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Engaging the Asian Diaspora
By Dovelyn Rannveig Agunias and Kathleen Newland
This brief explores how governments in Asia are facilitating diaspora contributions, including creation of conducive legal frameworks and diaspora-centered institutions to initiation of programs that specifically target diasporas as development actors. The authors detail a number of legislative proposals geared at diasporas, including flexible citizenship laws and visa arrangements, political and property rights, and reduced income tax rates.
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Thailand at a Crossroads: Challenges and Opportunities in Leveraging Migration for Development
By Jerry Huguet, Aphichat Chamratrithirong, and Claudia Natali
With a robust and relatively open economy attracting low- and high-skilled workers from nearby countries and beyond, Thailand is well positioned to take advantage of the benefits of migration. This brief examines the country’s migration challenges ahead and the two basic approaches to regularizing labor migration: Memoranda of Understanding with migrant-sending neighbors and nationality verification as a preliminary step for work permit application by unauthorized immigrants.
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Strengthening Pre-Departure Orientation Programmes in Indonesia, Nepal and the Philippines
By Maruja M.B. Asis and Dovelyn Rannveig Agunias
With overseas employment a more permanent feature of the development strategies of a number of Asian states, predeparture orientation programs have emerged as an important tool for the protection of migrant workers. This brief examines the strengths, limitations, and areas for improvement of this intervention, based on findings from field research conducted in Indonesia, Nepal, and the Philippines.
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Regulating Private Recruitment in the Asia-Middle East Labour Migration Corridor
By Dovelyn Rannveig Agunias
The Middle East represents one of the most sought-after labor markets in the world, with an estimated 10 million contract workers (mostly Asian) in the Gulf states alone. The vast majority of this temporary labor movement is brokered by recruitment agencies, with oversight difficult. This brief examines how sometimes unscrupulous agencies take advantage of the migrants they purport to serve by charging excessive placement fees and offering expensive predeparture loans; it also outlines the available policy levers for regulating recruitment practices.
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Understanding Mexico’s Economic Underperformance
By Gordon H. Hanson
Despite major economic reforms, fiscal discipline, privatization of state-owned enterprise, and strong growth in foreign trade and investment during recent decades, Mexico has underperformed economically relative to comparably situated nations. The report presents four arguments as to why Mexico has not sustained higher rates of economic growth: poorly functioning credit markets that inhibit long-term growth; unbalanced incentives toward informality in the labor market; inefficient regulation that diminishes the country’s comparative industrial advantage; and international competition, especially with China, which undermines export strength. The author offers policymakers a road map to expand economic opportunities.
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Central American Development: Two Decades of Progress and Challenges for the Future
By Hugo Beteta
Central America has witnessed an extraordinary transformation over the past two decades: : from authoritarian governments and civil strife to democratically elected governments and peaceful political transitions; from rural-based populations to urban majorities; and from volatile, resource-dependent economies into stable global exporters. This report traces the gains in economic growth, trade integration, and reduction in poverty and inequality in Central America, but makes clear that important challenges remain — among them the region’s inability to generate sufficient employment to keep pace with demographic growth, persistently large income inequality, and a surge in violence and public insecurity.
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Asian Labour Migrants and Humanitarian Crises: Lessons From Libya
By Brian Kelly and Anita Jawadurovna Wadud
Often low-skilled and facing language and cultural barriers, migrants workers in conflict zones are generally more vulnerable than the native population, though are rarely the focus of attention by the media or international community. This brief examines the challenges and opportunities for state actors and international organizers assisting foreign workers caught in national conflicts, with the migration crisis of Libya’s 2011 civil war a model for amending the existing framework in regards to response, coordination, and how to address similar humanitarian situations in the future.
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Asian Labour Migrants and Health: Exploring Policy Routes
Migrant health issues have risen on the agenda of policymakers in the Asia-Pacific region in recent years. The challenge now is how to translate the momentum generated at the highest levels of government into visible change on the ground. Many Asian migrant workers, especially those working under temporary contracts, continue to face challenges in accessing health facilities and services. The reasons for underutilization of health services, as this issue brief explores, include lack of health insurance, poverty, social exclusion, language and cultural differences, administrative hurdles and legal status.
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Labour Migration from Colombo Process Countries: Good Practices, Challenges and Ways Forward
By Dovelyn Rannveig Agunias and Christine Aghazarm
This issue brief, the first in a series launched by MPI and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) that examines migration trends and issues in Asia, discusses labor migration from the 11 Colombo Process countries (which include China, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Vietnam). Since 2005, these countries have taken concrete steps to manage these labor flows and protect their citizens working abroad, particularly with respect to recruitment regulation and welfare protection. Despite the progress, however, the brief details a number of remaining challenges and highlights possible areas of focus for these governments.
