Managing Migration for Development: Is Circular Migration the Answer?
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Managing Migration for Development: Is Circular Migration the Answer? by Ronald Skeldon Migration policy has long been considered the prerogative of the receiving state, and that state alone is responsible for selecting who comes within its borders. For the United States, where immigration has been an integral part of state building, immigration policy fashioned a “nation by design.” 1 Today, a more nuanced approach to migration policy has emerged: the idea that population migration can be managed, not just for the benefit of the destination state, but also for the origin states and the migrants themselves. Such an approach brings immigration and development policy into an uneasy dialogue. Officials from State Departments, Home Offices or Ministries of the Interior find themselves in discussions with representatives from development and aid ministries or departments. Migration no longer remains a unilateral matter but emerges as a matter of foreign policy through bilateral and multilateral negotiation among states. The change in the policy environment needs to be placed in the context of new patterns of migration, demography, and economy. Changes in the technologies of transportation and communication have meant that increased numbers of people can move further and faster than ever before. We are certainly in an age of mobility, if not migration. In 2009, only 214 million people or 3.1 percent of the world’s population crossed international borders, a relatively constant percentage over recent decades. 2 More importantly, pressures are building in two specific areas to allow increased numbers of immigrants into countries. First, there is a demand for highly skilled workers to service a globalizing economy, particularly in information technology and finance. A global competition for talent has emerged among the developed economies of the world that the recent financial crisis did not extinguish. 3 Second, the aging population of the developed world generates a demand for medical personnel that is not met locally. The result of these two pressures is an exodus of talent that is seen to be essential for the development of the countries of origin of the migration. A simple causation between the exodus of skilled migration and a lack of development is difficult to sustain, as the situation is more complex and cannot be pursued here. 4 The majority view, that there is a drain of talent from the Ronald Skeldon is a Professorial Fellow at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, and Senior Research Fellow at the United Kingdom Department for International Development, London. 21 The Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations 22 SKeLDOn developing world with negative consequences, helps to explain why policies need to be implemented to manage this flow. To this competition for talent, one further point must be added: the growing realization that many of the skilled, as well as less-skilled migrants to destination countries, are not coming permanently. 5 The global economy provides opportunities for migrants to move on to other areas in a competitive market as well as part of global company networks. People are more “footloose” given the new economy and the nature of the demands for health. However, as will be suggested below, migration may have maintained its status quo even as today’s technological developments in transportation allow more MIgRAtIon no longeR rapid turnover. Migration policy is only now ReMAInS A unIlAteRAl adjusting to some of the realities integral to all MAtteR but eMeRgeS AS A systems of population movement, namely the recognition of the importance of return and MAtteR of foReIgn polICy onward migration. While the management of thRough bIlAteRAl AnD migration covers more than the impermanence of much of current population movement, MultIlAteRAl negotIAtIon circular migration has emerged as one of the AMong StAteS . areas of policy concern. 6 Circular migration, according to one authority, has become the rage in international policy circles. It was identified by a leading policy institute as being one of the top ten migration issues of 2008. 7 It appears to offer a solution to apparently intractable problems in the migration policy area. Circular migration offers a way out to the governments of destination countries as migrants will circulate back to their home areas. Labor can be introduced to undertake essential functions but it will not remain and become a permanent part of the population. Hence, migration can be “sold” to the populations of democracies on the basis that the migrants will go home. The return of migrants will be appreciated by their countries of origin, as the migrants will not only send back remittances during their stay abroad but they will not be irretrievably “lost” to their home economies as a brain drain that will prejudice the potential for development. Migrants will come home to contribute to development. At the same time, the destination countries can no longer be blamed for poaching the best and brightest of the developing world. Lastly, the migrants themselves will benefit from their experience abroad, not only by increasing their earnings but also by learning new skills and absorbing new ideas that can then be applied in their home countries. The above might suggest that circular migration provides a “silver bullet” for migration management. 8 However, when a policy prescription seems too good to be true, it probably is, and some more dispassionate examination is required as to its real development potential. The emergence of circular migration towards the top of the foreign policy agenda changes the way policy makers view migration. So much of policy and current thinking on migration remains centered round the idea that a migration is a permanent movement from origin to destination. Circular migration The Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations MAnAGInG MIGRRATIOn FOR DeveLOPMenT 23 brings a much more realistic approach to the issue even though it is not conceptually new. In fact, it was implicit in the early formulation of generalizations or “laws of migration postulated by the father of modern migration studies, eG Ravenstein, in the late nineteenth century. His fourth law stated that each current of migration produced a compensating counter-current, which would include return movements. 9 AnteCeDentS AnD DefInItIonS The idea of migration as a permanent movement seems to fit the type of mass migrations across the Atlantic to the Americas as millions of europeans sought a new life during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet the historical record indicates otherwise. Many—perhaps the majority—expected to return. Dudley Baines cites rates of return of 20 percent for Scandinavians between 1860 and 1930, under 40 percent for english and Welsh between 1861 and 1913, and 40-50 percent of Italians in the early twentieth century. 10 Walter nugent cites rates of return from Argentina between 1857 and 1914 as 43.3 percent and from Brazil between 1899 and 1912 at about 66 percent. 11 nugent also reports rates of return from the United States between 1908 and 1914 as 52.5 percent, although Zolberg gives figures for departures as 35 percent of arrivals between 1908 and 1923. 12 Considerable variation by groups existed, with Italians as high as 50 percent and Jews, mostly from Russia, at 15-20 percent, declining to just over 4 percent after the Russian pogroms of 1905- 06. The majority of returnees were young men along with smaller numbers of women and children. Italy received about $60 million annually in remittances between 1901 and 1914 and its shipping companies, protected from competition, thrived as a result. 13 Quite apart from the Chinese exclusion Acts, restrictionist sentiment in the United States resulted in piecemeal and contentious legislation, which was prevalent from the early 1890s. Truly effective controls were not implemented until the 1920s with the introduction of national quotas. Immigration during this pre-1920s period of mass migration was occurring, if not within an entirely open system, in one with relatively few restrictions. To term return and short-term migration across the Atlantic at this time as circulation would fit with its more general use in the migration discourse. Circular CIRCulAR MIgRAtIon migration, as it first came into the migration literature, hAS beCoMe the RAge mainly referred to internal migrations, which again In InteRnAtIonAl operate with relatively few restrictions. 14 That said, it must also be recognized that, in certain countries at polICy CIRCleS . certain times, restrictionist policies towards rural to urban migration have been implemented. 15 Some of these internal policies could be as restrictive as any between countries, with perhaps China in the pre-reform era providing one of the best examples. 16 The idea of circular migration operating in an environment of minimal policy intervention requires careful assessment. One of the difficulties of using the term circular migration is to know exactly what it means and how it is to be distinguished www.journalofdiplomacy.org Winter/Spring 2010 24 SKeLDOn from other types of temporary migration. The Dutch geographer, Annelies Zoomers, makes the important point that “circular migration means that migrants are free to come and go, whereas the others [temporary, cyclical or contract migration] are more or less forced and managed forms of temporary residence.” 17 This suggests that the management of circular migration would be a contradiction in terms, that attempts to manage circular migration will simply turn it into a form of temporary labor migration. This contradiction needs to be stressed if policy makers are to consider circular migration as a separate form of migration in the debate on managing migration. Stephen Castles already raised the question whether we are currently seeing a resurrection of guest worker or temporary migrant worker programs. 18 Is circular migration simply one of the new “guises” among these programs or is it something distinct in its own right? Before going on to consider this question in more detail, it is worth pausing to examine the role of circular migration in development.