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2. Do Cash Transfers Deter Migration?
- Author:
- Michael A. Clemens
- Publication Date:
- 10-2022
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Conditional Cash Transfers are increasingly used by development aid agencies to reduce the incentives for migration from low-income countries. The evidence to date suggests that such transfers typically increase the rate of migration when they are conditional on investment, such as investment in education. They do this primarily by facilitating acquisition of human capital and by lowering capital constraints—increasing both migration aspirations and the means to achieve them. But with certain design features, particular transfer programs have reduced the incentive to migrate. Broadly speaking, migration can be deterred by transfer programs that are conditional on presence in the origin country—provided that the condition is strict, targeted, and lengthy.
- Topic:
- Economics, Migration, Finance, and Investment
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
3. Why and How Development Agencies Facilitate Labor Migration
- Author:
- Helen Dempster and Beza Tesfaye
- Publication Date:
- 08-2022
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Development agencies in high-income countries spend a large amount of both official development assistance (ODA) and other forms of financing on migration programming. While most of this spending is aimed at deterring migration, increasingly more is being focused on facilitating migration: to the high-income country itself; within and between low- and middle-income countries; and supporting people on the move and the diaspora. This paper, written by the Center for Global Development and Mercy Corps, aims to explore why and how development agencies in high-income countries facilitate labor, or economic, migration, and how they have been able to justify and expand their mandate in this area. Based on interviews with nine development agencies, we find that development agencies use a range of arguments to justify their work in this area, including supporting economic development and poverty reduction in partner countries while also meeting labor market demands at home or other countries. Yet expanding a mandate in this area requires substantial cross-government coordination and political buy-in, both of which are difficult to achieve. It also requires the ability to be able to use ODA to facilitate labor migration, which is currently up for debate. As development agencies seek to expand their work on labor migration, it will be necessary to define shared goals and start with pilot projects that focus on low-hanging fruit, while maintaining a focus on development and poverty reduction.
- Topic:
- Development, Migration, Diaspora, and Labor Issues
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
4. COVID-19, Long-Term Care, and Migration in Asia
- Author:
- Azusa Sato and Helen Dempster
- Publication Date:
- 05-2022
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Countries throughout Asia are experiencing rapidly aging populations and increasing life expectancy, leading to a large and growing demand for long-term care (LTC) services. Despite the shift to providing care within communities and at home, governments are struggling to provide enough LTC to meet demand. A large part of the constraint is the lack of available workers. While many countries in the region have migration schemes to bring in LTC workers, they are insufficient. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has had an outsized impact on older people throughout the region, and has exposed deficiencies in the structure of migrant care labor. This report explores the impact of these three dynamics—LTC, migration, and COVID-19—on the current and future LTC workforce in the Asian region. It showcases 11 countries of origin and destination, including the demand for and supply of LTC, how it is financed and resourced, and where and how migrant workers are sourced. It puts forward recommendations for how governments throughout Asia can ethically and sustainably increase LTC worker migration; improve wages, working conditions, and recruitment processes within the sector; and learn lessons from COVID-19.
- Topic:
- Migration, Labor Issues, Pandemic, and COVID-19
- Political Geography:
- Asia
5. Understanding the Cost-Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccination in Nigeria
- Author:
- Helen Dempster, Jennifer Dew, Samuel Huckstep, Martina Castigliono, and Cassandra Zimmer
- Publication Date:
- 04-2022
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (GCM) calls on countries of destination to both expand regular migration pathways and take steps to increase the development impact of these pathways. Migration can have a positive impact on the economic development of migrants themselves, their families, their countries of origin, and their country of destination, if aspects such as integration, remittances, and skill transfers are prioritized. This paper, produced by the Center for Global Development (CGD) and the UK office of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), outlines lessons for the UK Government to implement if they are to increase the development potential of both their existing and new immigration pathways, particularly in the agriculture, nursing, and green technology sectors
- Topic:
- Development, Migration, Immigration, and Reform
- Political Geography:
- United Kingdom and Europe
6. Facilitating Environmental Migration through Humanitarian and Labour Pathways: Recommendations for the UK Government
- Author:
- Helen Dempster, Amelia Dal Pra, and Mariam Traore Chazalnoel
- Publication Date:
- 12-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- The impact of climate change, environmental degradation, and disasters on migration and human mobility is receiving more and more attention, by policymakers, academics, and the press alike. While there are gaps in the evidence base, much suggests that the vast majority of people will seek to move internally and regionally, rather than internationally. That being said, there are good reasons as to why high-income countries may want to facilitate so-called international “environmental migration” by adapting their existing legal and policy frameworks. This paper outlines how countries such as the United States of America (US), Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and various European countries have explored, created, or adapted their legal and policy frameworks to explicitly respond to international environmental migration, and the lessons learned therein. It concludes with a series of policy recommendations for the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) as to how the UK could adapt their own legal and policy frameworks to better respond to international environmental migration.
