This paper explores Migration and Development policy and co-operation between the EU, the developing world and the agencies between. It raises some very interesting ideas and concepts whose fruition we should be looking out for as we approach 2009 – and yet have hitherto been ignored. Although the content outline is essentially the same as the original lengthier piece, sentences and paragraphs have been truncated and whole explanatory paragraphs omitted for the sake of brevity (and hopefully clarity!)
-- Davis Mukasa
OPINION OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEEON ‘MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES’
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In focussing on practical examples, suggestions and potential mutually beneficial cooperation arrangements, migration can be viewed as a ‘tool for development’. By introducing specific measures, the Committee wishes to move the debate from the policy level to the programming level. It is supportive of the Commission's sentiment on ‘Circular migration and mobility partnerships between the European Union and third countries’
2. MIGRATION AND GLOBALIZATION
• The process of globalisation has led to the liberalised movement of capital, goods, and services. The movement of people, however, still remains globalisation's most restricted branch.
• In order to give less-developed economies a bigger share of the economic growth driven by globalisation, more attention should be given to the free movement of people.
• This opinion follows the school of thought that migration is a chance for developing countries to participate more equally in today's globalised economy. Migration has the potential to decrease inequality; however, migration must not be seen as a substitute for traditional development aid.
• International migration can be an important component in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Remittances as well as the concepts of co-development and circular migration have significant developmental potential. More importantly, their developmental potential is fuelled by the labour market needs of Western Europe.
• This opinion underlines the need for a well-developed, comprehensive and integrated approach to Migration and Development policies, which has the potential to create a ‘win-win’ situation.
• This approach recognises the imbalance of the positive and negative impact of migration on developing countries.
• While in some countries migration eases the pressure from over-population and unemployment, and the deliberate export of skilled labour establishes overseas sources for future remittances, foreign direct investments and knowledge transfers; for other countries the permanent outflow of human resources severely hampers development. Therefore, well managed migration enhances the positive effects of migration while at the same time mitigates its negative impact.
• The Committee supports the assessments of leading international development organisations such as the World Bank, the UK Department for International Development, Oxfam and others which all highlight the developmental potential of international migration to achieve relief from poverty and sustain economic development in source countries.
• Remittance transfers lead to significant income increases for recipient households, and are a powerful driver for short-term poverty relief and, if managed carefully, can even lead to long-term sustainable development. The latter is supported by concepts of ‘co-development’ such as Diaspora philanthropy, social remittances, knowledge transfers, and transnational business networks.
• The strength of well managed Migration and Development policies should be their ability to protect vulnerable countries, (almost all of sub-Saharan Africa), from migration inflicted development constraints.
3. MIGRATION AND (CO)-DEVELOPMENT
• Co-development describes activities by migrants that compliment, not substitute, development. One form of co-development that reaches all income levels of the recipient community are remittance-based investments in infrastructure for education and basic health services. The Committee supports the embedding of remittances in co-development.
• An exemplary initiative is the matching fund programme. Every remittance that migrants channel towards communal development purposes in their country of origin is matched by an equal amount by each of the institutional partners of the programme
• Ideally these partners are development aid organisations that bring management expertise and experienced personnel into the programme in cooperation with local government to achieve sustainability.
• These matching funds programmes should be made widely public and easily accessible through information platforms that also promote the use of official banking channels for remittances. Once successful ‘matching funds programs’ are identified, additional ‘matching’ partners from the private sector can be included. Especially companies that employ a significant portion of migrants as well as financial services providers that facilitate remittance transfers should be encouraged to participate and to exercise their share of corporate social responsibility.
• These public-private partnerships benefit all participants: the developmental impact increases because of larger collective remittances and companies and banks build trust towards their customers.
• Other forms of co-development focus on steering remittances to entrepreneurial or investment-related activities.
• Incentives that source countries can offer in order to increase overall remittance flows for co-development, range from income tax exemptions for migrants when investing in local businesses to exemptions from import duties for business investments.
