Reflections on the UNU-WIDER development conference in Accra, Ghana, October 2017

by Eva-Maria Egger

Last week around 200 migration researchers and representatives of donor agencies and international organisations discussed how research and policy will shape migration over the next decades. The gathering was organised by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) in partnership with the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) and held in the University of Ghana at Legon, Accra.

 

The Vice President of Ghana, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, welcomed the participants in person emphasising the relevance of migration research for policy makers in developing countries as well as richer economies. How challenging it can be to make migration policies was documented in the keynote speech by Ingrid Palmary from the African Centre for Migration Studies (ACMS), a Migrating out of Poverty partner. She presented the results of Migrating out of Poverty research in Bangladesh, Singapore and South Africa on "How unpopular policies are made" showcasing the challenges that advocacy groups face to form successful coalitions when it comes to laws that improve immigrants' situations. Such policies often come at economic costs so they can be politically difficult to defend. The research pointed at the important interaction between local and global processes/actors and exposed the mostly passive consumption of evidence by policy makers.

Throughout the conference, the question of policy implications and challenges continued to arise. The conference addressed various aspects of migration and mobility through the lenses of economists, sociologists, historians, anthropologists, political scientists and lawyers. The topics comprised forced migration, health and education impacts of migration, social cohesion, migration governance, integration, determinants of migration, environmental causes of migration, impacts of displacement on hosting communities, and remittances. 

Migrating out of Poverty was represented not only in the keynote speech, but also in two parallel sessions. Julie Litchfield from the University of Sussex presented research on gender differences in remittance sending behaviour in Zimbabwe. The results showed that once migrant and household characteristics are controlled for, there is no gender difference in the incidence nor value of remittances sent, but women send relatively larger shares of goods. Questions were raised that could explain these differences and the author suggested to further investigate the use of remittances, for example, by looking at expenditure share of various goods. This could reveal, for example, whether women might remit goods to directly benefit a specific person in the household such as a child left behind. 

I also presented some Migrating out of Poverty research, co-authored with Julie Litchfield, which described the repeated nature of migration within rural households in Ghana and estimates the impact of sending additional migrants on household welfare. We do not find any effect of further engagement in migration on households' asset wealth. The data suggests that households with new migrants use their savings to finance migration so that they might not be able to further invest in other assets. On the other hand, migration costs for new migrants are lower than those of first-time or previous migrants. This raised the question whether households might be learning from their previous migration experience.

Both studies were well received due to their detailed description of the characteristics of migrants, their households and remittance patterns. This drew the attention to the household surveys conducted by Migrating out of Poverty in both countries reflecting an important contribution to the goal to close the migration data gap. 

Another example of policy-relevant research was the presentation by Eva Dick and Benjamin Schraven of the German Development Institute (DIE) based on a government funded research aiming to better understand migration governance in source countries. They develop a comparative framework to analyse migration governance in the ECOWAS and IGAD region that reflects on the position of migration within the institutional identity, structures specifically addressing migration, the normative reasoning behind migration governance, and finally how this is transmitted into written policies and actually implemented. The discussion revealed the lack of integration regarding mobility within these two regions and a lack of commitment to implement policies such as freedom of movement due to priority of national interest.

A special session on the root causes of migration with two presentations by the United Nations' agricultural organizations, FAO and IFAD, looked for evidence of the relationship between rural development and migration. These institutions are interested in the extent that agricultural development might encourage or deter migration from rural areas in developing countries. Migration out of rural areas is high in many of the countries that are agriculture dependent and the question arises to what extent this is part of the structural transformation process and as such could be shaped to result in inclusive economic growth or whether new patterns are emerging. These new patterns include those of the youth bulge in many African countries turning away from agriculture and seeking opportunities in cities or abroad and some destinations failing to offer these opportunities. Especially for the African region another challenge is posed by a structural transformation process with a lack of more productive jobs in the non-farm agricultural or service sector due to increased globalisation pressures.

The second keynote speech by Professor Hillel Rapoport from the Paris School of Economics summarised existing evidence on the impacts of diaspora or international migration on origin countries through economic integration (via trade, financial flows, innovation) or cultural integration (political views, cultural convergence). Evidence shows that migration increases bilateral trade as a larger diaspora reduces transaction costs and raises demand for goods from the country of origin. While there is no evidence on this, a larger diaspora could even influence trade agreements by creating the critical demand. Migration leads to an even larger increase in financial flows than goods trade, especially for high-skilled migration. Also, innovation is positively related to international migration. However, there is no evidence specifically for the innovation in the agricultural sector and whether financial flows reach this sector. Professor Rapoport concluded to "let their people come" because the evidence shows an overall positive effect of international migration for development in origin countries and even on national policies of receiving countries. These impacts are expected to be even higher for South-South migration because there transaction costs etc. are usually higher.

