Mainstreaming migration into development agendas of developing countries

By Roshini Jayaweera

Introduction

More than 200 million people, around three per cent of the world’s population, live outside their countries of birth. Global remittance flows were an estimated US$ 501 billion in 2011. Around 75 per cent of the total remittance flows is estimated to have reached developing countries.

Though there is a significant impact of migration and remittances on development, ‘migration policies’ and ‘development policies’ have been treated separately in countries’ development agendas. In this context, it is important to examine the status of migration as a tool of development.

A number of issues arise in this respect. What are the interactions between migration policies and development policies? How is the more effective incorporation of migration into the development agenda to be achieved? How can migration be featured in poverty reduction strategy papers? How can development strategies be taken into consideration in migration policy?

Linkages between international migration and development

Migration and development link can be understood to revolve around three phases: Recruitment, remittances and return.

Recruitment includes both motivation and facilitating factors that include low economic growth, high underemployment or unemployment rate, population growth, income inequality, pressure on land and urban environment, and poor governance. There is a direct link between remittances and development of sending countries and it has both micro and macro level impacts.

The end product of migration is the ‘return’ and it expects to have saved capital and acquired skills abroad that can be productively invested in the home country. In this process of migration, there are three types of transfers: transfer of people, transfer of knowledge and skills and transfer of financial assets. Transfer of knowledge and financial assets or remittances involves sending not only by temporary migrants but also by the diaspora.

The impacts of migration can be positive or negative. With regard to the positive impacts, remittances contribute to stabilise the economy through higher remittance inflows and it contributes to the Balance of Payments (BoP) and national savings. On the other hand, remittance inflows can fuel inflation and increase inequalities between households benefiting from remittances and those that do not.

At the micro level, impact of remittance occur through several aspects such as easing deprivation in meeting basic needs of households, increasing their ability to cope with adverse shocks, allowing them to purchase land and other productive assets, releasing them from indebtedness, promoting small scale enterprise development, and increasing investment in education and health. However, at the household level, there may be some negative social impacts such as family disruption.

Migration has both negative and positive impacts on the labour market in a country, such as its impact on the labour force, employment level, unemployment level and wage rates. Foreign employment can reduce unem¬ployment in the home country, while helping to fill a possible labour shortage in the destination country. However, in some cases, foreign employment creates labour shortages in some sectors in the home country.

Benefits of mainstreaming migration into development

Mainstreaming migration into development (M&D) planning may be defined as the process of assessing the implications of migration on any action (or goals) planned in a devel¬opment and poverty reduction strategy (Global Migration Group, 2010). This means mainstreaming M&D concerns into legislation, policies and programmes at all levels (local, national and, if appli-cable, regional). It also means integrating M&D concerns at all stages of development planning, including design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation. Mainstreaming migration into development is important as it affects all aspects of human development including human rights. Further, the process of mainstreaming migration allows migration to be embedded in the broader development strategy, rather than piecemeal actions. It tends to enhance coordination among all the stakeholders who are engaged in migration related issues. It also helps to identify the gaps in existing legislative and policy frameworks.

If migration is mainstreamed into development agendas of the country, it will facilitate funding and technical assistance for migration related activities through mobilisation of resources from international partners for development plans.

Does it add value to national policies?

Given the above advantages of mainstreaming migration into development agendas, it is important to examine further whether it is a worthwhile exercise, as the situation among various countries are different. Global Migration Group (2010) raised some basic questions to understand whether mainstreaming migration into development tools is an important task. Policy makers should decide whether migration should be mainstreamed into the development agenda after a situation assessment based on the following questions:

• Is migration a prominent issue in public or political debates? Is there a sense that the country would benefit from addressing it more effectively?
• Are there sizeable financial transfers or remittances from migrants? Do these represent an important share of GDP?
• Does the country have large stocks of migrants? Do those stocks comprise both men and women or are they dominated by one sex? This could in¬clude immigrants, transit migrants or emigrants (diaspora) currently living abroad. Are only a relatively small proportion of the population af¬fected, directly and indirectly, by migration? What have recent patterns of migration been? Is mi¬gration common? Do migration patterns appear to be changing?
• What sorts of experiences are migrants having? Are migrants’ human rights being respected? Does the migration experience affect men and women in the same way?
• Are there any possible effects, positive or nega¬tive, of these migration trends, e.g., problems for sectors that use skilled labour (because of ‘brain drain’), social/community level changes or ten¬sions, changes in tax revenue, demands on public services?
• Is there political will/interest in harnessing migra¬tion for development?

Concluding remarks

Despite its potential advantages, migration has not been featured in development planning tools in most of the countries. Policy measures linking migra¬tion with development tend more towards law enforcement activities (curbing irregular migration and trafficking and strengthening immigration and customs services) rather than harnessing its beneficial effects such as remit¬tances (Global Migration Group, 2010).

Policy measures should enhance the development outcomes in a wider sense, including its social and cultural dimensions. Penetration into new geographical and skills markets, capacity development of potential migrant workers, and strengthening coordination among different stakeholders are some of possibilities for enhancing development impacts of migration.

There are number of reasons why migration has not featured in development plans. These include lack of migration related data, lack of capacity and financial resources to address the linkages between migration and development. Another reason for migration not being featured in development agendas is that migration is fragmented among different government agencies. As a result, migration is a complex, cross cutting issue which makes it difficult to formulate a coherent and common position and it becomes a political challenge to bring all stakeholders together who have different interests.

On the other hand, the political focus has been mainly on the management aspect of migration rather than on the development aspect of migration. Not only sending countries but also labour receiving countries should be involved in the process of mainstreaming its different aspects. However, lack of coordination between countries of origin and destination countries is a barrier for this process.

(The writer is Research Officer, Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka.)