Migration and Development

Migration and Development

People have always migrated to improve their lives. Today, movements from developing countries to other parts of the world are of intense interest to many policymakers. While most of the rich world migration debate focuses on how migrants affect the places they arrive in, CGD conducts rigorous, independent research to examine the effects on migrants and their places of origin. CGD research fellow Michael Clemens leads this research.

These sending-country impacts remain, for the most part, poorly understood. CGD works to address this problem in part by collecting and sharing important new datasets and by bringing empirical results to a debate that has too often been conducted in an evidence-free zone. We then use these findings to identify ways that rich-world immigration policy could be made more development-friendly.

The CGD Commission on Migration Data

We are also working to increase the availability of high quality data. In 2009 our Commission on Migration Data for Development Research (www.migrationdata.org) will issue recommendations on specific steps that countries and relevant international organizations can take to gather and share migration data in order to give researchers and policymakers a much clearer picture of who is moving where.

Key Questions about Migration and Development

Much of the quantitative research that has been conducted in the past touches on certain aspects of the sending-country impacts, especially workers' international remittances and their transactions costs. But the bulk of development impact lies elsewhere, and remains poorly understood. Open questions include:

• How can creative immigration policies reconcile the vast and mounting pressure for greater labor mobility with the strong objections voiced in many rich countries?
• How should systems of higher education in sending and receiving countries change to suit a world in which professionals are increasingly mobile?
• How can rich-country policy encourage the formation of commercial and intellectual links between low-income country emigrants and their places of origin?

Preliminary Answers

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.

We aim to continually extend and refine our understanding of this critical topic 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.