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1. Expanding Legal Migration Pathways from Nigeria to Europe: From Brain Drain to Brain Gain

Author:
Samik Adhikari, Michael Clemens, Helen Dempster, and Nkechi Linda Ekeator
Publication Date:
07-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The youth population within Nigeria is rapidly increasing, but despite their high levels of education and skills, many are struggling to find meaningful work opportunities at home. At the same time, Europe’s working-age population is declining, resulting in employers in these countries facing large and persistent skill shortages within a range of mid-skill professions. Despite the large benefits that facilitating migration between Nigeria and Europe could bring, and despite the overtures of both European governments and the European Union, few mutually beneficial migration partnerships exist. This report, a joint production between the World Bank and the Center for Global Development (CGD), outlines how the Global Skill Partnership model could be used to meet needs on both sides. It explores the growing youth unemployment rate in Nigeria, the increasing emigration pressure, and the structures that have been set up to manage this movement. It also explores the large skill shortages persistent within Europe, its migration management relationship with Africa, and the potential positive impacts of opening new legal migration pathways. It creates a framework with which to explore potential sectors and partner countries for the implementation of the Global Skill Partnership model, providing practical steps that governments can follow. And finally, it applies this framework to three sectors and partner countries: a health care partnership between Nigeria and the UK, a construction partnership between Nigeria and Germany, and an information and communications technology (ICT) partnership with various European states.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Labor Issues, Intellectual History, Immigration Policy, and Migrants
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, and Nigeria

2. 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

3. 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

4. Promoting New Kinds of Legal Labour Migration Pathways Between Europe and Africa

Author:
Michael Clemens, Helen Dempster, and Kate Gough
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
As Europe’s working-age population continues to decline, sub-Saharan Africa’s is rapidly increasing. Many of these new labour market entrants will seek opportunities in Europe, plugging skill gaps and contributing to economies in their countries of destination. To make the most of these movements, the new European Commission should create and promote new kinds of legal labour migration pathways with more tangible benefits to countries of origin and destination; pilot and scale Global Skill Partnership projects between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa and within Africa; and be a positive voice for migration within Europe, promoting the benefits from migration and ensuring they are understood.
Topic:
Migration, Labor Issues, Legal Theory, Borders, and Labor Market
Political Geography:
Africa and Europe

5. Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican Bracero Exclusion

Author:
Michael Clemens, Ethan Lewis, and Hannah Postel
Publication Date:
03-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
An important class of active labor market policy has received little rigorous impact evaluation: immigration barriers intended to improve the terms of employment for domestic workers by deliberately shrinking the workforce. Recent advances in the theory of endogenous technical change suggest that such policies could have limited or even perverse labor market effects, but empirical tests are scarce. We study a natural experiment that excluded almost half a million Mexican ‘bracero’ seasonal agricultural workers from the United States, with the stated goal of raising wages and employment for domestic farm workers. We build a simple model to clarify how the labor market effects of bracero exclusion depend on assumptions about production technology, and test it by collecting novel archival data on the bracero program that allow us to measure state-level exposure to exclusion for the first time. We reject the wage effect of bracero exclusion required by the model in the absence of induced technical change, and fail to reject the hypothesis that exclusion had no eect on US agricultural wages or employment. Important mechanisms for this result include both adoption of less labor-intensive technologies and shifts in crop mix.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Immigration, and Financial Markets
Political Geography:
Mexico

6. Bounding the Price Equivalent of Migration Barriers

Author:
Michael Clemens, Claudio E. Montenegro, and Lant Pritchett
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
Large international differences in the price of labor can be sustained by differences between workers, or by natural and policy barriers to worker mobility. We use migrant selection theory and evidence to place lower bounds on the ad valorem equivalent of labor mobility barriers to the United States, with unique nationally-representative microdata on both U.S. immigrant workers and workers in their 42 home countries. The average price equivalent of migration barriers in this setting, for low-skill males, is greater than $13,700 per worker per year. Natural and policy barriers may each create annual global losses of trillions of dollars.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Immigration, Economy, and Borders
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

7. The New Economic Case for Migration Restrictions

Author:
Michael Clemens and Lant Pritchett
Publication Date:
02-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
For decades, migration economics has stressed the effects of migration restrictions on income distribution in the host country. Recently the literature has taken a new direction by estimating the costs of migration restrictions to global economic efficiency. In contrast, a new strand of research posits that migration restrictions could be not only desirably redistributive, but in fact globally efficient. This is the new economic case for migration restrictions. The case rests on the possibility that without tight restrictions on migration, migrants from poor countries could transmit low productivity ("A" or Total Factor Productivity) to rich countries—offsetting efficiency gains from the spatial reallocation of labor from low to high-productivity places. We provide a novel assessment, proposing a simple model of dynamically efficient migration under productivity transmission and calibrating it with new macro and micro data. In this model, the case for efficiency-enhancing migration barriers rests on three parameters: transmission, the degree to which origin-country total factor productivity is embodied in migrants; assimilation, the degree to which migrants’ productivity determinants become like natives’ over time in the host country; and congestion, the degree to which transmission and assimilation change at higher migrant stocks. On current evidence about the magnitudes of these parameters, dynamically efficient policy would not imply open borders but would imply relaxations on current restrictions. That is, the new efficiency case for some migration restrictions is empirically a case against the stringency of current restrictions.
Topic:
Economics, Migration, Labor Issues, and Economy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

