Migration Project
The Africa Growth Lab worked to identify the most important constraints on African growth and to recommend interventions that can relax these constraints.
Project Dates
2009–2011
Supported By
The migration of people and capital — including the steady flow of remittances that immigrants send home — has an enormous impact on global development. Close to $300 billion of remittances flowed from rich countries to poor countries in 2006, compared to just $70 billion in foreign aid. According to the World Bank, if OECD countries allowed just a 3% increase in the size of their labor force through more flexible immigration policies, the gains to citizens of poor countries would exceed $300 billion per year.
The Migration Project at CID (2009-2011) focused on understanding and strengthening the links between migration, remittances and prosperity. The Project working to expand the possibilities for comprehensive immigration reform in the U.S. by bringing a development lens to the domestic policy debate.
2009 Conference: Beyond the Fence
Migration Conference Brings Development Lens To Immigration
As the Obama Administration prepares to reform U.S. immigration policy, the nation remains stuck in the political holding pattern of the last two decades: a stalemate between voices on the right focused on border control and the threat of immigration to native wages and culture, and voices on the left advocating citizenship for a growing underclass of undocumented migrants. On May 26, 2009, the Center for International Development joined forces with the Center for Global Development and the Foundation for an Open America to host Beyond the Fence, a research conference that explored opportunities to break the stalemate by bringing a development lens to the immigration debate.
The event convened thought leaders in migration from across Harvard University, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, and the World Bank, among others, to explore policy solutions that would benefit both developed and developing economies.
“We hope to challenge the idea that immigration is a risky proposition for America these days,” said Professor Ricardo Hausmann, CID director. “The potential for win-wins is huge.”
The discussions acknowledged the development opportunity of migration as well as the dysfunction of the current system. New research presented at the conference highlighted the surprising effects of stricter border controls, which often fail to reduce the number of economic migrants and create “mousetrap” incentives that prevent migrants from returning home when labor demand drops because they fear being unable to return as jobs rebound.
Conference papers also spoke to the enormous development gains of migration for both migrants and sending countries. “If you take any people-based measure of well-being, then migration is fantastically good for it,” argued Professor Lant Pritchett, author of Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock on Global Labor Mobility. He quoted World Bank research that allowing just a 3% increase in the immigrant labor force would yield gains of more than $300 billion to citizens of developing countries while also providing a net benefit to citizens of developed countries.
The research also explored the economic benefits of immigration to the U.S., including Professor Michael Kremer’s findings that greater flows of private household workers can improve native welfare and reduce inequality in the U.S. Domestic policy strategies that emerged over the course of the event included a greater focus on designing ethical temporary worker programs that reflect both the needs of receiving countries and the priorities of economic migrants, who are often more interested in mobility and the pursuit of opportunity than full citizenship.
Professor Jeffrey Frankel presented his work on the countercyclical effects of remittances and addressed the topic of temporary workers. “It used to be we were over-focused on the Statue of Liberty and having migrants become citizens,” Frankel said. “I would make it easier to send remittances, easier for workers to go home and then return. The importance to both rich and poor countries is the ‘back and forth’ of labor.”
2011 Migration and Development Conference
2011 Conference Asks New Questions about the Role of Technology, Collaboration, and Expectations in Immigrants Decisions to Migrate
The 4th Annual Migration and Development Conference, sponsored by CID in partnership with the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies (Pop Center), the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), and the World Bank, was held on June 10th and 11th 2011 at the Harvard Kennedy School. The 2011 conference created a public space for academics and practitioners from around the world to present papers and engage in conversations around many topics in migration today.
Hillel Rapoport, one of the organizers and a CID Visiting Fellow from 2009-2011, described the conference saying “This was the 4th annual conference on migration and development, jointly sponsored by the French Development Agency (AFD) and the World Bank. Having a fourth conference is like passing adolescence and becoming mature, and this is exactly what this conference brought about: establishing the scientific network, opening it to include many Cambridge-based researchers, and getting a sense of scientific maturity as a research network on an important and exciting development issue.”
The dialogue in this 4th Conference focused again on the linkages between development and migration but asked new questions about the role mobile technology plays in migration, how the opportunity for international collaboration might increase or decrease migration of skilled professionals, whether migrants from the developing world have realistic expectations of expected salaries or not, and more. Presenters and discussants came from as close as Harvard, Tufts, and MIT and as far as California, France and the Netherlands. Panels focused on the different quasi-experimental methods available for use with different kinds of data, migration in an historical context, migration and macroeconomics, migration and health, temporary versus permanent migration, and more.
The conference had two keynote lectures, which were given by Harvard University professor Edward Glaeser and Brown University professor Oded Galor. Glaeser addressed the role – both positive and negative – that cities play in migration. Acknowledging that cities create spaces where disease or pollution spread rapidly he also argued that cities are a space for innovation and human capital exchange. People move to cities because of the many opportunities they create and as we move forward, he argued, the positive and negative aspects of cities will need to be fully considered in policy decisions.
Galor presented on genetic diversity, migration, and economic development. He spoke about how genetic diversity in the indigenous populations decreased as people moved further and further from East Africa. He argued there is an optimal level of genetic diversity that is correlated with growth and that the US’ level of population diversity is close to that optimum. However, he cautioned against the simplistic argument that this kind of diversity could then be reached through migration.
This year’s conference effectively incorporated many PhD students as discussants and even presenters – including several affiliated with the CID. The students offered insightful comments and criticisms to many of the papers and acted as an interesting and useful voice for questions and clarifications.
The conference concluded with a policy panel that aimed to better understand what avenues are available in the policy sphere moving forward. One central issue is how to keep development as a central component of that conversation in US and European policy circles.