and pension schemes can also add to
a generalised sense of insecurity Still to come are the full effects
of declining population and ageing. In retrospect, the 1990s may
be seen as witnessing the beginning of a major transition in terms
of people, particularly in Europe's large cities. After 200 years
or so of creating national States and the appropriate national
identities, it is hardly surprising if the combination of these
processes did not threaten to destabilise to the psyche. The economics
of labour migration could become disastrously intertwined in the
politics of personal identity. In fact, the process may be less
destabilising for the majority of Europeans who belonged to countries
than to those Europeans to whom those same countries belonged,
or rather to the intelligentsia whose role it has been to articulate
and sustain the national idea—a respectable xenophobia,
may be more dangerous today than popular resentments. This would
be enhanced for the population at large by the real or invented
association of border crossing with terrorism. The danger of terrorism
is less with the threat of particular acts of violence and rather
more with the maintenance of a continual state of popular panic
in electorates to which political leaders are obliged to react
with "tough measures" if they are to survive politically.
Not dealing with migration in a timely and publicly
transparent way thus has the potential for disaster, pulling down
the temple on our heads. On the other hand, converting the issue
into an opportunity for a sustained attack on world poverty can
mobilise the idealism of Europeans for this task.
February 2004
REFERENCES
Baines, D E (1991): Emigration from Europe,
1815-1930, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Constant, Amelie and Douglas S Massey (2002):
Return Migration by German Guestworkers: neoclassical versus new
economics, International Migration, 40/4, 2002: 5-39.
Constant, Amelie and Klaus F Zimmermann (2003):
Circular movements and Time Away from the Host Country,
IZA DP 960, Forschung Institut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (IZA), Bonn,
December.
Cornelius, Wayne (2001): Death at the Border:
efficacy and unintended consequences of US immigration control
policy, Population and Development Review, 27/4, December:
661-685.
DFID-World Bank (2003): Report and Conclusions,
International Conference on Migrant Remittances: Development Impact,
opportunities for the financial sector and future prospects,
October 9-10, London.
Dustmann, Christian (1996): Return Migration:
the European experience, Economic Policy: A European Forum
22 April 1996: 215-250.
Eichengreen, Barry (1994): Thinking about migration:
European migration pressures at the dawn of the next millennium,
in H Siebout (Ed), Migration: a Challenge for Europe, Mohr,
Tübingen.
Escobar, Agustin, Philip Martin, Peter Schalzer,
Susan Martin (2003): Migration: moving the agenda forward, International
Migration, IOM, 41(2), 2003).
Findlay, Alan (2001): From brain exchange
to brain gain: policy implications for the UK of recent trends
in skilled migration from developing countries, International
Migration Programme 43, ILO, Geneva, December.
Hamilton, C, and J Whalley (1984): Efficiency
and distributional implications of global restrictions on labor
mobility: calculations and political implications, Journal
of Development Economics, 14 (1-2): 61-75.
Iregui, Ana Martes (2002): Efficiency gains
from the elimination of global restrictions on labour mobility:
an analysis using a multiregional CGE model, World Institute
of Development Economic Research conference, Poverty, International
Migration and Asylum, Helsinki, 27-28 September.
Lowell, B Lindsey (2001): (a) Some development
effects of the international migration of highly skilled persons,
International Migration Programme 46, ILO, Geneva, Dec. (b) Policy
responses to the international mobility of skilled labour,
International Migration Programme 45, ILO, Geneva, December.
Massey, Douglas, Jorge Durand, Nolan J Malone
(2002): Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican immigration in an
era of economic integration, Russell Sage Foundation, New
York.
Moses, Jonathan W and Björn Letnes (2002):
The economic costs of international labor restrictions, paper
for WIDER conference (see Iregui above).
O'Neil, Kevin (2003): (a) Using remittances
and circular migration as drivers of development, Center for
Contemporary Immigration Studies, University of California: San
Diego, 11-12 April. (b) Migration and Development, Migration
Policy Institute, Washington, December.
Suro, Roberto (2003): Remittance senders
and receivers: tracking the transnational channels, Pew Hispanic
Center and Multilateral Investment Fund, Washington DC, 24 November.
UNDP (1992): The Human Development Report
1992, UNDP: New York.
Werner, Heinz (2002): From the German "Guestworker"
programmes of the Sixties to the current "Green Card"
initiative for IT specialists, International Migration Programme11,
ILO, Geneva.