8. Shared Border, Shared Future: A Blueprint to Regulate US-Mexico Labor Mobility

Author:
Carlos Gutierrez, Ernesto Zedillo, and Michael Clemens
Publication Date:
09-2016
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Mexico and the United States have lacked a bilateral agreement to regulate cross-border labor mobility since 1965. Since that time, unlawful migration from Mexico to the US has exploded. Almost half of the 11.7 million Mexican-born individuals living in the U.S. do not have legal authorization. This vast black market in labor has harmed both countries. These two neighboring countries, with an indisputably shared destiny, can come together to work out a better way. The time has come for a lasting, innovative, and cooperative solution. To address this challenge, the Center for Global Development assembled a group of leaders from both countries and with diverse political affiliations—from backgrounds in national security, labor unions, law, economics, business, and diplomacy—to recommend how to move forward. The result is a new blueprint for a bilateral agreement that is designed to end unlawful migration, promote the interests of U.S. and Mexican workers, and uphold the rule of law.
Topic:
International Political Economy, International Affairs, Labor Issues, and Border Control
Political Geography:
America and Mexico

9. Migration as a Strategy for Household Finance: A Research Agenda on Remittances, Payments, and Development

Author:
Michael Clemens and Timothy N. Ogden
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
It is time to fundamentally reframe the research agenda on remittances, payments, and development. We describe many of the research questions that now dominate the literature and why they lead us to uninformative answers. We propose reasons why these questions dominate, the most important of which is that researchers tend to view remittances as states do (as windfall income) rather than as families do (as returns on investment). Migration is, among other things, a strategy for financial management in poor households: location is an asset, migration an investment. This shift of perspective leads to much more fruitful research questions that have been relatively neglected. We suggest 12 such questions.
Topic:
Economics, Migration, Political Economy, Poverty, Labor Issues, and Immigration

10. A Labor Mobility Agenda for Development

Author:
Michael Clemens
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Rich countries have made efforts for half a century to help people in poor countries catch up to rich-country standards of living. Those efforts have included giving foreign aid, encouraging overseas investment, dismantling trade barriers, and spreading ideas and institutions. That is, their international development policy has been to encourage the globalization of almost all factors of production—except labor. So far, this policy has failed to cause the living standards of most people in most developing countries to converge with living standards in rich countries. But the globalization of labor—greater mobility for workers across borders—quickly and massively raises migrants' living standards toward those of rich countries. This paper argues that every rich country should consider its immigration policy to be part of its international development policy, and vice versa. A development policy that includes migration will be more effective; an immigration policy that includes development will better serve rich countries' ideals and interests. The paper also gives a non-technical review of new research on several common objections to unifying development policy and migration policy. One concrete way forward is for rich countries to greatly open up legal pathways for temporary labor movement.
Topic:
Globalization, Foreign Aid, and Labor Issues

11. The Roots of Global Wage Gaps: Evidence from Randomized Processing of U.S. Visas

Author:
Michael Clemens
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
This study uses a unique natural experiment to test a simple model of international differences in workers' wages and productivity. Large differences in wages across countries could arise from several sources. These include barriers to trade in outputs, differences in technology, differences in workers, or differences in the other factors of production accessible in different countries. To measure the relative importance of these sources in one setting, this study exploits the randomized processing of U.S. visas for a group of Indian workers who produce software within a single multinational firm. In this setting, international barriers to trade in outputs, barriers to technology transfer, and all observable or unobservable differences between workers are extremely low. The results indicate that location outside of India causes a sixfold increase in the wages of the same worker using the same technology to produce a highly tradable good. Under plausible assumptions about competition in the industry, this suggests that country-of-work by itself is responsible—in this industry—for roughly three-quarters of the gap in productivity between workers in India and workers in the richest countries. These findings have implications for open questions in labor, growth, international, and development economics.
Topic:
Economics and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
United States and India

12. Skill Flow: A Fundamental Reconsideration of Skilled-Worker Mobility and Development

Author:
Michael Clemens
Publication Date:
08-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Large numbers of doctors, engineers, and other skilled workers from developing countries choose to move to other countries. Do their choices threaten development? The answer appears so obvious that their movement is most commonly known by the pejorative term “brain drain.” This paper reconsiders the question, starting from the most mainstream, explicit definitions of “development.” Under these definitions, it is only possible to advance development by regulating skilled workers' choices if that regulation greatly expands the substantive freedoms of others to meet their basic needs and live the lives they wish. Much existing evidence and some new evidence suggests that regulating skilled-worker mobility itself does little to address the underlying causes of skilled migrants' choices, generally brings few benefits to others, and often brings diverse unintended harm. The paper concludes with examples of effective ways that developing countries can build a skill base for development without regulating human movement. The mental shift required to take these policies seriously would be aided by dropping the sententious term “brain drain” in favor of the neutral, accurate, and concise term “skill flow.”
Topic:
Development, Migration, Labor Issues, and Brain Drain