Journal ArticleDOI
International migration, remittances and development: myths and facts
TLDR
In this article, the reciprocal migration - development relationship is examined through the discussion of seven migration'myths' and the key lies in encouraging circular migration instead of uselessly and harmfully trying to stop inevitable migration, immigration policies allowing for freer circulation can, besides increasing migration control, enhance the vital contribution of migrants to the development of their home countries.Abstract:
The debate on international South-North labour migration tends to focus on the receiving end of migration. This bias obscures a proper understanding of the developmental causes and consequences of migration at the sending end. The reciprocal migration - development relationship is examined through the discussion of seven migration 'myths'. Because of its profound developmental roots, it is useless to think that migration can be halted or that aid and trade are short-cut 'solutions' to immigration. Migrant remittances contribute significantly to development and living conditions in sending countries. Nevertheless, the recent 'remittance euphoria' is not justified, because unattractive investment environments and restrictive immigration policies which interrupt circular migration patterns prevent the high development potential of migration from being fully realised. Although specific policies can enhance this potential through facilitating remittance transfers and investments, the key lies in encouraging circular migration. Instead of uselessly and harmfully trying to stop inevitable migration, immigration policies allowing for freer circulation can, besides increasing migration control, enhance the vital contribution of migrants to the development of their home countries.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Migration and Development: A Theoretical Perspective
Abstract: The debate on migration and development has swung back and forth like a pendulum, from developmentalist optimism in the 1950s and 1960s, to neo-Marxist pessimism over the 1970s and 1980s, towards more optimistic views in the 1990s and 2000s. This paper argues how such discursive shifts in the migration and development debate should be primarily seen as part of more general paradigm shifts in social and development theory. However, the classical opposition between pessimistic and optimistic views is challenged by empirical evidence pointing to the heterogeneity of migration impacts. By integrating and amending insights from the new economics of labor migration, livelihood perspectives in development studies and transnational perspectives in migration studies – which share several though as yet unobserved conceptual parallels – this paper elaborates the contours of a conceptual framework that simultaneously integrates agency and structure perspectives and is therefore able to account for the heterogeneous nature of migration-development interactions. The resulting perspective reveals the naivety of recent views celebrating migration as self-help development “from below”. These views are largely ideologically driven and shift the attention away from structural constraints and the vital role of states in shaping favorable conditions for positive development impacts of migration to occur.
Journal ArticleDOI
‘Keeping Them in Their Place’: the ambivalent relationship between development and migration in Africa
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the current initiatives to link migration and development will remain fundamentally flawed until the concept of development is reconceptualised for a mobile world and call for the reconsideration of the ideas of the good life envisaged in development initiatives, moving beyond models of development based on the nation-state and abandoning the paternalist paradigms that fail to recogni cation.
Journal ArticleDOI
Turning the tide? Why development will not stop migration.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that economic and human development increases people's capabilities and aspirations and therefore tends to coincide with an increase rather than a decrease in emigration, at least in the short to medium term.
Book
Leveraging Migration for Africa: Remittances, Skills, and Investments
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide new analyses and case studies, as well as formulating policy recommendations that can improve the migration experience for migrants, origin countries, and destination countries.
Remittances, Migration and Social Development: A Conceptual Review of Literature
TL;DR: The designations employed in UNRISD publications do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNISD concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries as discussed by the authors.
References
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Book
Development as Freedom
TL;DR: In this paper, Amartya Sen quotes the eighteenth century poet William Cowper on freedom: Freedom has a thousand charms to show, That slaves howe'er contented, never know.
Journal ArticleDOI
Theories of international migration: a review and appraisal.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a discussion of current theories that clarify basic assumptions and hypotheses of the various models of international migration, including macro theories of neoclassical economics, micro theories of macro-economic economics, new economics with examples for crop insurance markets futures markets unemployment insurance and capital markets, dual labor market theory and structural inflation motivational problems economic dualism and the demography of labor supply; and world systems theory and the impacts of land raw materials labor material links ideological links and global cities.
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The Age of Migration
Stephen Castles,Mark J. Miller +1 more
TL;DR: The third edition of the 3rd edition of as mentioned in this paper is the most comprehensive survey of international migration in the post-Cold-War era of globalization, focusing on the formation of ethnic minorities.
Book
The Migration of Labor
TL;DR: A relative deprivation approach to migration is proposed in this paper, where the economic performance of migrants and their remittances is analyzed in the context of planning with migration in a context of economic instability.
Journal ArticleDOI
Conceiving and Researching Transnationalism
TL;DR: A review of recent research across several disciplines not surprisingly finds a wide variety of descriptions surrounding meanings, processes, scales and methods concerning the notion of transnationalism as discussed by the authors, and several clusters or themes are suggested by way of disentangling the term.
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