Finally, the conference closed with reflections on the future research and policy agenda. A major goal for research is to produce more evidence on the causes and consequences of migration that can help to inform policy makers. This implies more data collection with a focus on migration, in source regions as well as following the migrants along their way and over time. To finance such costly surveys, policy makers have to be convinced of their potential to improve our knowledge. At the same time researchers have to be more creative in exploiting existing data to produce evidence as the resource mobilisation for new data is likely to be slow and challenging. New forms of research engagement with policy organisations are evolving, such as rapid reaction research immediately when and where events occur. One example is a survey collected at the arrival of migrants across the Mediterranean Sea run by the IOM at arrival points. 

Additional topics that should gain more attention by researchers and policy makers alike were raised. Among them were those of irregular migration and drivers to participate in it despite the risks, impacts of return migration, patterns of labour demand in destination countries to create channels of legal migration, net-benefits of migration, the role of information about migration to make it safer, financial product innovation that can improve the use of remittances, as well as the impact on families left-behind and possible need for support policies in origins. 

Covering a broad spectrum of migration-related topics, this conference provided the platform to share existing knowledge and to identify remaining knowledge gaps. These need to be closed to offer policy makers better understanding of how to positively shape mobility around the world. 

All presentation slides, papers and video recordings of the conference can be found online. 

Eva-Maria Egger worked for Migrating out of Poverty while completing her PhD at the University of Sussex. The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Migrating out of Poverty, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, nor the UK’s Department for International Development.

Migrating out of Poverty at the UNU WIDER development conference

By Emmanuel Quarshie

The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) in collaboration with the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) organized a development conference on migration and mobility on 5-6 October 2017 in Accra, Ghana. The theme of the conference was ‘Migration and mobility - new frontiers for research and policy’. In this blog I will discuss some of the main themes running through the conference and the Migrating out of Poverty contributions.

The issues of migration and mobility have become very topical and find their place at the heart of high-level global economic development debates. They are a feature of the Sustainable Development Goals due to the range of opportunities and challenges they pose globally. For this reason the conference sought to bring together a variety of disciplines ‘to inform policy-relevant debate and action’.

The conference was well attended by a wide range of researchers and scholars in the fields of migration, development economics and anthropology, among others. Favourably, Migrating out of Poverty team members from the United Kingdom, South Africa and Ghana were present. His Excellency, the Vice-President of Ghana, Mahamudu Bawumia gave the opening speech after a warm welcome address by Finn Tarp, Director of UNU-WIDER, and Ernest Aryeetey, Secretary General of ARUA.

The first keynote lecture was delivered by Ingrid Palmary, professor and academic director of the African Centre for Migration & Society at Wits University, South Africa. In her lecture, ‘How unpopular policies are made’, she discussed the following six key factors impacting on policy:

• The nature of the policy being made
• Who is the policy for?
• Who are the role players?
• Which positions have been taken? i.e. Is it from the moral/ethical or legal/human-right point of view?
• Contestations over knowledge and
• The political environment.

In her conclusion, she highlighted the fact that there is the need to attend to the relationship between global and local processes in policy formulation in order to avoid political rhetoric.


Professor Mariama Awumbila and Benjamin Schraven served as conveners for the parallel session on ‘Migration within Africa: defining the governance challenge’. A series of discussions went on after the three presentations, where focus was on the challenges of regional migration, economic integration and marriage migration. Having a keen interest in the presentation on ‘Challenges to regional migration and economic integration in West Africa: the case of Ghana and Nigeria’ I asked the presenter, Stephen Adaawen, if he could clearly explain the major problem impeding the ECOWAS Free Movement Protocol implementation, and if one of the plausible reasons was the conflict that exists between country-specific policies and ECOWAS protocol? He responded that the major challenge hampering the observation of the protocol for nationals from other member states was political will.  Countries within the community of the West Africa states looked to prioritize their citizens over citizens of other ECOWAS countries. Prof Awumbila suggested to improve mobility there was a need for ECOWAS to refine and define some key policies on the acquisition of work permits, residence permits and other such permits, to take into account those nationals residing outside their state that pass the 90 days of allowed stay in the another ECOWAS country. She also added that most of these issues emanate from the paucity in data on job categorisation and a lack of universality in school certificates among member countries.

