“Reduce the fear of migration by 50% until 2015”. Could this be a migration related Millennium Development Goal (MDG)? While it seems rather unlikely that the international community will agree on international targets when it comes to migration in the near future, it is clear that human mobility and the achievement of the MDGs are related. In view of the upcoming MDG Review Summit (20-22 September), UNITAR, together with IOM, UNFPA and the MacArthur Foundation, held an expert seminar on 2 September at UN Headquarters, to re-examine these inter-linkages.
The seminar contributed to the upcoming MDG summit by promoting the integration of migration into the negotiations revolving around the summit and its outcome. Furthermore, the seminar enhanced the knowledge of delegates from member states as well as civil society actors about the relationship between migration and the MDGs: Migration can potentially contribute to the achievement of the MDGs. But it is equally important that migrant populations are not left out of the achievements of these international development targets. The most important conclusions of the seminar were:
Migration and Development are related in two different ways: On the one hand, there is enough evidence to show that migration can be beneficial to development in both origin and host country. On the other hand, economic development leads to more migration, at least in the short term: Once the level of development rises, the volume of migration first also does. Thus, immobile populations reflect stagnant economies. This forces us to rethink two common « myths »: that economic development will “control” migration and that only the poor migrate.
Second, most migration is internal not international. Thus; we need to conduct more research and advocacy on internal migration related to the achievements of the MDGs.
Third, remittances are the most common channel through which places of origin benefit from migration, at least economically speaking. Remittances have increased substantially over the past few decades and will increase in the future. They are resilient to crisis and they can help reduce poverty at the household level and at the macro-level by contributing to sovereign credit-worthiness. There is potential for leveraging remittances for the benefit of development in the future.
Fourth, for migration to be beneficial for development, the policy settings must be right. Policy recommendations that promote a positive link between migration and the MDGs include: Policies that allow people to move legally across borders, including temporary labour migration agreements; policies that work to reduce the transaction costs of sending money home; policies to reduce urban poverty since most migrants end up in large cities; policies that pay attention to female migrants.
Fifth, South – South migration is as important in numbers as is South-North migration but we still lack data on this phenomenon. To exploit the potential of South-South migration for development, we need to build capacities in the South for research, data collection and analysis, and to encourage cooperation between researchers and policy-makers to integrate migration into development plans.