4. MITIGATING THE AFFECTS OF BRAIN DRAIN, AND FACILITATING CIRCULAR AND VIRTUAL MIGRATION
• The voluntary outflow of human capital often generates economically beneficial consequences for source countries. International migration eases the pressure from over-population and unemployment for many source countries. Some countries successfully export labour deliberately in order to build overseas pools for remittances, foreign direct investments and knowledge transfers. However, the permanent outflow of human resources, especially the highly skilled and talented, hampers development in the least developed countries which possess neither the economical nor the institutional capacity to build replacements.
• The Committee therefore urges all actors to, firstly, take all necessary steps to mitigate the effects of brain drain and secondly, develop plans to prevent further depreciation of human capital in vulnerable economies and sectors. The Commission has already highlighted in its recent communication that mitigating the effects of brain drain involves concepts of circular and virtual migration. Ethical codes of conduct, higher incomes and compensation funds are ways to prevent skilled professionals from leaving. Furthermore, well-tailored outsourcing from OECD countries to developing countries can decrease the migratory pressure in these specific countries. However, similar considerations which are being discussed to prevent brain waste in developed destinations countries should be applied to workers employed in out-sourced industries in developing countries.
• Facilitating circular and virtual migration builds upon the abovementioned capacities of Diaspora groups and their ability to connect with their country of origin — the creation of brain trust. Skilled migrants who have acquired tertiary education or professional training in destination countries can be an asset to source countries if they are enabled to transfer their skills and services.
• Creating brain trust is a complementary concept to brain drain because the net-loss in source countries ideally feeds into the migration-based brain trust in destination countries. But more importantly, brain trust potentially mitigates some of the detrimental effects of brain drain in source countries. Individual migrants can offer their skills or organisational capacities to their country of origin either on a temporary basis — temporary return — or on a virtual basis by means of web-based applications and online platforms.
• Visa regimes should be tuned accordingly in order to allow for professionals to more easily ‘commute’ between host and source country. International development organisations should consider schemes for development that virtually transfer services and knowledge of highly skilled migrants, such as cardiologists in destinations countries using the internet to analyse medical records from the source country, geologists providing access to state-of-the-art laboratories in host countries, or financial analysts assessing business plans for micro finance programmes. Offering multiple-entry visas is a mechanism to facilitate circular migration.
• Another powerful incentive for return and or circular migration is the portability of pensions' benefits and social security benefits of migrants from host to source country.
• Developing countries need to be made aware of the existing possibilities of co-development and furthermore be encouraged and enabled to build network links with their Diaspora communities abroad.
5. ‘MAINSTREAMING’ MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT POLICIES, AND ENSURING COHERENCE
• The Committee acknowledges that South-South migration and regional migration is significantly greater than international migration between developing and developed countries; so more attention should therefore be devoted to regional approaches of Migration and Development - as already undertaken by the African Union.
• The Committee wishes to highlight the need to integrate ‘migration and development policies’ into the policies of host countries, source countries and international development organisations.
• The Committee notes that policy coherence is highly beneficial to the anticipated outcome of migration and development policies.
• Trade and security policies should not undermine the pro-development efforts of migration and development policies.
• Equally importantly, the Committee is urges its Member States to aim at policy coherence, by not arguing for different policies at the national and at the European Union level.
Monday 27 October 2008
How Migration and Global Development CAN work: A Summary of the EU Report
This summary article is taken from a report written by the President of the European Economic and Social Committee, Dimitris DIMITRIADIS for the Official Journal of the European Union, December 2007.
This paper explores Migration and Development policy and co-operation between the EU, the developing world and the agencies between. It raises some very interesting ideas and concepts whose fruition we should be looking out for as we approach 2009 – and yet have hitherto been ignored. Although the content outline is essentially the same as the original lengthier piece, sentences and paragraphs have been truncated and whole explanatory paragraphs omitted for the sake of brevity (and hopefully clarity!)
-- Davis Mukasa
OPINION OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEEON ‘MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES’
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In focussing on practical examples, suggestions and potential mutually beneficial cooperation arrangements, migration can be viewed as a ‘tool for development’. By introducing specific measures, the Committee wishes to move the debate from the policy level to the programming level. It is supportive of the Commission's sentiment on ‘Circular migration and mobility partnerships between the European Union and third countries’
2. MIGRATION AND GLOBALIZATION
• The process of globalisation has led to the liberalised movement of capital, goods, and services. The movement of people, however, still remains globalisation's most restricted branch.
