International Migration Literature Review

This paper provides a review of the literature on the development impact of migration and remittances on origin countries and on destination countries in the South. International migration is an ever-growing phenomenon that has important development implications for both sending and receiving countries. For a sending country, migration and the resulting remittances lead to increased incomes and poverty reduction, and improved health and educational outcomes, and promote economic development. Yet these gains might come at substantial social costs to the migrants and their families. Since many developing countries are also large recipients of international migrants, they face challenges of integration of immigrants, job competition between migrant

International migration has development implications for origin and destination countries in the South and in the North. Some 215 million people or 3 percent of the world’s population are believed to live outside their countries of birth (United Nations 2009). While the focus in the literature has been on South-North migration, the number of migrants between developing countries is estimated to be as large as the number of migrants moving from South to North (Ratha & Shaw 2007). Thus, the development implications of migration and the need to manage in-migration are as relevant to the South as they are to the North. Although violent conflict, political persecution, and trafficking are important causes for international mobility, more than 9 out of 10 international migrants move for economic reasons. By and large, migration has positive economic impacts on the migrant household, the sending country as well as the receiving country. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides a discussion of the development implications, first economic and then social impacts, of migration for origin countries. Section 3 discusses the available evidence on the impact of migration on destination countries in the South. Section 4 concludes with a brief discussion of selected emerging migration issues such as environment and