Overcoming barriers: Human mobility and development

Human development is about putting people at the center of development. It is about people realizing their potential, increasing their choices and enjoying the freedom to lead lives they value. Since 1990, annual Human Development Reports have explored challenges including poverty, gender, democracy, human rights, cultural liberty, globalization, water scarcity and climate change. 

Migration, both within and beyond borders, has become an increasingly prominent theme in domestic and international debates, and is the topic of the 2009 Human Development Report (HDR09). The starting point is that the global distribution of capabilities is extraordinarily unequal, and that this is a major driver for movement of people. Migration can expand their choices – in terms of incomes, accessing services and participation, for example – but the opportunities open to people vary from those who are best endowed to those with limited skills and assets. These underlying inequalities, which can be compounded by policy distortions, is a theme of the report. 

The report investigates migration in the context of demographic changes and trends in both growth and inequality. It also presents more detailed and nuanced individual, family and village experiences, and explores less visible movements typically pursued by disadvantaged groups such as short term and seasonal migration. 

There is a range of evidence about the positive impacts of migration on human development, through such avenues as increased household incomes and improved access to education and health services. There is further evidence that migration can empower traditionally disadvantaged groups, in particular women. At the same time, risks to human development are also present where migration is a reaction to threats and denial of choice, and where regular opportunities for movement are constrained. 

National and local policies play a critical role in enabling better human development outcomes for both those who choose to move in order to improve their circumstances, and those forced to relocate due to conflict, environmental degradation, or other reasons. Host-country restrictions can raise both the costs and the risks of migration. Similarly, negative outcomes can arise at the country levels where basic civic rights, like voting, schooling and health care are denied to those who have moved across provincial lines to work and live. HDR09 shows how a human development approach can be a means to redress some of the underlying issues that erode the potential benefits of mobility and/or force migration. 

 

How and why 

people move 

 

Consider Juan. Born into a poor family in rural Mexico, his family struggled to pay for his health care and education. At the age of 12, he dropped out of school to help support his family. Six years later, Juan followed his uncle to Canada in pursuit of higher wages and better opportunities. Life expectancy in Canada is five years higher than in Mexico and incomes are three times greater. Juan was selected to work temporarily in Canada, earned the right to stay and eventually became an entrepreneur whose business now employs native-born Canadians. This is just one case out of millions of people every year who find new opportunities and freedoms by migrating, benefiting themselves as well as their areas of origin and destination. 

Now consider the case of Bhagyawati. She is a member of a lower caste and lives in rural Andhra Pradesh, India. She travels to Bangalore city with her children to work on construction sites for six months each year, earning Rs 60 ($1.20) per day. 

While away from home, her children do not attend school because it is too far from the construction site and they do not know the local language. Bhagyawati is not entitled to subsidized food or health care, nor does she vote, because she is living outside her registered district. 

Like millions of other internal migrants, she has few options for improving her life other than to move to a different city in search of better opportunities. 

Our world is very unequal. The huge differences in human development across and within countries have been a recurring theme of the Human Development Report (HDR) since it was first published in 1990. In this year’s report, we explore for the first time the topic of migration. 

For many people in developing countries, moving away from their home town or village can be the best – sometimes the only – option open to improve their life chances. Human mobility can be hugely effective in raising a person’s income, health and education prospects. 

But its value is more than that: being able to decide where to live is a key element of human freedom. 

When people move, they embark on a journey of hope and uncertainty, whether within or across international borders. Most people move in search of better opportunities, hoping to combine their own talents with resources in the destination country so as to benefit themselves and their immediate family, who often accompany or follow them. If they succeed, their initiative and efforts can also benefit those left behind and the society in which they make their new home. But not all do succeed. 

Migrants who leave friends and family may face loneliness, may feel unwelcome among people who fear or resent newcomers, may lose their jobs or fall ill and thus be unable to access the support services they need in order to prosper. 

Discussions about migration typically start from the perspective of flows from developing countries into the rich countries of Europe, North America and Australasia. Yet most movement in the world does not take place between developing and developed countries; it does not even take place between countries. 

The overwhelming majority of people who migrate do so inside their own countries. Using a conservative definition, we estimate that approximately 740 million people are internal migrants – almost four times as many as those people who have moved internationally. 

Among people who have moved across national borders, just over a third moved from a developing to a developed country – fewer than 70 million people. 

Most of the world’s 200 million international migrants moved from one developing country to another or between developed countries. 

Most migrants, internal and international, reap gains in the form of higher incomes, better access to education and health, and improved prospects for their children. Surveys of migrants report that most are happy in their destination, despite the range of adjustments and obstacles typically involved in moving. Once established, migrants are often more likely than local residents to join unions or religious and other groups. Yet there are trade-offs and the gains from mobility are unequally distributed. 

