Week 2: Migration and inclusive growth in Africa

Introduction

Welcome to Week 2 of the course. Last week, you looked at inclusive growth, which has become a widely discussed concept over the last decade. It is:

• useful for making us consider both the economic and non-economic dimensions of development
• an antidote to prioritising economic growth over all other considerations, and as a way of addressing the growing inequalities that have accompanied recent growth periods
• a general concept that organisations like the OECD apply to a wide range of countries, sectors and groups.

This week, we want to focus on how inclusive growth and migration might be linked. The overarching question is: how does inclusive growth enrich our understandings of migration and development? In addressing this question, we focus mainly on two of the course learning outcomes:

2. Understand the main debates and dimensions of inclusive growth.
3. Appreciate and apply some of the methodologies for trying to measure inclusive growth.

2.1 Looking at migrants

Before starting this week’s learning, try Activity 2.1.

Activity 2.1: Where are migrants coming from and going to?

Timing: Allow approximately 5 minutes

Look at Figures 2.1 and 2.2. Where do you think they are arriving and where might they be from?

Figure 2.1 Migrants in a dinghy.

Figure 2.2 Migrants crossing a river.

Discussion

Photographs like these have become commonplace in western media. Terms like ‘migration crisis’ evoke ideas of huge flows of migrants that, in some way, threaten to over-run recipient countries. Those recipient countries are usually seen to be ‘developed’ countries in Europe or North America; the first image is the coast of Lesvos in Greece and the second is of Honduran women crossing the Mexico–US border. When we think of international migration – particularly those of us based in the Global North – we usually think of migration from the Global South to the Global North. We will look at what this assumption about international migration tells us about development.

When we discuss migration and development, we often do so in particular ways:

• Much of the literature – like the photos in Activity 2.1 – assumes that the flows are from poorer countries of the Global South to wealthier countries of the Global North. In fact, most international migration – that is, migration from one country to another – is ‘south–south’, meaning that migrants move from one Global South country to another. In the context of Africa, 75% of international African migrants are in another African country (Flahaux and de Haas, 2016).
• Something linked to the point above is that these migrant flows set up further flows in other directions. You may have heard of ideas like the ‘brain drain’, which refers to the loss of talent from Global South countries as skilled migrants leave. The assumption about migrant flows being south–north is that remittances (financial flows from international migrants back to their families in their ‘home’ countries) back to the Global South are seen as compensation. Sometimes these remittances are ‘pooled’, so that a group of migrants may, for example, support their home community in some way rather than just their immediate families. This has become the mainstream view of migration and development, with much of the focus being on the scale of remittance flows back to the Global South.
• The focus of much migration and development literature is on particular levels. For example, remittance flows are calculated as a percentage of overall GDP, a measure of income for an entire country; meaning the focus is at the national level. Alternatively, some study remittances within households and what that means for the well-being of these households, as well as for things like inequality between households and inflation. These levels are treated as discrete – either national or household – but they are often inter-connected. When a particular region has a lot of successful migrants, then remittances can benefit that region. This in turn can lead to inequalities between regions within a country. We need approaches that cut across or connect levels, and address key areas of uncertainty in migration and development debates around whether and how migration affects inequality.

We think that inclusive growth (IG) offers one way to move beyond these limiting assumptions. It allows us to see ‘development’ as multi-faceted, rather than being reduced to one or two indicators like remittances or GDP growth. The mainstream view of migration and development also misses out on some important things like south–south migration and more intangible outcomes like gender awareness.

This week we will examine these debates in more detail and look at how IG can enrich our understanding of the complex linkages between migration and development. You will also get a chance to apply some of the IG concepts and methodologies to real data on migrants.

2.2 How do we conceptualise migration and development?

Let’s delve a little deeper into how we conceptualise the linkages between migration and development.

