From A Zero-Sum to a Win-Win Scenario? Literature Review on Circular Migration
Circular migration holds real development potential, but realizing win-win outcomes depends on conditions that research has only begun to map.
A new era has ushered in rising circular migration, involving a greater cross-section of groups and taking a wider variety of forms than ever before. Although the impact of circular migration on development is far from settled, a review of the literature suggests increasing optimism about its developmental potential.
This optimism stems mainly from the erosion of the traditionally polarized migration framework, where migrants who depart are seen as “lost” to the sending country and arriving immigrants are therefore “gained” by the receiving country. Instead, a transnational framework is gaining ground where migrants continually forge and sustain multiple attachments across nation-states and/or communities. As these transnational migrants return home, it is argued that they can facilitate the transfer of the critical financial and human capital the developing world needs.
However, the expressed optimism is not without a healthy dose of caution. Although the pendulum has started to move away from the dominant zero-sum scenario of previous decades toward a more positive “win-win” scenario, there are calls to keep the pendulum from moving too far. Indeed, also evident in the literature is a simmering concern that the impact of policies encouraging more circular migration is still very much conditioned by the political, economic, and social conditions in the countries of origin and destination, as well as by the characteristics of the migrants, their respective diasporic communities, and the dynamics of return.
Notwithstanding this concern, however, it is very clear that the previous decades’ abrupt dismissal of the developmental impact of circularity as negligible or even negative is no longer warranted, especially in an increasingly transnational world. The challenge still is to understand this new reality and to comprehend precisely the circumstances in which the win-win potential of a policy encouraging more circular migration has been and could be realized.
About the Global Program
The Global Program bridges policy advice, research, and candid dialogue to design effective migration policies, drawing on global evidence and anticipating the forces reshaping how people move.