During an afternoon session which was chaired by Ingrid Palmary, Julie Litchfield presented on
‘Migrant remittances and gender in Zimbabwe’. The presentation shed more light on in-kind remittances, which she stated, are more often sent by female migrants. It was put across, that in order to clearly understand the gendered dynamics of remitting and the overarching motivation to remit, these types of remittances must be acknowledged and explored. She argued that a focus on cash remittances ignores the larger volume of remittances sent by both men and women, but particularly undervalues the contribution of women to rural and household economies and this may have implications for policy around remittances. Looking solely at monetary remittances creates an incomplete picture.  Women are as likely as men to send remittances home and there is no difference in the value of what they send.

Eva-Maria Egger presented on ‘The nature and impact of repeated migration within households in rural Ghana’. The research sought to explore whether new migrants differ from the previous migrants of the same household and how having a new migrant affects the welfare of households who had already engaged in migration. She concluded with these four points:

• There are repeated migration patterns and different motivations for migration within the same household
• ‘New’ migrants are often from the younger generation, move more for educational reasons and because of household dynamics. They pay less for their move, remit rarely and when remitting, send smaller amounts
• There was no impact of having a new migrant on the households of those left-behind who had already engaged in migration. Lower costs and the use of savings could explain this result
• More longitudinal data and more outcome measures are needed for conclusive analysis

The last session of the conference highlighted an issue that many of us are grappling with. How can research affect policy? This invited a lot of views which highlighted the gap between research and policy; the role of politics in the implementation of key policies; the lack of proper liaison between researchers and policy makers; and the conflicting interests among these various actors. All places where more research can and should be done.

Emmanuel Quarshie is the Communications and Research Uptake officer for Migrating out of Poverty at the Centre for Migration Studies in Ghana

UN draft Declaration on migration: A focus on internal migration and the generation and use of evidence are sadly lacking

By L Alan Winters

On the 19^th September, the UN will hold a High Level Meeting of the General Assembly on addressing large movements of refugees and migrants. It will be informed by a draft Declaration of fairly broad principles accompanied by two Annexes making somewhat more concrete commitments.

The Declaration makes twelve references to ‘sustainable development’ and is heavily oriented towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The high principles of the 2030 Agenda led to concrete promises only in terms of achieving ‘orderly’ migration and the minor issue of remittance costs. The Declaration takes a more balanced approach to migration, by recognising more frankly the developmental benefits that it brings. However, the Declaration’s principal route to ‘balance’ is to mention almost any idea that exists which pertains to migration. Given such comprehensiveness, it is perhaps surprising that I was mainly struck by two omissions – one conscious, but nonetheless regrettable, and the other (I hope) by over-sight. 

Internal migration

The Declaration states that there were 244 million international migrants in 2015. But we know that there were also probably about 760 million internal migrants. The causes and consequences of internal migration are pretty similar to those of international migration, except that in most countries there is no formal legal barrier equivalent to immigration policies a country’s border. People move to try to raise their standards of life in economic or social terms. Because the physical and cultural distances between origin and destination are usually smaller for internal migration, it is cheaper and thus more open to poorer people. So, internal migration is more likely to help overcome poverty than international migration because most international migrants tend not to be poor in the first place.

The lower cost of internal than international migration also means that people will move for smaller rewards and/or with less concern for the risks - internal migration involves taking a smaller bet. As a result it is not surprising to see that some internal migrants fail to realise the gains they hoped for and face challenges finding decent housing and secure employment. This is no reason to discourage migration, however; rather it calls for policies to ease migrants’ transitions by countering discrimination, making public services accessible even to newcomers, and ensuring that potential migrants have access to better information.

Where is the evidence base?

The unconscious omission is to evidence, research or analysis; none of these words occurs at all in the Declaration or its Annexes! There is a hint (in Annex II para. 4.3) of ‘technical expertise’ being provided by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and reference to a role for civil society, but these are not commitments to evidence-informed policy and practice per se.

Given our profound ignorance of the process and parameters of migration this omission is rather disturbing. The shopping list approach of the Declaration, which lists nearly all possible migration-relevant approaches and activities, means that there is a desperate need to characterise the necessary trade-offs and priorities in deciding what sub-set of them to actually undertake.