As Figures 2.1 and 2.2 and the ensuing discussion in Activity 2.1 suggested, migration can evoke powerful emotions. Ideas of ‘crisis’ conjure up negative ideas of migrants coming in large numbers, threatening jobs or social services, or even the very way of life of the host community. Politicians and activists may play on these sentiments for political gain. The idea of ‘brain drain’ is generally a bad thing for the sending countries, but potentially good for the receiving countries if those skilled migrants can apply their skills. Remittances are generally seen to be a ‘good’ thing for the households that receive them back home.

Debates around migration and development are often presented in polarised terms, either good or bad, which varies with the standpoint of the observer. Part of this standpoint is about where the person observing and making these claims about migration is located. Does the development that occurs because of the migrant’s movement accrue to the receiving country or the sending country – or both?

In this section, we want to summarise the main debates about the positive and negative impacts of migration on development.

Activity 2.3: Applying de Haas’ framework

Timing: Allow approximately 15 minutes

To delve deeper into the complex and sometimes contradictory relationships between migration and development, watch Video 2.1. It is a ‘primer’ by the Oxford Migration Observatory and includes an interview with Dr Carlos Vargas-Silva, who is a migration expert.

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Transcript: Video 2.1 Oxford Migration Observatory interview with Dr Carlos Vargas-Silva.

ROB McNEIL:

When large numbers of people move from developing countries to developed countries, it seems clear that there’ll be impact for both the sending country and the receiving country. I’m here to discuss the impact of migration on international development with Dr Carlos Vargas-Silva, senior researcher at the Migration Observatory at Oxford University.

So Carlos, does migration affect international development – and if so, how can we measure that?

CARLOS VARGAS-SILVA:

Well, most of the literature concludes that migration increases global welfares, and the way they measure this, or the conclusion, is that a small increase in migration of less than 5% at global levels can increase global welfare by the hundreds of millions of US dollars. So a small increase in migration can lead to a big increase in global welfare.

Now, this increase in global welfare can be divided in three parts: you have the increasing welfare of the sending country, the increasing welfare of the migrant, and the increasing welfare of the receiving country. A lot of the increasing welfare is increasing welfare of the migrant that was earning a low wage, or a lower wage, in the sending country, and migrates, and now receives a larger wage in the host country.

So to a certain degree, the increase in global welfare does not necessarily lead to increase in development. Now, migrants, usually when they migrate they keep some connection with their home countries. And the connection of migrants with their home countries and their relationship and their money transfers and other social transfers are the way in which migration affects development.

ROB McNEIL:

So is poverty the main reason that people leave their home country?

CARLOS VARGAS-SILVA:

Well, income levels are one of the important reasons. But what you have to think about when you think about income levels is that a lot of times, if you’re really poor, if you don’t have money to travel and to migrate – even if you want to migrate and you can take advantage of that – then you’re not going to be able to do it. The classic example is Africa, where a lot of the residents of Africa could earn higher wages in other countries, but they don’t migrate because they don’t have enough money to pay for the trip. So there’s a limitation in the case of underdevelopment and poverty in regards to migration.

The implication of that is that increased development and welfare levels in developing countries – in some developing countries – may lead to more migration instead of less migration, because as they move off in the income categories, then they are going to be able to afford to move and they can move to other countries where they can get higher incomes.

ROB McNEIL:

If developing countries provide training for people who are then able to emigrate, does that have a negative impact on those sending countries?

CARLOS VARGAS-SILVA:

Yeah, there’s the notion of a ‘brain drain’ that basically says that developing countries are training their citizens with their limited resources, and then these people leave to developed countries that take advantage of that training. So in some sense, there is a movement, or a drain, of these human capital levels of developing countries.

Now, recently there has been also a notion of a ‘brain gain’: that basically says that in order to get educated, people need some incentive – and that incentive is usually the expectation of receiving a certain salary. And in developing countries, salaries or wages for certain professions are very low, so the possibility of migrating allows these people or encourages people to get educated because they may receive, in the end, a higher salary in the other country.