• In order to give less-developed economies a bigger share of the economic growth driven by globalisation, more attention should be given to the free movement of people.
• This opinion follows the school of thought that migration is a chance for developing countries to participate more equally in today's globalised economy. Migration has the potential to decrease inequality; however, migration must not be seen as a substitute for traditional development aid.
• International migration can be an important component in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Remittances as well as the concepts of co-development and circular migration have significant developmental potential. More importantly, their developmental potential is fuelled by the labour market needs of Western Europe.
• This opinion underlines the need for a well-developed, comprehensive and integrated approach to Migration and Development policies, which has the potential to create a ‘win-win’ situation.
• This approach recognises the imbalance of the positive and negative impact of migration on developing countries.
• While in some countries migration eases the pressure from over-population and unemployment, and the deliberate export of skilled labour establishes overseas sources for future remittances, foreign direct investments and knowledge transfers; for other countries the permanent outflow of human resources severely hampers development. Therefore, well managed migration enhances the positive effects of migration while at the same time mitigates its negative impact.
• The Committee supports the assessments of leading international development organisations such as the World Bank, the UK Department for International Development, Oxfam and others which all highlight the developmental potential of international migration to achieve relief from poverty and sustain economic development in source countries.
• Remittance transfers lead to significant income increases for recipient households, and are a powerful driver for short-term poverty relief and, if managed carefully, can even lead to long-term sustainable development. The latter is supported by concepts of ‘co-development’ such as Diaspora philanthropy, social remittances, knowledge transfers, and transnational business networks.
• The strength of well managed Migration and Development policies should be their ability to protect vulnerable countries, (almost all of sub-Saharan Africa), from migration inflicted development constraints.
3. MIGRATION AND (CO)-DEVELOPMENT
• Co-development describes activities by migrants that compliment, not substitute, development. One form of co-development that reaches all income levels of the recipient community are remittance-based investments in infrastructure for education and basic health services. The Committee supports the embedding of remittances in co-development.
• An exemplary initiative is the matching fund programme. Every remittance that migrants channel towards communal development purposes in their country of origin is matched by an equal amount by each of the institutional partners of the programme
• Ideally these partners are development aid organisations that bring management expertise and experienced personnel into the programme in cooperation with local government to achieve sustainability.
• These matching funds programmes should be made widely public and easily accessible through information platforms that also promote the use of official banking channels for remittances. Once successful ‘matching funds programs’ are identified, additional ‘matching’ partners from the private sector can be included. Especially companies that employ a significant portion of migrants as well as financial services providers that facilitate remittance transfers should be encouraged to participate and to exercise their share of corporate social responsibility.
• These public-private partnerships benefit all participants: the developmental impact increases because of larger collective remittances and companies and banks build trust towards their customers.
• Other forms of co-development focus on steering remittances to entrepreneurial or investment-related activities.
• Incentives that source countries can offer in order to increase overall remittance flows for co-development, range from income tax exemptions for migrants when investing in local businesses to exemptions from import duties for business investments.
4. MITIGATING THE AFFECTS OF BRAIN DRAIN, AND FACILITATING CIRCULAR AND VIRTUAL MIGRATION
• The voluntary outflow of human capital often generates economically beneficial consequences for source countries. International migration eases the pressure from over-population and unemployment for many source countries. Some countries successfully export labour deliberately in order to build overseas pools for remittances, foreign direct investments and knowledge transfers. However, the permanent outflow of human resources, especially the highly skilled and talented, hampers development in the least developed countries which possess neither the economical nor the institutional capacity to build replacements.
• The Committee therefore urges all actors to, firstly, take all necessary steps to mitigate the effects of brain drain and secondly, develop plans to prevent further depreciation of human capital in vulnerable economies and sectors. The Commission has already highlighted in its recent communication that mitigating the effects of brain drain involves concepts of circular and virtual migration. Ethical codes of conduct, higher incomes and compensation funds are ways to prevent skilled professionals from leaving. Furthermore, well-tailored outsourcing from OECD countries to developing countries can decrease the migratory pressure in these specific countries. However, similar considerations which are being discussed to prevent brain waste in developed destinations countries should be applied to workers employed in out-sourced industries in developing countries.
