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Gender Dimensions of Migration &
Development
Understanding the Links Between
Migration & Development |
There
is much debate as to whether migration promotes development in home countries.
While cash remittances sent by diaspora populations do benefit home countries,
policymakers must recognise the social and economic costs caused by emigration
and seek to enhance the positive links where possible.
A paper from
the University of Oxford, in the UK, reviews the emigration experience of five
developing countries. India, Mexico, Morocco, the Philippines and Turkey have
all undergone a demographic transition that means they have more young people
entering the labour market than can find jobs. These countries have suffered
from uneven economic development and the impoverishment of certain groups,
leading to intense rural to urban migration and onward migration to industrial
countries. In four of the countries, the state has played an essential role in
promoting labour export.
The transfer
of labour power and skills through labour migration can be seen as a form of
development aid from developing countries to rich countries. For the
Philippines – where remittances account for 12 percent of Gross Domestic
Product – the legacy of three decades of organised labour export is the absence
of industrialisation and economic growth, in contrast to neighbouring
countries. Nowhere is the ‘deskilling’ effect of migration more pronounced than
in the case of the Mexican population in the United States – the world’s
largest diaspora.
The
emergence of emigration as a ‘rite of passage’ in such countries not only leads
to a loss of productive workers, but also to the absence of people who can be
agents of change in their home countries. The paper draws attention to the
problems caused by:
Strategies
of ‘remittance-led development’ are often naïve. Collective remittances for
community investment by hometown associations and similar groups are still very
small in comparison with private remittance flows. In some circumstances,
remittances can lead to over-consumption, inefficient types of investment and
economic dependence on continuing emigration.
Remittances
will only lead to economic growth if appropriate policies are put in place to
encourage legal transfers and productive investment, reduce inequality, tackle
corruption and unnecessary bureaucracy, and improve governance. The author
makes the following conclusions:
Source(s):
‘Comparing the Experience of Five Major Emigration Countries’, International
Migration Institute Working Paper No. 7, University of Oxford: Oxford, by
Stephen Castles, 2007 (PDF) Full
document.
‘Migration and Development: Perspectives from the South’, International
Organization for Migration: Geneva, edited by Stephen Castles and Raúl Delgado
Wise, forthcoming 2008
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