Migration & Development
Recent Activity
Nearly 1 million U.S. residents spend time volunteering abroad each year, including nearly 200,000 first- and second-generation immigrants. As skilled migration and the number of U.S. youth with ancestors in the developing world grow, this report shows the potential for diaspora service volunteers to assist with development in a number of countries.
A growing body of evidence suggests that diasporas play a critical role in supporting sustainable development by transferring resources, knowledge, and ideas back to their home countries, and in integrating their countries of origin into the global economy.
This discussion examines the overseas labor deployment system created by the Philippines, one of the largest and most sophisticated of its type, providing a framework for regulating recruitment.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the third-largest destination for Filipino migrants, with private recruitment agencies in both countries managing the flow of 200,000 Filipino workers who head there annually. This report examines the recruiters’ practices as well as their regulation by the Philippine and UAE governments, offering recommendations to strengthen the system of oversight.
Five factors, including wages and professional development, drive skilled people to migrate, and three reasons encourage them to return. Laura Chappell and Alex Glennie of ippr in London look at all of these factors and how motivations vary across different contexts and groups of migrants.
Remittances would seem to boost the chances that children in Mexico complete high school. But money alone does not improve schooling outcomes in the educationally marginalized, migrant-sending regions of southern Mexico, as Adam Sawyer of the Harvard Graduate School of Education reports.
Numerous researchers and organizations have predicted that climate change will trigger historically unprecedented waves of mass migration. MPI's Carolina Fritz examines the complex links between climate change and migration, how and where these links influence current and future migration patterns, and some of the problems with predicting future flows.
For many developing countries, migrants are considered valuable contributors to future development. As proof of their commitment, they have invested in diaspora institutions with responsibilities ranging from protecting migrants to encouraging investment. MPI's Dovelyn Rannveig Agunias analyzes 45 such institutions across 30 countries and breaks them down by type.