These briefs are informal notes for Bank staff on the development implications of current migration and remittances issues. They highlight emerging trends or topical issues, and are issued every second month (or more frequently if the occasion demands). Contributions are greatly welcome.
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Briefing 6. Managing Migration: Lessons from the Philippines. This note describes how the Philippine government helps its migrants by regulating overseas employment recruitment, informing migrants of available resources abroad, providing protection, and developing recording mechanisms to understand migrants' needs. Managing migration also comes with a price and governments need to develop a coordinated strategy to sustain such endeavors.
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Briefing 5. Revisions to Remittance Trends 2007. Remittances to developing countries reached $251 billion in 2007. This brief also discusses concerns over a much-publicized decline in remittance received by Mexico in the first part of 2008, and argues that remittances may instead have grown although at a slower pace.
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Remittances Dispatch. US dollar depreciation and remittance flows to developing countries. Currency appreciation and rising costs of living have eroded the purchasing power of recipients in the major remittance-receiving countries. Preliminary estimates suggest that in the Philippines, over 90 percent of the increase in remittances between 2004 and 2007 went simply towards preserving the purchasing power of recipients, while in Mexico and India, the increase in remittances after accounting for currency appreciation and domestic inflation was less than half of the increase in US dollar terms.
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Briefing 4. International Migration and Technological Progress. International migrants are an important channel for the transmission of technology and knowledge. The so-called “brain drain” associated with better educated citizens of developing countries working in high-income countries is acute in some developing countries. Developing countries benefit, however, from the temporary migration of managers and engineers; the return of well-educated emigrants; and contact with a technologically sophisticated diaspora. Remittances sent by migrants also promote technology diffusion by making investments more affordable.
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Briefing 3. Recorded remittances to developing countries are estimated to reach $240 billion in 2007. The true size of remittances including unrecorded flows is even larger. The brief describes broad regional and country specific trends in remittance flows worldwide, and highlights some structural changes that will affect future flows.
See also Press release | Brief in French | Spanish | Arabic
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Briefing 2. Remittance flows to developing countries to approach $200 billion in 2006.
This brief provides the latest estimates of remittance flows worldwide.
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Breifing 1. U.S. immigration reform: some development implications.
United States Congress is debating the largest overhaul of US immigration law in two decades. This note discusses some of the implications for the migrants, their countries of origin, and the United States.
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