- Topic:
- Environment, Migration, Governance, and Partisanship
- Political Geography:
- United Kingdom and Europe
7. A Pacific Skills Visa: Improving Opportunities for Skilled Migration Throughout the Pacific Region
- Publication Date:
- 10-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- The demand for skills exceeds supply, both within the Pacific Islands and the high-income countries of the Pacific Rim. Enhancing skilled migration therefore has the potential to generate large economic gains. The Global Skill Partnership is a migration model that can support such mutually beneficial mobility by moving training into the country of origin. In this paper, we outline its regional application to the Pacific. To assess the potential economic gains from such a Pacific Skills Partnership, we present new data on earnings and the cost of training in the Pacific Islands for three qualifications—accountants, computer science graduates, and chefs—and explore how such training could be financed through loan schemes. Graduates could be provided with internationally accredited qualifications and a new Pacific Skills Visa, facilitating their access to work opportunities abroad, particularly in the regions’ high-income countries. This Pacific Skills Partnership could bring large economic benefits to countries of origin, destination, and the migrants themselves.
- Topic:
- Economics, Migration, Labor Issues, and Migrant Workers
- Political Geography:
- Asia-Pacific
8. Measuring the Spatial Misallocation of Labor: The Returns to India-Gulf Guest Work in a Natural Experiment
- Author:
- Michael Clemens
- Publication Date:
- 01-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- ‘Guest workers’ earn higher wages overseas on temporary low-skill employment visas. This wage gap can be used to measure gaps in the productivity of workers due to where they are, not who they are. This paper estimates the effects of guest work on Indian applicants to a construction job in the United Arab Emirates, where an economic crisis allocated guest work opportunities as-good-as-randomly among several thousand families. Guest work raised the return to poor families' labor by a factor of four, with little evidence of systematic fraud.
- Topic:
- Migration, Labor Issues, Migrant Workers, and Guest Workers
- Political Geography:
- India and Asia
9. Maximizing the Shared Benefits of Legal Migration Pathways: Lessons from Germany’s Skills Partnerships
- Author:
- Michael Clemens, Helen Dempster, and Kate Gough
- Publication Date:
- 07-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- The world is experiencing significant demographic shifts. By 2100, Europe’s working-age population will have declined, and sub-Saharan Africa’s working-age population will have greatly increased. Many of these new labor market entrants will seek opportunities in Europe, plugging skill gaps and contributing to economies in their countries of destination. Germany is one country piloting and implementing projects that can help alleviate such demographic pressures and maximize the potential mutual benefits of legal labor migration. We discuss these projects, and highlight differences in their potential impact on development in the country of origin. We recommend that European governments build on, adapt, and pilot-test one of Germany’s approaches, also known as the Global Skill Partnership model: training potential migrants in their countries of origin before migration, along with non-migrants. Ideally, governments should pursue such pilot-tests with those countries that exhibit rising future migration pressure to Europe, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Neither the conclusion nor the results of this analysis reflect the opinion of the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) or Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).
- Topic:
- Migration, Labor Issues, Immigration, and Border Control
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Europe, Germany, and Sub-Saharan Africa
10. Losing Our Minds? New Research Directions on Skilled Migration and Development
- Author:
- Michael Clemens
- Publication Date:
- 09-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- This paper critiques the last decade of research on the effects of high-skill emigration from developing countries, and proposes six new directions for fruitful research. Design/methodology/approach: The study singles out a core assumption underlying much of the recent literature, calling it the Lump of Learning model of human capital and development, and describes five ways that research has come to challenge that assumption. It assesses the usefulness of the Lump of Learning model in the face of accumulating evidence. The axioms of the Lump of Learning model have shaped research priorities in this literature, but many of those axioms do not have a clear empirical basis. Future research proceeding from established facts would set different priorities, and would devote more attention to measuring the effects of migration on skilled-migrant households, rigorously estimating human capital externalities, gathering microdata beyond censuses, and carefully considering optimal policy—among others. The recent literature has pursued a series of extensions to the Lump of Learning model: This study urges instead discarding that model, pointing toward a new paradigm for research on skilled migration and development.
- Topic:
- Migration, Refugee Issues, and Developing World