• News
• Publications
• Articles
• Events
• Research

• Research Programmes
• Citizens, Society and Economy
• Global Change
• Research Themes

You are in: research

• Team Introduction
• staff
• current projects
• previous projects

Development on the Move

Contact Email: l.chappell@ippr.org

Introduction

In 2006 ippr began working in partnership with the Global Development Network (GDN) on a major project on migration and development. Development on the Move: Measuring and Optimising Migration's Development Impacts aimed to research migration and development by creating new methodologies for assessing migration’s impacts, collecting evidence on those impacts, helping to build research capacity on migration and development issues in developing countries and examining fresh policy options for improving migration’s contribution to development.  

It did this through gathering comparable data on the wide range of developmental impacts of migration (both economic and social) in Colombia, Fiji, Georgia, Ghana, Jamaica, Macedonia and Vietnam.

In each country we worked with local researchers who gathered together the existing evidence on this diverse range of impacts and complemented it with two additional kinds of new data – information collected from stakeholder interviews, and a new, nationally-representative household survey (designed specifically for this project to give us reliable data on how common migration is and to investigate its development impacts).

Outputs

This project has produced a large number of outputs. These include:

• Six country reports:
  Georgia summary (pdf); Georgia full report (pdf)
  Macedonia summary (pdf); Macedonia full report (pdf)
  Jamaica full report (pdf)
  Colombia full report (pdf)
  Vietnam summary (pdf); Vietnam full report (pdf)
  Ghana full report (pdf)
  
• A series of working papers (see below)
  
• The final global project report, published on 21 May 2010 - click here to view the executive summary and here for the accompanying press release, which highlights the key findings.

We have also spoken to a number of migrants about their personal experiences of migration, and the impact it has had on their own lives and the lives of their families. Their accounts are posted as two articles, here and here.

Further Information

The project was generously funded by the Australian Agency for International Development, the UK Department for International Development and the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

For more information about the project, please contact Laura Chappell: l.chappell@ippr.org.

Publications

Maximising the Development Outcomes of Migration:
A policy perspective

This paper maps and explores the policy territory for improving migration’s development impacts, including but also going beyond migration policy and development policy. We set out what areas of policy this might contain, as well as some practical examples of where such policies have been put in place and their effects. As a result, we hope to increase awareness of the number of levers available to policymakers to maximise migration’s benefits and minimise its costs; as well as providing a more systematic approach to considering policy in this area to help others identify more levers in the future.

view publication

Easing the Strain:
Understanding brain drain and where policy can respond

It is clear that many countries across the globe are increasingly seeking to attract highly skilled migrants, with trends looking set to continue despite the global downturn. This competition for highly skilled workers is provoking concerns about ‘brain drain’.

view publication

Measuring Migration’s Development Impacts:
Preliminary evidence from Jamaica

This is the second working paper from GDN and ippr’s global research project, Development on the Move: Measuring and Optimising Migration’s Economic and Social Impacts. It is written with two purposes in mind: to present the first set of findings from the project and to illustrate the potential of the Development on the Move survey, providing a useful resource for the researchers we are working with in other countries, and to researchers outside this project.

view publication

Mapping the development impacts of migration

Despite considerable interest in the relationship between migration and development, there have been relatively few attempts to map the various development impacts that migration can have on a country. This paper presents a new framework for mapping these impacts, focusing particularly on developing countries that send migrants.

view publication