In the Migrating Out of Poverty Consortium we have studied the process of making or changing policy in the super-sensitive field of migration. We find that, while politicians often rely more on narratives and myths than on hard analysis (for more on this see our work in Singapore and Bangladesh). Handled sensibly evidence can make an important, if not dominant, contribution to good policy outcomes. Moreover, in one case soon to be published on our website – South Africa’s Trafficking in Persons Act 2013 – the politicians themselves felt the absence of data and analysis acutely.

For sure, we need to act now on migration and to make policy with the best information we have now, but that does not excuse failing to seek more and better evidence in future. Thus in its debate I urge the General Assembly to make a special reference to undertaking research and policy analysis in migration on a deep and wide scale, not to see it as a mere technical afterthought to be managed by its latest recruit to the UN family (the IOM).

Reflections on the Gendered Dimensions of Migration: Material and Social Outcomes of South-South Migration Conference

By Alex Ma

Held in conjunction with the Migrating out of Poverty (MOOP) consortium in July 2015, academics and researchers crammed into ARI’s seminar rooms for the exciting three-day conference Gendered Dimensions of Migration: Material and Social Outcomes of South-South Migration, that drew international attendance from MOOP partners and beyond. With over 20 presentations by academics from the UK, Singapore, South Africa, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Hong Kong, India, Ghana, Kenya, and Australia, the conference proved fruitful in bringing together ideas from diverse, interdisciplinary projects that allowed for peer review, networking, and reflections on the latest work being conducted in the field of migration.

In general, presentations were listed under four main themes: Labour and Mobility Regimes; Images of Gender, Migration, and Development; Gender Dynamics in the Labour Market; and Expectations and Moralities Surrounding Remittances. Though the conference was pitched mainly at an academic crowd, the Gender Dynamics and Remittances themes were also elaborated upon during two policy roundtable sessions attended by representatives from the World Bank, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the Asia Development Bank (ADB), and others.

A complaint that was echoed by attendees was the lack of communication and uptake of research findings by policymakers as well as the lack of policymaker attendance to such conferences. The roundtable provided an invaluable interface between the research being carried out and how findings may be put into practice.

The tone of the conference was set by Trond Waage of the University of Tromsø, Norway on the first day during his keynote speech. Presenting his film, ‘Les Mairuuwas’, Trond’s visual ethnography detailed the tumultuous lives of Central African Republic (CAR) refugees trying to forge a life for themselves as water transporters in Ngaoundéré, Cameroon. Though their journeys were often underwritten by struggle and hardship, their migratory journeys were also punctuated by a sense of solidarity and camaraderie.

In many ways Trond’s film echoed the theme of the second keynote speech by Deidre McKay of Keele University, UK. Deidre’s multi-sited, ethnographic work detailing the lives of Filipino domestic workers shared the common theme of aspiration. Though the migrants in the two cases presented are divided by different roots and backstories, they share a common desire for ‘progress’ and a better future. McKay revealed the extent of the role of migration in the development of whole towns and villages. From vanity building projects symbolic of migrant success to the more mundane balikbayan box of gifts and everyday goods sent from overseas migrants, her presentation showed how migration is a profoundly human phenomenon.

An interesting theme that emerged from the policy roundtable discussion was the recurring issue of migration cost. Dilip Ratha of the World Bank spoke about his ‘$100 billion idea’: to eradicate, or dramatically reduce, the cost for workers to migrate. This chimes well with findings within the MOOP consortium that unskilled labourers often finance their migration through debt, which exposes them to a greater potential for exploitation. This resonated with Katharine Jones’ (Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University, UK) mapping of the sprawling networks of profit-making stakeholders in the migration process. Dilip elaborated how migration could contribute to economic development and how its potential could be unlocked by lowering the barriers to entry into international labour markets.

The conference greatly benefitted from the interdisciplinary nature of the papers as well as the accessible way in which they were presented. With inputs from across the social sciences, the conference proved to be an engaging, challenging, and valuable platform through which migration – one of the most powerful forces of contemporary social change – was discussed and understood.

Alex Ma is the 2015 Migrating out of Poverty funded intern at the Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore. To view the storify summary of the conference please visit:  https://storify.com/MigrationRPC/gendered-dimensions-of-migration-material-and-soci

The migration researcher: Who's doing the talking?

by Paul Clewett

 

December 18^th marks the true Christmas of the migration world, as disciples of all things-migration meet and tweet their way through a copious amount of reflection on the developments of the last year. They will have talked about a global protection system in crisis and rising anti-immigration sentiment in the West; burgeoning South-South migration and global development; labour rights and the World Cup…  Yet they will not, I surmise, have talked much about themselves: a sprawling network of migration geeks united by a common obsession with understanding why people move.

