Understanding Global Migration

Understanding Global Migration

July 2008

Global Migration & Human Mobility, eNewsletters

More than 200 million of the world’s 6.7 billion people are migrants, an unprecedented number. Many are refugees fleeing violence and persecution, but more are voluntary migrants moving for economic opportunity. Most migrate to developed nations, such as the United States, but 40 percent move within the developing world, like the thousands of Filipinos who travel to the Middle East to work each year or the Afghanis who pour into Iran. Understanding this historic movement of people across the globe is the focus of MacArthur’s global migration and human mobility grantmaking and the topic of the Foundation’s upcoming fall newsletter.

Cell phones, electronic wire transfers, and inexpensive airline tickets have made it easier than ever to migrate and for people to maintain ties with their home countries through visiting and sending money, called “remittances,” to relatives. The soaring number of migrants, people who live outside of their country for at least a year, has made migration a pressing international policy issue. Yet there is little research about migration’s impact on nations and people. Through its support for this field, MacArthur seeks to address these gaps in knowledge and encourage research that can help migration benefit individuals and societies.

“In entering the field of international migration, we hope to contribute to building a flexible, adaptive framework for understanding migration processes around the world and to help capture the benefits of migration for individual migrants as well as countries of origin and destination,” writes MacArthur President Jonathan Fanton in the newsletter.

MacArthur’s grantmaking focuses on two areas: improving governance of migration regionally, nationally, and internationally, and fostering a better understanding of the relationship of migration to economic development. While international law governs the treatment of refugees, there is no consensus for a global regime that oversees the people who move by choice from Kazakhstan to Russia, Bangladesh to India, or Algeria to France to work. Instead, nations have convened regional and bilateral gatherings to address common concerns. MacArthur is funding research on international migration governance and supports a major international dialogue, the Global Forum on Migration and Development. The first meeting of the Global Forum was held in Brussels in July 2007, and attended by 156 nations. The next Global Forum, to be held in Manila in October, will focus specifically on migrants’ rights.

MacArthur also supports research on the economic implications of migration, with an emphasis on remittances, brain drain, and diaspora networks. Remittances to developing nations are estimated at about $300 billion annually, far outweighing the global total of foreign aid. But it is not clear how the funds are being used. A University of Michigan field experiment looks at how creating savings accounts in El Salvador and other banking products can help Salvadoran migrants in the U.S. and their families at home make better use of remittances.

The exodus of healthcare workers from countries such as South Africa complicates efforts to provide quality health services in areas of the world ravaged by diseases like AIDS. The Foundation is supporting separate initiatives by AcademyHealth and the Aspen Institute’s Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative to develop guidelines aimed at preventing abuse of foreign healthcare workers and encouraging attention to the healthcare needs of their countries of origin. Read the newsletter