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Developing a Road Map for Engaging Diasporas in Development
By Dovelyn Rannveig Agunias and Kathleen Newland
Governments at both ends of the migration cycle increasingly are seeking ways to magnify the human capital and financial resources that emigrants and their descendants contribute to development in their countries of origin. This user-friendly handbook offers a strategic road map for governments in both origin and destination countries to build a constructive relationship with diasporas. The guide, a project of MPI and the International Organization for Migration, offers practical advice to policymakers and practitioners and details the wide range of institutions that governments worldwide have established to work with diasporas.
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The Development and Fiscal Effects of Emigration on Mexico
By Raymundo Campos-Vazquez and Horacio Sobarzo
The economic consequences of emigration on migrants’ countries of origin have long been studied, yet the precise assessment of positive and negative impacts remains complex. This analysis finds that when the labor market effects and household income benefits of remittances are compiled into a model of the Mexican economy, Mexico’s fiscal balance appears to benefit from emigration – its GDP rising by 8.8 percent and tax collection by 7.4 percent.
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Migration and Development Policy: What Have We Learned?
By Kathleen Newland
Migration and development have become a pressing policy priority on the global agenda over the past decade, and a number of revisions to conventional thinking on the subject have gained traction and yielded innovative — albeit in many cases yet unproven — policies and programs. This brief identifies critical lessons from the past decade of policy experimentation and offers some recommendations for policy moving forward.
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Climate Change and Migration Dynamics
By Kathleen Newland
Climate change is a new driver of human migration, and is expected by many to dwarf all other factors in its impact. But while there is growing concern about climate change, far less agreement exists about what kinds of effects will be felt where, by whom, and precisely when. Human displacement is a result of a complex mix of factors, and some of the more commonly repeated predictions of the numbers of people who will be displaced by climate change are not informed by a full understanding of the dynamics of migration. This report analyzes the salient mechanisms of displacement: sea level rise, higher temperatures, disruption of water cycles, and increasing severity of storms. It also examines the ensuing migration responses and proposes recommendations to offset the severity of displacement.
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Running in Circles: Progress and Challenges in Regulating Recruitment of Filipino and Sri Lankan Labor Migrants to Jordan
By Dovelyn Rannveig Agunias
Labor migration from the Philippines and Sri Lanka to Jordan has filled a growing share of unskilled and semi-skilled jobs in recent years, with private recruitment agencies playing an important role in facilitating and driving labor migration. But despite a comprehensive set of laws and guidelines to control migration systems in these countries, workers remain vulnerable to abuse and exploitation at the hands of recruitment agents. Excessive placement fees, violations of contractual terms and conditions, underpayment or nonpayment of wages, poor working or living conditions, confiscation of passports, and even physical abuse highlight the significant gaps in these countries' migration protection systems. This report identifies problem areas and recommends ways to strengthen system management.
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Migration and Development: Policy Perspectives from the United States
By Aaron Terrazas
As migration has become an increasingly visible global phenomenon in recent decades, there has been heightened interest in the complex relationship between migration and the development prospects of migrants’ countries of origin. While individual migrants and their families tend to benefit from the decision to seek opportunities abroad, the consequences for migrant communities and countries of origin are more ambiguous. This report examines the evidence and whether there is any role for US policymakers to play.
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Voice After Exit: Diaspora Advocacy
By Kathleen Newland
Today’s diaspora organizations, communities, and individuals increasingly seek to influence government, media, private sectors, and other prominent groups in their countries of origin and of settlement – but despite their growing voice, success requires smart policy. This report, the sixth in our series on diaspora engagement, provides an overview of diaspora advocacy by looking at five issues: who participates in diaspora advocacy, who or what are the “targets” in these efforts, what means are used to advance these causes, what are the issues on which they focus, and the effectiveness of the efforts.
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Mobilizing Diaspora Entrepreneurship for Development
By Kathleen Newland and Hiroyuki Tanaka
Diasporas are in a unique position to have a positive effect on the economy of their countries of origin – the key is for those countries to seize the opportunities. This report, the fifth in a series examining the role of diasporas in development policy, documents how diaspora entrepreneurs often are motivated to contribute to job creation and economic growth in their native lands. But, as the report outlines, many developing countries have met only limited success in attracting diaspora investors and entrepreneurs. The study offers some key findings and policy options.
