Migration has huge potential to enhance development but also poses some serious challenges in
both developing and developed countries. By allowing workers to move to where they are most
valued, migration allows an increase in aggregate world income and output. The impact of
migration on sending and receiving countries has been under-researched in the past, due mainly to data unavailability and political sensitivities. But international migration and development is now a key area for World Bank research, including work on the brain drain, temporary mobility, the links with foreign direct investment, and the role of remittances.
International migration has significant economic, social, and cultural implications in both sending and destination countries. For example, migrants’ remittances to developing countries exceeded $160 billion in 2004, far surpassing development aid and representing the largest source of foreign exchange for some countries. And this official figure is believed to capture only part of the actual funds that migrants send home.
Unlike in the 19th and early 20th centuries, international labor migration today is severely restricted. Only three percent of the world’s population lives outside their countries of birth, and the majority of people in industrialized nations oppose an increase in immigration.
Early research suggests that allowing increased labor migration into OECD countries would yield significant income gains worldwide. These would be evenly split between developed and developing countries and would owe more to the mobility of less skilled than more skilled workers, and would be substantially larger than the probable gains from all proposed remaining trade liberalization.
Actual and prospective World Bank studies in migration include efforts to improve data and indicators; to study the developmental and financial impacts of remittances and migration, and the design of policies and institutions to enhance these. Various World Bank departments and regions are collaborating in this effort, and researchers have close relationships with counterparts in other international organizations, statistical authorities, and research networks working on these issues.
The first phase of the Migration program will culminate in the publication of International
Migration, Remittances, and the Brain Drain in October 2005.
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