So I’ve decided to make some sweeping statements about the characteristics of those who inhabit the field in a bid to provoke some group reflection on what it means to be a researcher of migration. I do so with the aim of shining a light where light is not usually shone, but without any kind of moralising agenda. We all know self-reflection is important in research, but what does this look like collectively? Who are the migration geeks of this world and why should we care?

Migration researchers are mostly women. This is in many ways refreshing as it bucks the general trend in European research which sees women underrepresented in almost every subject area. Yet one has to wonder where all the men are at. I’ve started calculating the gender balance at conferences in Brussels and, with the caveat that expert panels tend to reflect the dominance of men in senior policymaking positions, audiences are always clearly weighted towards women. I’ve found a similar imbalance in studies and at work, where far more often than not I’m the only man in the room. My unscientific hunches lead me down the dangerous path of conjecture: are there more women in migration studies because of this long-standing habit we have of portraying migrants as victims in need of (feminine) care? And are the men in migration largely confined to economics departments because policymakers, despite all the progress in the social sciences, still favour overtly economically rational (and masculine) approaches to understanding the world? Priya Deshingkar’s recent post brilliantly underscores the importance of taking a gendered approach in understanding the close relationship between social mobility and human mobility.  Maybe we should also be extending the approach to research and policy itself, where gender divisions between disciplines are part of wider gendered structures that affect the quality of our migration policy.

Migration researchers are often closet activists, supressing the urge to shout aloud about how ridiculous the stance on migration is in the north. I’ve heard more than one person express feelings of restlessness whilst in the thick of a major piece of research or trying to produce a piece of ‘dispassionate’ policy analysis against the grain of a growing internal rage at the injustices meted out by sovereign states and borders. We know that evidence is crucial to better, fairer policy, but sometimes the desk-based approach to changing the world just doesn’t feel like it can ever faithfully reflect the urgency for change.

Migration researchers often feel guilty about deriving pleasure from their work. Stephen Hopgood’s thoroughly engaging ethnography on Amnesty International - Keepers of the Flame – (which I read as part of a reading group organised by the Religion Cluster at the Asia Research Institute), dealt with the conflation by Amnesty staff of hard work and personal suffering, i.e. if you’re not in great pain and anguish yourself, then you are not doing justice to the topic.  Hopgood paints a picture of research staff who could not be satisfied with work that did not take them to the same dark places inhabited by the victims of grave human rights abuses they support. Most migration researchers perhaps aren’t at that extreme, but I think there is a fairly constant sense that enjoying what you are doing can somehow invalidate it. For instance, a friend of mine told me of his guilt that his PhD research proposal doubled-up as the perfect strategy for making his long distance relationship work. But his supervisor told him he was being ridiculous, he produced an excellent thesis, his subsequent work is original and well-respected, and the relationship is (so far) happily ever after.

Those studying mobility are hyper mobile and often migrants themselves. It stands to reason that we study those things that reflect our personal experiences and interests, but do we think enough about what this means for the subject we’re studying and the agenda we bring to our work as a consequence? Of course, many of us regularly write up reflexive pieces to accompany our work, but there’s more to this: I find, for instance, that my increasing mobility as I entered adulthood and started doing things of my own accord made me feel strangely detached from the places to which I was supposed to belong; the increasing ease and need for international travel made distance and difference less consequential. This has to matter for studying migration. Our place in the world and our understanding of what that means has to be especially important for those responsible for generating knowledge about other peoples’ place in the world. It’s not the most straight-forward conversation to have, but maybe one worth taking up.

Migration is both the Holy Grail and the poisoned chalice of contemporary global challenges, simultaneously propping up our economies whilst undermining the sacred principle of national sovereignty. Given the amount of energy expended year round through conferences and seminars trying to make sense of all of this – and the emotion that pulsates through the debate in constant duel with evidence – International Migrants Day offers a great opportunity to step back and take a minute to consider who is actually doing the talking.

 

Paul Clewett was the  Asia Research Institute's 2014 Migrating out of Poverty Research and Communications Intern at the National University of Singapore. He is currently Program Assistant at  MPI-Europe, the Migration Policy Institute's Brussels office. He writes in a personal capacity.