JBNST - Vol. 229/6 - 2009

Impacts on economic development emanating from international, interregional or seasonal migration movements are discussed controversially both in the public and in the scientific community. While we expect overall global gains from increased integration of labor markets, migration produces a series of distributional effects that are not yet fully understood. Especially the topical discussion about selective migration that has been enforced by the industrialized countries’ increased application of selective standards generating a bias of immigration policies toward skilled applicants is characterized by a lack of consensus. Additionally, involuntary migration in cases of conflict and/or prosecution induces considerable humanitarian, social and economic challenges. With the emergence of the brain-drain literature in the 1960s, migration has at the latest been recognized as a critical factor for the development of economically backward countries. Whereas early contributions emphasize the negative impact of emigration of highly skilled labor on the economic growth and development of those countries (cf., e.g., Bhagwati/ Hamada 1974), more recent contributions (cf. Mountford 1997, Beine et al. 2001) take a different stance and highlight several positive effects of high-skilled emigration, such as (i) brain gain by comprehensive incentives to acquire education in emigration countries, (ii) overall brain gain in less-developed countries by brain circulation in case of re-migration, (iii) financial remittances of successful emigrants to their home countries and (iv) transfer of technology and knowledge to less-developed countries (including institutional change in financialmarkets and social security systems) especially in the case of temporary migration. As a result, new challenges arise with respect to the design of migration policies both in developed immigration countries and less-developed sending countries in order to support the development process in the poor sending countries. Challenges also arise with respect to the evolution of institutions (financial markets, education, provision of social security) in less-developed countries and their support by specific policy measures.

Most of the recent literature on the effects of the brain drain on source countries consists of theoretical papers and cross-country empirical studies. In this paper we complement the literature through three case studies on very different regional and professional contexts: the African medical brain drain, the exodus of European researchers to the United States, and the contribution of the Indian diaspora to the rise of the IT sector in India. While the three case studies concern the very upper tail of the skill and education distribution, their effects of source countries are contrasted: clearly negative in the case of the exodus of European researchers, clearly positive in the case of the Indian diaspora’s contribution to putting India on the IT global map, and mixed in the case of the medical brain drain out of Africa.

In this paper we set up a simple theoretical framework to study the possible source country effects of skilled labor emigration from developing countries. We show that for given technologies, labor market integration necessarily lowers GDP per capita in a poor source country of emigration, because it distorts the education decision of individuals. As pointed out by our analysis, a negative source country effect also materializes if all agents face identical emigration probabilities, irrespective of their education levels. This is in sharp contrast to the case of exogenous skill supply. Allowing for human capital spillovers, we further show that with social returns to schooling there may be a counteracting positive source country effect if the prospect of emigration stimulates the incentives to acquire education. Since, in general, the source country effects are not clear, we calibrate our model for four major source countries – Mexico, Turkey, Morocco, and the Philippines – and show that an increase in emigration rates beyond those observed in the year 2000 is very likely to lower GDP per capita in poor economies.

This paper examines the purpose of remittances using individual data of migrants in Germany. Particular attention is paid to migrants’ savings and transfers to family members in the home country. Our findings indicate that migrants who intend to stay in Germany only temporarily have a higher propensity to save and save larger amounts in their home country than permanent migrants. A similar picture emerges when considering migrants’ payments to family members abroad. The results of a decomposition analysis indicate that temporary and permanent migrants seem to have different preferences towards sending transfers abroad, while economic characteristics and the composition of households in home and host countries are less relevant.

The relationship between migration and development processes inmigrants’ countries of origin has been subject to extensive scrutiny in the last decade by researchers and policy-makers. Migrants’ remittances have been fore-grounded as a key aspect in this relationship and have increasingly been seen as a potential source of ‘development capital’. Yet the fact that migration and remitting are often entangled in processes of violent conflict and political upheaval is often overlooked. This paper uses the Somali case to raise a set of conceptual issues regarding the dynamics and impact of remittances in conflict-affected settings. The implications of the violent causation of migration, the on-going conditions in the country of origin, and the post-migration situation of refugees are advanced as key ways in which remittance dynamics in conflict situations may differ from those in more peaceful settings.

This article poses three questions about the recent resurgence of academic and policy interest in migration, development and diasporas. First, over many years the connection between migration and development has been of marginal interest for many of those involved in the field of development studies; in many cases, where it has been considered, migration has been seen as a symptom of a development failure and cause of further underdevelopment. What has changed to bring about the dramatic turnaround in views in the last decade? Second, governments and development organisations are increasingly focusing on the role of ‘diasporas’ in the process of development. The attempts to co-opt diasporas into existing development practice tend to assume that they share a common set of interests and aspirations with the development industry.Here, we ask who is included within these diasporas and why should they be expected to contribute to development? This leads to the third question: what is the nature of development in which we are anticipating that the migration process and diasporas should play a role? This article argues that existing models of development are inherently sedentary and struggle to incorporate migration. In the increasingly mobile world new concepts of development are required. An open and critical dialogue between diaspora members and the development industry may help to achieve this.

This article examines the driving forces of the magnitude, composition and duration of refugee movements caused by conflict and persecution. The decision to seek temporary or permanent refuge in the region of origin or in a more distant asylum destination is based on inter-temporal optimization. We find that asylum seeking in Western countries is rather a phenomenon of comparatively less persecuted people. In an attempt to reduce their respective asylum burdens, Western countries and host countries in the region of origin are likely to end up in a race to the bottom of restrictive asylum policies. Alternatively, this study shows that, under certain circumstances, proactive refugee-related aid transfers are an effective instrument to relieve Western countries from asylum pressure.