People displaced by insecurity and conflict face special challenges. There are an estimated 14 million refugees living outside their country of citizenship, representing about 7 percent of the world’s migrants. Most remain near the country they fled, typically living in camps until conditions at home allow their return, but around half a million per year travel to developed countries and seek asylum there. A much larger number, some 26 million, have been internally displaced. They have crossed no frontiers, but may face special difficulties away from home in a country riven by conflict or racked by natural disasters. 

Another vulnerable group consists of people – mainly young women – who have been trafficked. 

Often duped with promises of a better life, their movement is not one of free will but of duress, sometimes accompanied by violence and sexual abuse. 

In general, however, people move of their own volition, to better-off places. More than three quarters of international migrants go to a country with a higher level of human development than their country of origin. 

Yet, they are significantly constrained, both by policies that impose barriers to entry and by the resources they have available to enable their move. 

People in poor countries are the least mobile: for example, fewer than 1 percent of Africans have moved to Europe. Indeed, history and contemporary evidence suggest that development and migration go hand in hand: the median emigration rate in a country with low human development is below 4 percent, compared to more than 8 percent from countries with high levels of human development. 

 

Barriers 

to movement 

 

The share of international migrants in the world’s population has remained remarkably stable at around 3 percent over the past 50 years, despite factors that could have been expected to increase flows. Demographic trends – an aging population in developed countries and young, still-rising populations in developing countries – and growing employment opportunities, combined with cheaper communications and transport, have increased the “demand” for migration. However, those wishing to migrate have increasingly come up against government-imposed barriers to movement. Over the past century, the number of nation states has quadrupled to almost 200, creating more borders to cross, while policy changes have further limited the scale of migration even as barriers to trade fell. 

Barriers to mobility are especially high for people with low skills, despite the demand for their labor in many rich countries. Policies generally favor the admission of the better educated, for instance by allowing students to stay after graduation and inviting professionals to settle with their families. But governments tend to be far more ambivalent with respect to low-skilled workers, whose status and treatment often leave much to be desired. In many countries, agriculture, construction, manufacturing and service sectors have jobs that are filled by such migrants. Yet governments often try to rotate less educated people in and out of the country, sometimes treating temporary and irregular workers like water from a tap that can be turned on and off at will. 

An estimated 50 million people today are living and working abroad with irregular status. Some countries, such as Thailand and the United States, tolerate large numbers of unauthorized workers. This may allow those individuals to access better paying jobs than at home, but although they often do the same work and pay the same taxes as local residents, they may lack access to basic services and face the risk of being deported. 

Some governments, such as those of Italy and Spain, have recognized that unskilled migrants contribute to their societies and have regularized the status of those in work, while other countries, such as Canada and New Zealand, have well designed seasonal migrant programs for sectors such as agriculture. 

While there is broad consensus about the value of skilled migration to destination countries, low-skilled migrant workers generate much controversy. It is widely believed that while these migrants fill vacant jobs they also displace local workers and reduce wages. Other concerns posed by migrant inflows include heightened risk of crime, added burdens on local services and the fear of losing social and cultural cohesion. But these concerns are often exaggerated. While research has found that migration can, in certain circumstances, have negative effects on locally born workers with comparable skills, the body of evidence suggests that these effects are generally small and may, in some contexts, be entirely absent. 

 

The case 

for mobility 

 

This report argues that migrants boost economic output, at little or no cost to locals. Indeed, there may be broader positive effects, for instance when the availability of migrants for childcare allows resident mothers to work outside the home. As migrants acquire the language and other skills needed to move up the income ladder, many integrate quite naturally, making fears about inassimilable foreigners – similar to those expressed early in the 20th century in America about the 

Irish, for example – seem equally unwarranted with respect to newcomers today. Yet it is also true that many migrants face systemic disadvantages, making it difficult or impossible for them to access local services on equal terms with local people. And these problems are especially severe for temporary and irregular workers. 

In migrants’ countries of origin, the impacts of movement are felt in higher incomes and consumption, better education and improved health, as well as at a broader cultural and social level. 

Moving generally brings benefits, most directly in the form of remittances sent to immediate family members. However, the benefits are also spread more broadly as remittances are spent – thereby generating jobs for local workers – and as behavior changes in response to ideas from abroad. Women, in particular, may be liberated from traditional roles. 

The nature and extent of these impacts depend on who moves, how they fare abroad and whether they stay connected to their roots through flows of money, knowledge and ideas. 

