Migration and Development

Rich countries’ decisions to admit or block the entry of workers from poor countries have a substantial impact on potential migrants and their homelands. While most of the rich world migration debate focuses on the impact of migrants on receiving countries, CGD’s Migration and Development initiative examines effects on migrants and their countries of origin. We aim to put migration at the center of the development policy agenda, and to bring solid evidence about the development impact of labor mobility to the rich-world migration policy debate. CGD’s Migration and Development initiative, led by research fellow Michael Clemens (see also video below) examines effects on migrants and their countries of origin.

These effects of migration on migrant-sending countries can be extraordinarily complex and vary greatly across industries, countries, and time. Conditions within the sending countries themselves play a central role. To what extent, for example, does the sending country’s investment climate encourage migrants to return home and open businesses? But rich countries’ migration policies also have important impacts on economic development in low-income regions, starting with how many and what types of workers are admitted, and under what conditions.

Too many anecdotes, not enough evidence

CGD’s work on migration and development seeks to evaluate the impact of these and other rich country policies through rigorous, independent research, and then to use the findings to identify ways that rich-world immigration policy could be made more development-friendly.

Unfortunately, policy debate in this area often rests on anecdotes and plausible intuition, due to strong political passions and a general lack of objective data on worker flows and their consequences. CGD’s research aims to address this problem in part by collecting and sharing important new datasets, bringing empirical results to a debate that has too often been conducted in an evidence-free zone. A sound, fact-based understanding of the developing-country consequences of migration is the crucial missing ingredient in both the migration debate and the development debate.

Key questions that focus our work

Much of the quantitative research that has been conducted touches on certain aspects of the impact, especially workers’ international remittances and their transactions costs. But the bulk of sending-country impact lies elsewhere, and remains poorly understood.

• How can creative immigration policies reconcile the irresistible forces of pressure for greater labor mobility with the strong objections voiced in many rich countries?
• Should rich country governments that welcome highly trained individuals compensate the poor countries that helped to educate them?
• How can rich-country policy encourage the formation of commercial and intellectual links between low-income country emigrants and their places of origin?

CGD research has begun to provide initial answers to these questions. Lant Pritchett, in Let Their People Come, suggests concrete ways that a more development-friendly migration policy can be politically feasible. Devesh Kapur and John McHale gather all the evidence on development impacts of skilled-worker migration and place it within a clear framework in Give Us Your Best and Brightest. And CGD is convening an international commission of experts on migration data to recommend clear steps the international community can take in the short-run and long-run to give researchers a better idea of who is moving where.

The Migration and Development initiative is continually extending and refining its efforts through rigorous research conducted in cooperation with some of the world’s top migration scholars. We believe that good research begets good ideas, and good ideas can deliver a win-win-win proposition: for migrants, for receiving countries, and for sending countries.