Now, if everyone migrates and everyone that is educated migrates from a country, then actually you have a brain drain. But if just a portion of those migrate, then the possibility of migration may increase the human capitals of the country, because it increases the expected salary in some professions.

ROB McNEIL:

When people gain skills in a developed country, can that then bring benefits to their home country?

CARLOS VARGAS-SILVA:

There’s also the notion of a ‘brain bank’. So people return home in a lot of cases. So they come to developed countries, they get educated and they go back. And their skills and the skills that they take with them are going to affect development levels of those countries – so in some sense, yes, you can have a feedback effect into developing countries.

In addition to that, people may acquire some other things, such as business experience and knowledge about certain technologies in developed countries that they can take with them to developing countries. They don’t even have to migrate – just the fact that they have knowledge of those things and that they have a relationship with the developing country means that they can invest the money, and they can transfer that knowledge to the developing country.

ROB McNEIL:

So is it generally positive, then, for migrants to send home money from a developed to a developing country?

CARLOS VARGAS-SILVA:

What we have seen in the last decades is that the level of remittances at global levels has increased dramatically. Now remittances stand at over US$300 billion, which is a very large amount. And for a lot of countries, remittances account for more than 10% of GDP. So these flows are very important for developing countries.

Now, there are positive effects of remittances and there are negative effects of remittances. One of the positive effects is that a lot of these transfers are invested in education, so receiving households use this money to send children to school. In a lot of cases, these flows are also invested in small businesses, and this can provide the initial capital that that is necessary to start the business – and this is very important, because a lot of developing countries lack credit markets where people can get this money.

However, on the other hand we have evidence that receiving this money sometimes results in a decrease in the labour supply of some receiving households, and this is similar to what will happen with some international welfare system in which people receive this money so there’s less incentive to work. There is also some evidence that remittances appreciate the real exchange rate, and this has a negative effect on the export sector.

ROB McNEIL:

Is money the primary resource that gets sent home?

CARLOS VARGAS-SILVA:

It is likely that money is the primary, but it’s not the only one. Migrants also send social norms, ideas of behaviour and other things back home, not only money. One of the examples is, in Mexico there’s evidence that migrants have sent democratic ideas: so they go to the United States, where the rule of the law is followed more strictly – they get those ideas there, and when they go back home then they want to apply that and they want the law to be followed more strictly.

Sometimes migrants go to countries where politicians are held accountable for their actions. So when they go back home, maybe politicians before there were not accountable, but now they want that because they have seen that working in the receiving countries, in the countries that they migrated to.

ROB McNEIL:

Where migration is happening, is there a way to improve the benefits that migration brings to developing countries?

CARLOS VARGAS-SILVA:

As I mentioned at the beginning, there is a lot of evidence that migration can increase global welfares. But this is not the only way in which a government, a receiving country government, can make migration more development-friendly. There are different ways. One way that is very popular is to have a remittances portal, which is a website in which migrants can go and compare prices from different remittances companies, and they can select the best that offers them the best deal. So that’s an easy way for the government to support development through migration.

Another example is governments that support migrant organisations when they are making investments back home. So they can basically match up some quantity of money that these migrant organisations are donating for development projects in the sending country with some money, and basically make the project bigger. This is very important, because migrant organisations know the needs of developing countries very well, and they know the needs of the regions where they come from. So it is usually the case that this one is going to be well invested.

ROB McNEIL:

Carlos, thank you very much.

CARLOS VARGAS-SILVA:

Thank you.

End transcript: Video 2.1 Oxford Migration Observatory interview with Dr Carlos Vargas-Silva.

Video 2.1 Oxford Migration Observatory interview with Dr Carlos Vargas-Silva.

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As you watch the video, try to find examples of the different views of migration that de Haas identifies. Make some brief notes, under the three headings of optimistic, pessimistic and pluralist.

Optimistic	Pessimistic	Pluralist
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Words: 0

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Discussion

It is not always easy to neatly allocate the things that Dr Vargas-Silva mentioned into the categories that de Haas set up, but we have made some notes in the table below. It was interesting that the interviewer said early on that migration is from developing to developed countries, which reinforces our contention that too much focus is given to south–north migration.

