Maximising the Development Outcomes of Migration: A policy perspective

It is becoming increasingly clear that migration can have important impacts upon development. As a result, policymakers are searching for ways to increase migration's developmental benefits, and decrease its costs. But what are the levers for doing so?

Some of the earliest efforts to maximise the development impacts of migration focused on migration policy, and specifically on opening up more channels for developing country citizens to move into higher wage labour markets. The hope was that this would maximise remittances, thereby promoting development. However, this strategy has come up against a number of problems.

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.

This is the 4th paper from ippr's Development on the Move project.