Because migrants tend to come in large numbers from specific places – for example, Kerala in India or Fujian Province in China – community-level effects can typically be larger than national ones. However, over the longer term, the flow of ideas from human movement can have far-reaching effects on social norms and class structures across a whole country. The outflow of skills is sometimes seen as negative, particularly for the delivery of services such as education or health. Yet, even when this is the case, the best response is policies that address underlying structural problems, such as low pay, inadequate financing and weak institutions. Blaming the loss of skilled workers on the workers themselves largely misses the point, and restraints on their mobility are likely to be counterproductive – not to mention the fact that they deny the basic human right to leave one’s own country. 

However, international migration, even if well managed, does not amount to a national human development strategy. With few exceptions (mainly small island states where more than 40 percent of inhabitants move abroad), emigration is unlikely to shape the development prospects of an entire nation. Migration is at best an avenue that complements broader local and national efforts to reduce poverty and improve human development. These efforts remain as critical as ever. 

At the time of writing, the world is undergoing the most severe economic crisis in over half a century. Shrinking economies and layoffs are affecting millions of workers, including migrants. 

We believe that the current downturn should be seized as an opportunity to institute a new deal for migrants – one that will benefit workers at home and abroad while guarding against a protectionist backlash. With recovery, many of the same underlying trends that have been driving movement during the past half-century will resurface, attracting more people to move. It is vital that governments put in place the necessary measures to prepare for this. 

Lebanon in 

the human 

development report

 

Each year since 1990 the Human Development Report has published the human development index (HDI) which looks beyond GDP to a broader definition of well-being. The HDI provides a composite measure of three dimensions of human development: living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), being educated (measured by adult literacy and gross enrolment in education) and having a decent standard of living (measured by purchasing power parity, PPP, income). 

The index is not in any sense a comprehensive measure of human development. It does not, for example, include important indicators such as gender or income inequality nor more difficult to measure concepts like respect for human rights and political freedoms. 

What the index does provide is a broadened prism for viewing human progress and the complex relationship between income and well-being. 

Of the components of the HDI, only income and gross enrolment are somewhat responsive to short term policy changes. For that reason, it is important to examine changes in the human development index over time. 

The human development index trends tell an important story in that respect. HDI scores in all regions have increased progressively over the years although all have experienced periods of slower growth or even reversals. 

This year’s HDI, which refers to 2007, highlights the very large gaps in well-being and life chances that continue to divide our increasingly interconnected world. The HDI for Lebanon is 0.803, which gives the country a rank of 83rd out of 182 countries with data. 

 

Human poverty: focusing on the most deprived in multiple dimensions of poverty 

 

The HDI measures the average progress of a country in human development. The Human Poverty Index (HPI-1), focuses on the proportion of people below certain threshold levels in each of the dimensions of the human development index – living a long and healthy life, having access to education, and a decent standard of living. By looking beyond income deprivation, the HPI-1 represents a multi-dimensional alternative to the $1.25 a day poverty measure. 

The HPI-1 value of 7.6 percent for Lebanon, ranks 33rd among 135 countries for which the index has been calculated. 

The HPI-1 measures severe deprivation in health by the proportion of people who are not expected to survive to the age of 40. Education is measured by the adult illiteracy rate. 

And a decent standard of living is measured by the unweighted average of people not using an improved water source and the proportion of children under the age of 5 who are underweight for their age. 

 

Building the capabilities of women 

 

The HDI measures average achievements in a country, but it does not incorporate the degree of gender imbalance in these achievements. The gender-related development index (GDI), introduced in Human Development Report 1995, measures achievements in the same dimensions using the same indicators as the HDI but captures inequalities in achievement between women and men. It is simply the HDI adjusted downward for gender inequality. The greater the gender disparity in basic human development, the lower is a country’s GDI relative to its HDI. 

Lebanon’s GDI value, 0.784 should be compared to its HDI value of 0.803. Its GDI value is 97.6 percent of its HDI value. Out of the 155 countries with both HDI and GDI values, 127 countries have a better ratio than Lebanon’s. 

 

Migration 

 

Every year, millions of people cross national or international borders seeking better living standards. Most migrants, internal and international, reap gains in the form of higher incomes, better access to education and health, and improved prospects for their children. 

Most of the world’s 195 million international migrants have moved from one developing country to another or between developed countries. 

Lebanon has an emigration rate of 12.9 percent. The major continent of destination for migrants from Lebanon is Northern America with 31.2 percent of emigrants living there. 

 

Remittances 

 

Remittances, which are usually sent to immediate family members who have stayed behind, are among the most direct benefits from migration; their benefits spread broadly into local economies. They also serve as foreign exchange earnings for the origin countries of migrants. However, remittances are unequally distributed. Of the total $370 billion remitted in 2007, more than half went to countries in the medium human development category against less than one per cent to low human development countries. In 2007, $5,769 million in remittances were sent to Lebanon. Average remittances per person were $1,407, compared with the average for Arab states of $125.