Optimistic	Pessimistic	Pluralist
Global welfare – sending, migrant, receiving – but mainly for the migrant Other social transfers Brain gain and income opportunities Other knowledges acquired Remittances – invested in education, start-up capital	Brain drain	Other social transfers Only wealthier can migrate Brain bank – feedback effect Remittances – may reduce incentives to work Norms and behaviours, e.g. rule of law

Video 2.1 reveals that the outcomes of migration for development are complex and can differ between the sending country, the receiving country and the migrant. What benefits the migrant may not benefit either the sending or receiving country, or what benefits the receiving country is a net loss to the sending country, or vice versa.

It also reveals that the development outcomes are not singular. Some concern income – what was referred to as global welfare – and these finances had knock-on effects like start-up capital or paying for education in the sending country. But it could also be more intangible effects like attitudes towards gender or the rule of law, which may be less immediate or visible, but nonetheless are important for development.

Can we find a coherent framework for linking migration and these diverse development outcomes? Let’s look at what IG offers us.

2.3 What does inclusive growth add to our understanding of migration and development?

In Week 1, we looked at the general idea of IG; this week, we have been looking at the complex linkages between migration and development. In this section, we want to bring these two aspects together by looking at migration and IG together.

IG contains elements of different theories, but is more in what de Haas would call the pluralist camp: it seeks to combine social and cultural factors with economic ones, and to give us a more nuanced understanding of the levels and geographical factors that link migration and development outcomes.

Let’s start by revisiting the MIAG framework that you looked at in Week 1. Take a minute to refresh your memory of the framework, which seeks to capture the interplay of economic and non-economic factors for well-being outcomes.

Figure 2.3 MIAG framework.

In the rest of this week, we are primarily concerned with the outcomes for IG, whereas in Week 4 we focus more on the red part of the framework at the bottom of Figure 2.3, which relates to the policy implications. The challenge we need to consider is how we combine the economic and non-economic factors in researching and analysing migration. The following activity involves hearing from various migration experts reflecting on how they have attempted to grapple with these issues. Then the following two activities give you the opportunity to look at real data to get hands-on experience of trying such an analysis for yourself.

Activity 2.4: Linking migration and IG

Timing: Allow approximately 30 minutes

This activity involves watching Videos 2.2–2.5, which include extracts from a webinar that took place in November 2021. The webinar brought together world-leading experts on migration and development and was structured as a conversation rather than discrete presentations. They are:

• Dilip Ratha (The World Bank)
• Oliver Bakewell (University of Manchester)
• Heaven Crawley (Coventry University)

As you watch, reflect on the following questions and identify the issues where the speakers agreed and differed:

1. What did the speakers think we should look at when considering the linkages between migration and development?
2. What mechanisms did the speakers identify that link migration and development outcomes?
3. What is the appropriate geographical framing for looking at migration and development?
4. In broad terms, what did they feel should be done to enhance the contribution of migration to development?

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Transcript: Video 2.2 Theme 1: How are migration and development linked?

Dilip Ratha:

Migration is integral to development. It’s integral in the sense that these two are not separable, and it’s for the simple reason that, if by ‘development’ we mean somebody doing or someplace doing better than other people or other places, there would be mobility. And by the way, that goes the other way around: if somebody is doing worse, or some place is doing worse, than other people or other places, there will be also movement appropriately. So, migration is integral to development, and if we don’t allow that process to work – that people are able to move – then some people are getting hurt in a big way. And the community as a whole is hurt also, in a big way, but we don’t know by how much.

Oliver Bakewell:

From our perspective, they are fundamentally intertwined. Without migration mobility, there is going to be no change in development. But at the same time, development, social change, will affect the way people move. The two things are completely intertwined. I do tend to see migration mobility perhaps as more fundamental – it’s just such a basic part of human life. And you can talk to the demographers, and one of the confusing things to them is people are born, then they move around the world, and then they die somewhere else. And that’s what we do as human beings.