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Heritage Tourism and Nostalgia Trade: A Diaspora Niche in the Development Landscape
By Kathleen Newland and Carylanna Taylor
Diasporas can play an important role in promoting trade and tourism in their countries of origin, particularly since it is difficult to introduce and establish unfamiliar goods and new tourist destinations in the international market. This report, the fourth in a series examining the role of diasporas in development policy, examines how nostalgia trade and heritage tourism can involve diaspora populations in transactions that ease the integration of their homeland economies into an increasingly connected global economy, while also helping diasporas to maintain their ties to their countries of origin or ancestry.
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Diaspora Philanthropy: Private Giving and Public Policy
By Kathleen Newland, Aaron Terrazas, and Roberto Munster
This report, the third in a series examining the role of diasporas in development policy, analyzes the evolving role of diaspora philanthropy in countries of origin. The study examines the emergence of nongovernmental development actors and new trends in global philanthropy, such as strategic giving and use of online platforms to harness small donations. It also discusses public policies, in both donor and developing countries, that can encourage or discourage philanthropic giving.
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Connected through Service: Diaspora Volunteers and Global Development
By Aaron Terrazas
Nearly 1 million US residents spend time volunteering abroad each year, including nearly 200,000 first- and second-generation immigrants. Diasporas often have the connections, knowledge, and personal drive to volunteer outside the framework of organized volunteer programs. But many also volunteer through established programs. As skilled migration and the number of US youth with ancestors in the developing world grow over the coming years, the potential for both skilled diaspora volunteers and youth diaspora volunteers will increase. This report is the second in a series of studies examining the role of diasporas in development policy.
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Diaspora Investment in Developing and Emerging Country Capital Markets: Patterns and Prospects
By Aaron Terrazas
Financial flows from migrants and their descendants are at the heart of the relationship between migration and development. There is little doubt that remittances can have important effects on financial development. But they represent only a fraction of the potential private financial flows originating from diasporas, with substantial evidence showing that diasporas hold substantial financial assets beyond their current income — for instance, in savings and retirement accounts, in property, debt, and equity. Remittances tap the incomes of migrants, but this report argues that the greater challenge is to mobilize the wealth of diasporas. Capital markets perform precisely this function, mobilizing savings and channeling them to productive investment. This report is the first in a series of six studies on the role of diasporas in development policy.
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Migration's Middlemen: Regulating Recruitment Agencies in the Philippines-United Arab Emirates Corridor
By Dovelyn Rannveig Agunias
Private recruitment agencies manage much of the flow of the 200,000 Filipino workers who head to annually to the United Arab Emirates, which is the third-largest destination for Filipino migrants after the United States and Saudi Arabia. While the recruitment agencies provide critical services, some abuse their clients by charging exorbitant fees or violating basic human rights. This report, based on exhaustive interviews with key actors and migrants themselves, examines the recruiters' practices as well as their regulation by the Philippine and UAE governments, finding room for significant improvement.
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Migration and Development Publications| All MPI Publications
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Governments, multilateral agencies, and development specialists have recently rediscovered the connections between migration and development. Increasing volumes of research are focusing on the actual and potential contributions of migrant communities to sustainable development or the reduction of poverty in their countries of origin.
The findings have not been systematically translated into policy guidance, however, and important topics remain underinvestigated. One result is that little coherence is to be found between the development policies and the migration policies of governments in either countries of destination or countries of origin. Since 2004, MPI has begun to address the paucity of policy analysis in its newest program area: Migrants, Migration, and Development.
MPI is deeply engaged in efforts to encourage a multilateral discussion and exchange of experience through the September 2006 UN High-Level Dialogue on Migration and Development and the Global Forum on Migration and Development, which was the main outcome of the September meeting. MPI staffs the Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Migration and Development, Mr. Peter Sutherland. For the first Global Forum, in July 2007, MPI is organizing workshops on the two main substantive issues to be discussed: remittances and the human capital implications of migration. MPI will also cooperate with the conveners of the second Global Forum in 2008.
In the coming biennium, MPI’s work in migration and development will draw out the policy implications of a voluminous and rapidly expanding body of literature — much of which is primarily theoretical or descriptive — and evaluate whether it implies a major revision of conventional understandings of migration-and-development linkages.
A second strand of work will produce new research findings on diaspora engagement in countries of origin (through such mechanisms as foreign direct investment, technological innovation, and private philanthropy) and on the migration-related development policies of countries of origin as well as donor countries and institutions. We will also emphasize the critical role of broader macroeconomic conditions that may support or undermine the development potential of particular migration policy
interventions. The macroeconomic impacts of remittances are very poorly understood and thus will be a major focus of work in this area.
In conjunction with its research and analysis, MPI will convene policy discussions with important stakeholders, in particular policymakers, to discuss and vet the research agenda and our findings in relation to the specific circumstances of their own countries and institutions.