• Facilitating circular and virtual migration builds upon the abovementioned capacities of Diaspora groups and their ability to connect with their country of origin — the creation of brain trust. Skilled migrants who have acquired tertiary education or professional training in destination countries can be an asset to source countries if they are enabled to transfer their skills and services.
• Creating brain trust is a complementary concept to brain drain because the net-loss in source countries ideally feeds into the migration-based brain trust in destination countries. But more importantly, brain trust potentially mitigates some of the detrimental effects of brain drain in source countries. Individual migrants can offer their skills or organisational capacities to their country of origin either on a temporary basis — temporary return — or on a virtual basis by means of web-based applications and online platforms.
• Visa regimes should be tuned accordingly in order to allow for professionals to more easily ‘commute’ between host and source country. International development organisations should consider schemes for development that virtually transfer services and knowledge of highly skilled migrants, such as cardiologists in destinations countries using the internet to analyse medical records from the source country, geologists providing access to state-of-the-art laboratories in host countries, or financial analysts assessing business plans for micro finance programmes. Offering multiple-entry visas is a mechanism to facilitate circular migration.
• Another powerful incentive for return and or circular migration is the portability of pensions' benefits and social security benefits of migrants from host to source country.
• Developing countries need to be made aware of the existing possibilities of co-development and furthermore be encouraged and enabled to build network links with their Diaspora communities abroad.
5. ‘MAINSTREAMING’ MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT POLICIES, AND ENSURING COHERENCE
• The Committee acknowledges that South-South migration and regional migration is significantly greater than international migration between developing and developed countries; so more attention should therefore be devoted to regional approaches of Migration and Development - as already undertaken by the African Union.
• The Committee wishes to highlight the need to integrate ‘migration and development policies’ into the policies of host countries, source countries and international development organisations.
• The Committee notes that policy coherence is highly beneficial to the anticipated outcome of migration and development policies.
• Trade and security policies should not undermine the pro-development efforts of migration and development policies.
• Equally importantly, the Committee is urges its Member States to aim at policy coherence, by not arguing for different policies at the national and at the European Union level.
This paper explores Migration and Development policy and co-operation between the EU, the developing world and the agencies between. It raises some very interesting ideas and concepts whose fruition we should be looking out for as we approach 2009 – and yet have hitherto been ignored. Although the content outline is essentially the same as the original lengthier piece, sentences and paragraphs have been truncated and whole explanatory paragraphs omitted for the sake of brevity (and hopefully clarity!)
-- Davis Mukasa
OPINION OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEEON ‘MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES’
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In focussing on practical examples, suggestions and potential mutually beneficial cooperation arrangements, migration can be viewed as a ‘tool for development’. By introducing specific measures, the Committee wishes to move the debate from the policy level to the programming level. It is supportive of the Commission's sentiment on ‘Circular migration and mobility partnerships between the European Union and third countries’
2. MIGRATION AND GLOBALIZATION
• The process of globalisation has led to the liberalised movement of capital, goods, and services. The movement of people, however, still remains globalisation's most restricted branch.
• In order to give less-developed economies a bigger share of the economic growth driven by globalisation, more attention should be given to the free movement of people.
• This opinion follows the school of thought that migration is a chance for developing countries to participate more equally in today's globalised economy. Migration has the potential to decrease inequality; however, migration must not be seen as a substitute for traditional development aid.
• International migration can be an important component in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Remittances as well as the concepts of co-development and circular migration have significant developmental potential. More importantly, their developmental potential is fuelled by the labour market needs of Western Europe.
• This opinion underlines the need for a well-developed, comprehensive and integrated approach to Migration and Development policies, which has the potential to create a ‘win-win’ situation.
• This approach recognises the imbalance of the positive and negative impact of migration on developing countries.