Walmsley, Terrie L and L Alan Winters (2002):
Relaxing restrictions on the temporary movement of natural
persons: a simulation analysis, unpublished paper, University
of Sheffield.
Winters, L Alan, Terrie L Walmsley, Zhen Kun
Wang, Roman Grynberg (2003): Liberalising labour mobility under
GATS, Economic Paper 53, Commonwealth Secretariat, London.
86 The theory of international trade turns on the
proposition that where there are differences in factor endowment
(raw materials, labour, capital, entrepreneurship etc), between
countries or localities, disproportionate economic gains result
from exchanging factors. This is the rationale for liberalising
world trade and the mobility of capital. A number of studies have
endeavoured to put figures on the gains arising from the liberalisation
of labour migration. Hamilton and Whalley (1984), using 1977 data
and a set of strict assumptions, estimate gains to gross world
product (then US$ 7.8 trillion) arising from lifting all migration
controls at between $4.7 trillion and $16 trillion. Recent reworking
of more up-to-date data confirm these broad magnitudes (Moses
and Letnes, 2002; Iregui, 2002). UNDP, in the Human Development
Report 1992 (pp 57-58), present a different calculation of
more limited changes. Walmsley and Winters (2001) present a model
in which worker migration to employment in services in developed
countries equal to 3% of the developed countries labour force
would yield benefits of $156 billion, shared between developed
and developing countries, compared to the estimated $104 billion
generated by a successful outcome of the Doha trade round (and
the roughly $55 billion granted in aid to developing countries
by the OECD group). The precise figures are no better than the
assumptions made, but the direction of change, and the magnitudes,
is important. Back
87
Without controls, it is commonly observed that migrant workers
circulate. Thus, with the decline in trans-Atlantic transport
costs of the 1890s, 40-50% of Italian migrants to the United States
up to 1914 returned to Europe; and 30-40% of Portuguese, Croatians,
Serbs, Hungarians and Poles (Baines, 1991). Constant and Zimmerman
(2003) estimate that 60% of contemporary guest-workers in Germany
are repeat migrants. See also Eichengreen (1994) and Dustmann
(1996). Back
88
However, steady progress in many developing countries-in the
provision of basic infrastructure, telecommunications etc, is
narrowing the gap with developed countries. The availability of
cheap support workers-maids, nannies, gardeners, cooks-may already
mean that standards of livings for software programmers in Bangalore-at
lower levels of remuneration-are higher than in Silicon Valley. Back
89
The German guestworker case is often cited to support the proposition
that "there is nothing so permanent as a temporary worker".
However this is a misjudgement since (i) employers pressed the
government to keep workers because the suspension of the programme
meant that there could be no replacements; (ii) workers tried
to stay because they recognised that, if they left, there would
be no repeat opportunity to work in Germany; (iii) in any case,
a significant proportion of guestworkers did leave Germany-see
Werner (2001); Constant and Massey (2002). There are many other
schemes of circular migration that have worked effectively-for
example, the US-Mexico Braceros scheme, contract labour schemes
in the Persian Gulf etc. In the case of the Mexico-Canada agricultural
labour programme, in the 28 years of its operation (with 12,500
workers involved in 2002), no Mexicans overstayed their visas,
and 5% returned to Mexico before their visas expired-O'Neil (2003). Back
90
In the American case, Mexicans are estimated to have stayed in
the US on average three years in the early 1980s, but in the late
1990s after major steps to tighten border controls, nine years-and
as a result, bring spouses, put children into schools and seek
US citizenship. On the general case, see Cornelius (2001) and
Massey et al (2002): "Immigration policies should . . . recognise
that most international migrants are not initially motivated to
settle in developed nations, and that hardening the borders through
police actions only undermines the inclination to return, ultimately
reducing the flow of people and migradollars back to sending regions
to choke off their development. A smarter strategy would be to
counter the natural inclination to remain abroad by facilitating
return migration and the repatriation of fund" (Massey et
al, 2002: 157). Back
91
As also have financial institutions, development banks and aid
donors-see the DFID-World Bank conference in London, October 2003. Back
92
The EU has made efforts to relate aid programme to migration,
but these have usually been directed at preventing emigration
rather than reinforcing development. Back
93
There have already been schemes here-see, for example, the Belgian
Migration for Development programme; Working holiday maker schemes
in Belgium, UK etc. Back
|
