Contenu du sommaire : The Annual AFD-World Bank Migration and Development Conference Ten Years After

This paper provides an overview of the main findings from the last decade of scholarship on the poverty-inequality-migration nexus. The compilation of new datasets at both the cross-country and micro levels has provided a better understanding of how poverty and inequality play important roles in determining both the level of migration and the selection of who migrates. Contrary to simple theories of income maximization and popular perception, migrants are not overwhelmingly drawn from the poorest households within a country, or poorest countries. The consequence is that income growth and development can lead to more, rather than less, migration from many developing countries. There is also no simple relationship between inequality in origin countries and migration, since inequality affects migration in several counteracting ways. Innovative studies have then used a variety of modern econometric methods to estimate the causal impacts of migration on poverty and inequality. All studies find enormous gains in income for those individuals who do voluntarily migrate from developing to developed countries, which typically lowers poverty and inequality at a global level. However, impacts on poverty and inequality within developing countries themselves depend on who gets to migrate: poverty falls more when networks are large or when migration policies provide more options for unskilled workers to migrate, while within-country inequality may rise at first if skill-selective policies and liquidity constraints prevent the poor from benefiting from migration.JEL Codes: F22, O15, I32.

The paper provides an overview of the most recent results in the literature on the role of financial flows in the migration-development nexus. Drawing on the papers presented in the “Migration and Development” conference, but not exclusively, the paper first highlights the main findings regarding the determinants of remittances. It also provides insights into the decision making mechanisms both at the individual and household level in terms of remitting behaviour. It ends with a synthesis of recent contributions on the developmental impact of remittances and some policy recommendations for development cooperation.JEL Codes: O15, F24, D82.

Using a growth theory perspective, this paper summarizes the recent advances on the bidirectional links between emigration and development. Taken at face value, the stylized facts suggest that (i) helping poor countries to develop can relax credit constraints and lead to massive migration pressures, and (ii) increasing migration can spur the brain drain and increase global inequality. In terms of policy coherence, this means that development policies could reduce the effectiveness of restrictive immigration policies. Recent studies challenge these views. In this paper, I use a Migration Accounting model to show that credit constraints, while relevant for the very poorest countries, only have a limited effect on the upward segment of the migration transition curve. I then use a Development Accounting model to show that emigration, albeit skill-biased, is likely to generate positive effects on income per capita in most low-income and middle-income countries. Hence, should there be an inconsistency between policy actions, it is of a different nature: for most developing countries, migration barriers jeopardize the effectiveness of development and cooperation policies.JEL Codes: F22, J24, O15.

Gravity models of migration have become the standard tool to analyze the determinants of bilateral migration flows. The empirical evidence produced by the estimation of this model helps us to understand why the geographical distribution of migrants across destinations varies greatly for different migrant-sending countries. This, in turn, contributes to shape the development implications of international migration flows. Furthermore, gravity models have been used to predict the evolution of migration flows over the coming decades, and to establish a causal relationship between migration and development, following a standard practice in the trade literature.JEL Codes: F22, O15, J61.

Understanding the determinants of migration patterns and the selection of migrants is of paramount importance in a world in which over 240 million people have migrated and many more are considering doing so. This paper adds to the literature on this topic by (i) using micro-level wage data for a large number of source and destination countries, and (ii) identifying the impact of bilateral variables, e.g. distance, and source and destination country characteristics using a two-step estimation strategy that allows for estimation over a full matrix of migration corridors and better addresses the issue of multilateral resistance to migration. The results highlight how geography (distances, contiguity and country size) and wage differentials matter for determining migration flows and the differential selection of low and high skilled migrants.JEL Codes: F22, F66, J61.

This paper reviews the evidence on the consequences of hosting forced migrants (i.e. refugees or internally displaced persons) in Africa. Overall, the presence of forced migrants is positive for local economies, but there are multiple consequences of hosting displaced populations and some could be negative (e.g. environmental damage, competition for resources, labour market displacement). The implications of hosting forced migrants are also likely to be different across sectors of the host population and several papers identify ‘winners' and ‘losers' among the host community members. Finally, the impacts of hosting forced migrants can have long-lasting consequences and change the hosting communities even after the forced migrants have left. The paper also identifies several key gaps in the literature. Among these gaps, the lack of research on the consequences of hosting internally displaced persons and the scarce evidence on the implications of refugee repatriation for communities of return standout as particularly important.JEL Codes: J43, J46, F22.