Heaven Crawley:

MIDEQ stands for ‘Migration for Development and Equality’, and I suppose it kind of captures what we see as being the relationship, in a sense, which is that we see that migration has the potential to contribute towards development, but also towards equality. And so at the heart of the way in which we’re looking at these issues is this relationship. Not just between migration and development, but rather between migration and inequalities and equality in the context of development, because there’s no necessary, linear or simple relationship between migration and development, as we know, and as you’ve talked about. So our focus of our work in MIDEQ is really specifically on south–south migration.

Dilip Ratha:

People say that the root causes of migration, the fundamental drivers of migration –poverty, inequality, unemployment, all the bad things – that’s a developing country problem. And the rich country problem is integrating all these people and trying to keep the flows minimal, so that the social contract between the state and the people in the rich countries is not somehow undermined. That dichotomy is failing. That dichotomy – I mean, recently you had the truck driver issues in the UK, the whole supply chain issue globally, it has a lot to do with migrants and migratory flows. And I think both rich countries, as senders of migrants and recipients of migrants, is very much true. The same way for poor countries, I think the issue of integrating immigration or dealing with challenges posed to native-born workers by foreign-born workers is very, very tangible as well. So, truly migration is a global development issue.

Heaven Crawley:

If we were to talk about the inequalities that underpin that, we’d have a very different conversation. And part of that conversation would be how global capitalism is working, and how it’s exploiting, both within the periphery and outside, to its own advantage. With the consequences to the human beings that are involved. So I think a conversation about inequality takes us to a very different place in terms of how we think about this conceptually, but also politically.

Dilip Ratha:

The really big question that we have not been able to address, either as a research community or in the World Bank: this whole issue of the social contract between the nation states and the people. If a country suddenly has a lot of migrants and the population increases the share of the new people – if that exceeds half of the population, in a democracy they would have the power, right? So who does a nation belong to? Who does the nation state belong to? Or this whole question of nation and state being connected – are they really connected or should they not be connected anymore?

Oliver Bakewell:

The trouble with much of our analysis of development – especially that coming from development studies – is it pays far too little attention to people’s movement. We conceptualise development in a rather static way. We are thinking about states, the development of states. And as Dilip was suggesting, when a lot of people move to a new place, it raises all sorts of questions. What does the state look like now? What is the nation? How do we measure the success –the change in development of that place – if people are coming and going from it? States or geographical regions as containers of development, I think maybe is quite problematic.

End transcript: Video 2.2 Theme 1: How are migration and development linked?

Video 2.2 Theme 1: How are migration and development linked?

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Transcript: Video 2.3 Theme 2: What mechanisms link migration and development?

Heaven Crawley:

An instinct might be to say, ‘Well then, people shouldn’t be allowed to migrate, because you’re creating inequalities’ – but that fails to take note of the really important point, which is that it’s the better off people that migrate in the first place. I mean, we know from almost every context where we work in, that where people are living in extreme poverty with no resources, those are not the people who are able to move.

Oliver Bakewell:

Cross-border trade is really, really important. One of the casualties, if you like, of the way that we are talking about migration – so often it comes into discussion about borders and about how we manage what goes on at borders. I’m thinking of the cross-border movements I’ve seen on Zambia, Angola, but also in between Sudan and Ethiopia, where the day-to-day crossings are vitally important for people’s livelihoods.

They’re sanctioned and enabled by the border officials who are there – but there’s no paperwork, necessarily. It’s completely informally done, but it’s recognised and accepted. And I think that’s one of the dangers of trying to work out how those sorts of informal institutions of cross-border trade can be sustained in the face of this concern about regularising, controlling, taking the fingerprints, and all that stuff of the well-managed border.