More on MPI's policy
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Stranded Migrants: A New Challenge for the International Community
 Discussion with William Lacy Swing, Director General of the International Organization for Migration; Sam Worthington, President & CEO of InterAction; and MPI's Kathleen Newland.
May 9, 2013
Watch Video | Listen to event audio | View powerpoint
 MPI-IOM Bangkok Event: Breakfast Briefing on Regulating Private Recruitment in the Asia-Middle East Labour Migration Corridor
Paper launch and discussion with Dovelyn Rannveig Agunias, Regional Research Officer, IOM and Policy Analyst, MPI; Supang Chantavanich, Professor, Chulalongkorn University and Director, Asian Research Center for Migration; Jaewon Kim, Manager, Business for Social Responsibility; and Rabab Fatima, Regional Coordinator and Advisor for South Asia, IOM Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. Panelists discussed the Asian migrant worker experience in the Middle East and offered insights on migration issues affecting the Asia-Pacific region today.
August 30, 2012
US Secretary of State’s Global Diaspora Forum: Moving Forward by Giving Back
The second annual Global Diaspora Forum, hosted by the State Department and the US Agency for International Development, focused on how new technology can empower and increase diaspora philanthropy, volunteerism, social entrepreneurship, and innovation. MPI is the knowledge partner for the forum and a partner with the State Department and USAID on the International diaspora Engagement Alliance (IdEA).
July 25-26, 2012
Listen to Audio
 MPI/IOM Panel Discussion and Asia-Pacific Launch of Developing a Road Map for Engaging Diasporas in Development
A discussion with Dr. Noppawan Tanpipat, Vice President, National Science and Technology Development Agency; Frank Laczko, Head, Migration Research Division, IOM; Dovelyn Rannveig Agunias, Regional Research Officer, IOM, and Policy Analyst, Migration Policy Institute (MPI); and Kathleen Newland, Director of Migrants, Migration, and Development, Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
July 11, 2012 | Bangkok , Thailand
Watch Video | Listen to Audio
 MPI/IOM Briefing- Asian Labour Migrants and Humanitarian Crises: Lessons from Libya
A discussion with Brian Kelly, Regional Emergency & Post Crisis Adviser, IOM, and Andrew Bruce, IOM Regional Director
July 17, 2012 | Bangkok , Thailand
 Developing a Road Map for Engaging Diasporas in Development
The Washington DC launch event for the MPI/IOM handbook on diaspora engagement with the Honorable William Lacy Swing, Director General of the International Organization for Migration, and Kathleen Newland, MPI Co-Founder and Director of the Refugee Policy and Migrants, Migration, and Development Programs.
June 26, 2012
Watch Video | Listen to Audio
Update on the 2012 Global Forum on Migration and Development
A discussion with the current Chair of the Global Forum on Migration and Development and Financial Secretary of the Republic of Mauritius Ali Mansoor and MPI President Demetrios Papademetriou on the preparation of the 2012 GFMD summit, including an update on the possible ideas and projects presently contemplated that would fully integrate migration into the development framework, with a special focus on Africa.
June 22, 2012
Watch Video | Listen to Audio
MPI Europe - IOM Brussels Event - Engaging Diasporas in Europe for Development
The Brussels MPI Europe-IOM event for the launch of an MPI/IOM handbook on Engaging Diasporas in Development and panel discussion with Eva Åkerman-Börje, Swedish Ambassador for the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD); Luigi Soreca, Head of International Affairs, Directorate-General for Home Affairs, European Commission; Frank Laczko, Head of Research and Publications, International Organization for Migration (IOM); Santo Deng, President, Board of the Diaspora Forum for Development; Dovelyn Agunias, Migration Policy Institute (MPI)-IOM policy and research analyst; and Kathleen Newland, Co-Founder and Director, Migrants, Migration, and Development Program Director, MPI.
June 20, 2012
Watch Video | Listen to Audio
Labour Migration from Colombo Process Countries
The launch in Bangkok of an issue brief series on labor migration in Asia undertaken by IOM and MPI with speakers H.E. Phadermchai Sasomsub, Minister of Labo ur, Government of Thailand; H.E. Kazi Imtiaz Hossain, Ambassador, Government of Bangladesh; H.E. Linglingay Lacanlale, Ambassador, Government of the Philippines; Andrew Bruce, Regional Director, IOM; and Dovelyn Rannveig Agunias, IOM Regional Research Officer and MPI Policy Analyst.
May 14, 2012
Listen to Audio | View PowerPoint | Read the Issue Brief
For details and video/audio of events, click here. |
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