• While in some countries migration eases the pressure from over-population and unemployment, and the deliberate export of skilled labour establishes overseas sources for future remittances, foreign direct investments and knowledge transfers; for other countries the permanent outflow of human resources severely hampers development. Therefore, well managed migration enhances the positive effects of migration while at the same time mitigates its negative impact.
• The Committee supports the assessments of leading international development organisations such as the World Bank, the UK Department for International Development, Oxfam and others which all highlight the developmental potential of international migration to achieve relief from poverty and sustain economic development in source countries.
• Remittance transfers lead to significant income increases for recipient households, and are a powerful driver for short-term poverty relief and, if managed carefully, can even lead to long-term sustainable development. The latter is supported by concepts of ‘co-development’ such as Diaspora philanthropy, social remittances, knowledge transfers, and transnational business networks.
• The strength of well managed Migration and Development policies should be their ability to protect vulnerable countries, (almost all of sub-Saharan Africa), from migration inflicted development constraints.
3. MIGRATION AND (CO)-DEVELOPMENT
• Co-development describes activities by migrants that compliment, not substitute, development. One form of co-development that reaches all income levels of the recipient community are remittance-based investments in infrastructure for education and basic health services. The Committee supports the embedding of remittances in co-development.
• An exemplary initiative is the matching fund programme. Every remittance that migrants channel towards communal development purposes in their country of origin is matched by an equal amount by each of the institutional partners of the programme
• Ideally these partners are development aid organisations that bring management expertise and experienced personnel into the programme in cooperation with local government to achieve sustainability.
• These matching funds programmes should be made widely public and easily accessible through information platforms that also promote the use of official banking channels for remittances. Once successful ‘matching funds programs’ are identified, additional ‘matching’ partners from the private sector can be included. Especially companies that employ a significant portion of migrants as well as financial services providers that facilitate remittance transfers should be encouraged to participate and to exercise their share of corporate social responsibility.
• These public-private partnerships benefit all participants: the developmental impact increases because of larger collective remittances and companies and banks build trust towards their customers.
• Other forms of co-development focus on steering remittances to entrepreneurial or investment-related activities.
• Incentives that source countries can offer in order to increase overall remittance flows for co-development, range from income tax exemptions for migrants when investing in local businesses to exemptions from import duties for business investments.
4. MITIGATING THE AFFECTS OF BRAIN DRAIN, AND FACILITATING CIRCULAR AND VIRTUAL MIGRATION
• The voluntary outflow of human capital often generates economically beneficial consequences for source countries. International migration eases the pressure from over-population and unemployment for many source countries. Some countries successfully export labour deliberately in order to build overseas pools for remittances, foreign direct investments and knowledge transfers. However, the permanent outflow of human resources, especially the highly skilled and talented, hampers development in the least developed countries which possess neither the economical nor the institutional capacity to build replacements.
• The Committee therefore urges all actors to, firstly, take all necessary steps to mitigate the effects of brain drain and secondly, develop plans to prevent further depreciation of human capital in vulnerable economies and sectors. The Commission has already highlighted in its recent communication that mitigating the effects of brain drain involves concepts of circular and virtual migration. Ethical codes of conduct, higher incomes and compensation funds are ways to prevent skilled professionals from leaving. Furthermore, well-tailored outsourcing from OECD countries to developing countries can decrease the migratory pressure in these specific countries. However, similar considerations which are being discussed to prevent brain waste in developed destinations countries should be applied to workers employed in out-sourced industries in developing countries.
• Facilitating circular and virtual migration builds upon the abovementioned capacities of Diaspora groups and their ability to connect with their country of origin — the creation of brain trust. Skilled migrants who have acquired tertiary education or professional training in destination countries can be an asset to source countries if they are enabled to transfer their skills and services.
• Creating brain trust is a complementary concept to brain drain because the net-loss in source countries ideally feeds into the migration-based brain trust in destination countries. But more importantly, brain trust potentially mitigates some of the detrimental effects of brain drain in source countries. Individual migrants can offer their skills or organisational capacities to their country of origin either on a temporary basis — temporary return — or on a virtual basis by means of web-based applications and online platforms.