Heaven Crawley:

We do that through the kind of construct of a migration corridor that’s used by others – including Dilip, I know – because what we’re interested in is not just the impact or the consequences of migration in the countries to which migrants go, but also the two-way flows, the relationships, between countries of origin, if you like, and countries of destination. Because I’m sure we’ll hear more from Dilip about remittances for example, but those flows are more than just remittances.

Dilip Ratha:

Big news is that remittances are no longer small change. Since 2015, if you excluded China from the group of low- and middle-income countries, remittances are now larger than both official development assistance, official aid, and foreign direct investment that goes through all the multinational companies together – meaning remittances are larger than both ODA and FDI together. On average, remittances from the north – so that means high-income OECD countries – was about four times the average size of remittances coming from the poorer countries.

Then the real interesting question in dollar terms here is the values are higher – but in terms of impact on poverty, which one is better? And I kind of think that south–south migration might have a deeper impact on poverty reduction. But then there are other links, like trade tourism, investment skill transfers, technology transfers, philanthropy and then impacts on values. And of all of them, and I say that with having searched for tangible things about all other things, but I have not found a lot other than anecdotes, anecdotes, anecdotes.

Heaven Crawley:

Migration is really just a consequence, often, of other things, including inequalities. So we’re really interested in how inequalities drive migration, potentially, but also how migration can itself help to reduce inequality. So, for example, we know that migration can reduce inequalities and contribute to development through remittances, through the exchange of opportunities for education, the transfer of other things – but it can also increase inequalities by, for example, accelerating those differences within communities.

For example, our research is showing that within southern Ethiopia, the remittance transfers back are actually creating inequalities in the region where most migrants come from. Some communities, some families, can access healthcare, education, employment opportunities, businesses, that others can’t. And so there’s inequalities being generated or reinforced in countries of origin as well as the countries to which migrants travel. There are flows of knowledge, ideas, relationships, interactions, culture, music – there are multiple different ways in which these flows take place.

End transcript: Video 2.3 Theme 2: What mechanisms link migration and development?

Video 2.3 Theme 2: What mechanisms link migration and development?

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Transcript: Video 2.4 Theme 3: Over what geographical scales do we study migration and development?

Heaven Crawley:

Migration, as we know, is embedded in the context in which it takes place: in the social context, the political context, the economic context, and the relationships between those different dimensions. And so to look at migration, I would argue – as somebody who works in migration, this might seem a little odd – but I would say that the biggest problem with migration research is that it focuses on migration.

Oliver Bakewell:

My viewpoint is: the movement within Africa, it’s another continent like all the others, and there’s not necessarily such a huge difference. So rather than looking at African migration as a special thing, many things about the movement, like these questions of integration: there’s fascinating things going on where the majority of people, migrants from Africa, move to other parts of the continent. There’s virtually no integration policies across the continent.

Heaven Crawley:

There’s much that we could and need to know about migration itself, but it’s ultimately embedded in context – and those contexts are incredibly different. And you know, what happens at different ends of the corridors also is very different. So you can’t presuppose that, even if you had forms of movement, forms of experience of migration that are similar, the consequences will be different – because they’re embedded in entirely different contexts.

We mustn’t sort of, well, reduce the south to being singular in its experience, or Africa. I mean, we’re talking about a continent that’s as big as four of the main continents on the planet. The complexity and the diversity of that migration is huge, absolutely huge. And only by understanding that diversity, I think, can we really get to what’s going on. We have, if you like, the kind of core and periphery of north and south, but we also have cores and peripheries within the south, within the north – and indeed within both sets of countries.

Dilip Ratha:

The other thing is – again, Heaven alluded to that – south–south migration is larger than south–north migration. And in Africa, 70% of the cross-border migration is within Africa. And the developmental links, particularly through remittances but in other ways, are actually broken in Africa, in sub-Saharan Africa. So you had the migration – south–south migration and international migration – very, very significant in terms of size and in its importance to the economies and to households, to people. But developmental links are actually fragmented, disrupted, ruptured because of policy, and there should be many low-hanging fruits there to harvest.

