Labour migration a developmental path or a low-level trap.pdfVIP

Development in Practice, Volume 15, Number 5, August 2005 Labour migration: a developmental path or a low-level trap? David Ellerman This article focuses on the debate about the developmental impact of migration on the sending countries. Throughout the post-Second World War period, temporary labour migration has been promoted as a path to development. Remittances have grown to rival or surpass official development assistance and have increased living standards in the sending countries. However, the evidence over time is that the remittances do not lead to development or even to higher incomes that are sustainable without further migration. Some determinedly temporary labour migration schemes offer promise. But where the pattern of migration and remittances locks into a semi-permanent arrangement (the standard line is ‘There’s nothing more permanent than “temporary” migration’), then this may be a developmental trap for the South whereby, in a semi-permanent ‘3 Ds Deal’, the South forgoes self-development in favour of being a long-range bedroom community to supply the labour for dirty, dangerous, and difficult jobs in the North. In recent years, migration issues have risen to the top of the policy agenda in industrialised as well as in developing countries. Globalisation has renewed and given new force to an old debate in the development community about the impact of migration on the sending countries or regions. The relationship between international migration and development in the sending country has been variously called ‘unsettled’ (Papademetriou and Martin 1991) or ‘unresolved’ (Appleyard 1992). For most of the post-Second World War period, ‘temporary’ migration was seen as a path to development for the sending country. Migrants could return with the skills and capital necessary to spur development. However, there have long been dissenting