• Visa regimes should be tuned accordingly in order to allow for professionals to more easily ‘commute’ between host and source country. International development organisations should consider schemes for development that virtually transfer services and knowledge of highly skilled migrants, such as cardiologists in destinations countries using the internet to analyse medical records from the source country, geologists providing access to state-of-the-art laboratories in host countries, or financial analysts assessing business plans for micro finance programmes. Offering multiple-entry visas is a mechanism to facilitate circular migration.
• Another powerful incentive for return and or circular migration is the portability of pensions' benefits and social security benefits of migrants from host to source country.
• Developing countries need to be made aware of the existing possibilities of co-development and furthermore be encouraged and enabled to build network links with their Diaspora communities abroad.
5. ‘MAINSTREAMING’ MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT POLICIES, AND ENSURING COHERENCE
• The Committee acknowledges that South-South migration and regional migration is significantly greater than international migration between developing and developed countries; so more attention should therefore be devoted to regional approaches of Migration and Development - as already undertaken by the African Union.
• The Committee wishes to highlight the need to integrate ‘migration and development policies’ into the policies of host countries, source countries and international development organisations.
• The Committee notes that policy coherence is highly beneficial to the anticipated outcome of migration and development policies.
• Trade and security policies should not undermine the pro-development efforts of migration and development policies.
• Equally importantly, the Committee is urges its Member States to aim at policy coherence, by not arguing for different policies at the national and at the European Union level.
Income and Poverty Gap decreasing in the UK? Is the OECD sure?
An OECD report (21 October, 2008) trumpeting a fall between income inequality and poverty in the UK was greeted with ambivalence today as it went on to describe how the gap between the rich and poor is still greater in the UK than in three quarters of other OECD countries.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) delivered its report today to a somewhat unenthused media. The BBC’s news website was typical of the more cautious consensus: “Rich and poor gap 'narrows' in UK”.
Despite initial bouts of optimism surrounding the report, closer inspection offered less comfort; the report focused on the period between 2000-2005 (a period of significant global growth) - from when the pattern has ceased being ‘positive’ - and more crucially - the report comes in as the UK enters a recession of unknown magnitude, through which inequality and poverty could increase again significantly.
Despite income inequality and poverty falling somewhat since 1990 and falling faster in the United Kingdom than in any other OECD country since 2000, the current picture is bleak. The UK is still a long way behind other OECD economies, and the current torrid economic conditions could set us back decades.
A summary of OECD findings:
The Development of income poverty
• Earnings have become much more unequal in the UK: the wage gap has widened by 20% since 1985, with much of the widening occurring towards the start of this period.
• 16% of all households with a working-age head are jobless – only Belgium, Germany and Hungary have more people in households where no one has a job. But the number of children living in workless households has been falling recently.
• The number of people living alone or in single-parent households has increased more rapidly than in all other countries. The average household size in the UK declined from 2.4 to 2.1 (compared to an OECD average decline of 2.7 to 2.6) between 1985 and 2005. This has widened inequality.
• Income poverty – that is, a household with less than half the average (median) income for its country – fell from 10% to 8% between the mid-1990s and 2005. For the first time since the 1980s, the poverty level is well below the OECD average.
• The number of children living poverty fell from 14% to 10% between the mid-1990s and 2005-- the second largest fall (behind Italy) over this period. Even so, child poverty rates are still above the levels recorded in the mid-1980s (7-8%) and mid-1970s (5%).
• There is less social mobility in the UK than in Australia, Canada and Denmark. In this respect it is similar to the United States and Italy. What your parents earned when you were a child has much more effect on your own earnings than in more mobile countries.
About the OECD:
[The] OECD brings together the governments of countries committed to democracy and the market economy from around the world to:
• Support sustainable economic growth
• Boost employment
• Raise living standards
• Maintain financial stability
• Assist other countries' economic development
• Contribute to growth in world trade
OECD also shares expertise and exchanges views with more than 100 other countries and economies, from Brazil, China, and Russia to the least developed countries in Africa. (www.oecd.org)
For more Info regarding the above article, go to: www.oecd.org/els/social/inequality
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