End transcript: Video 2.4 Theme 3: Over what geographical scales do we study migration and development?

Video 2.4 Theme 3: Over what geographical scales do we study migration and development?

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Transcript: Video 2.5 Theme 4: What policy responses might we imagine?

Dilip Ratha:

National boundaries are lines in the sand that we have drawn and winds of change will blow them away. We know that, right? But that is not being talked about. That is why we have the conflict constantly, and that’s why it seems like us versus them and all sorts of issues. So it becomes very difficult and I think I know by raising that issue I make the whole issue very intractable.

So then we kind of do what we are more able to do, which is focus on a few issues, bringing the whole challenge down to a few practical issues, and then try to sort them out. So go more the bottom-up way rather than the top-down way. I think that makes sense.

Oliver Bakewell:

The borders do matter. People are crossing them and they’re crossing them in ways which aren’t necessarily regulated by states. That doesn’t mean they’re not regulated, but states don’t necessarily have the laws in place, the policies. But people still move and it’s accepted as local conventions which enable that to happen.

Heaven Crawley:

It’s not that there has to be a policy solution for everything. There is a tendency – particularly in migration, I think – to think we need policies for everything. And a lot of things, a lot of the problems that are created in the migration world, are caused by policies. We know that, in terms of preventing people from moving across borders, returning, people become trapped. The fact that they’re not able to do what they would choose to do, they have to be constrained within these policy frameworks that are often very artificial, and as others have said, designed as much I think to appeal to an internal audience as much as an external one.

Oliver Bakewell:

There’s a whole sort of set of incentives to develop policies which look good internationally. I often have great doubts about how far many large parts of the state actually buy into that, and buy into those concerns and interests. Because there’s so many other interests on migration about business interests, about people moving back and forth, people need the labour, the trade. And if you try to follow too much of the policy, especially when you’re talking about the borders – we’re not talking about airports, we talking about the land borders. The resources you’d need to make it look like European, well-managed migration – come on, we could do something better with development money than invest in that!

Dilip Ratha:

At a more practical level, what can we do? On facilitating remittances we can do a few things, very easy to do, but then we get into the whole issue of the Homeland Security type or interior affairs ministries of every country in the world, every country in the world. So I’m not saying it is only UK or US, it is also India and Nigeria and Mexico. Everywhere in the world.

The interior ministry and the treasury ministry and the development ministry don’t get along. I mean, you know, that’s why they are there as separate entities. So that also is there. I feel it very much in my work on a day-to-day basis. So even small things, like introducing fintech and recognising that small remittances are not money laundering, is very difficult.

The other sort of broad-brush message that is dawning on me more recently is that we have been thinking about addressing root causes of migration by creating employment, reduce poverty, all the good things – and that’s a win-win. Of course we should reduce poverty, of course we should share prosperity, and migration is the best way of sharing prosperity – absolutely the best way.

So I had a meeting with a World Bank president once, and he asked, ‘What can we do about reducing poverty?’ And I said, ‘How fast do you want to do it?’ And I said, ‘You want to reduce world poverty in one year? Open up the borders. You will see. Just open up the borders all over the world.’

Heaven Crawley:

The problem with the policies, of course, is they almost always are quite similar. Even in Africa now, you have quite similar policies to those that we’ve seen in the Global North over recent years. So I think is really a point about the interrelationship between migration and the spatial context, but how that’s being flattened out if you like, by the political debate and how the inequalities underpinning it are also being flattened out because people aren’t talking about them. They’re only talking about the kind of physical manifestation of those inequalities, which is, in many cases, the movement of people.

When you talk about exploitation of people in labour markets in many different contexts, part of that exploitation comes from the fact that they’re migrants, but part of it comes from the fact of their irregularity or uncertainty, or the lack of longevity around that status. Many of the inequalities that we’re seeing are not intrinsic to migration, but a reflection of the policies that are put in place to manage it, or the absence of those policies – when I’m talking, for example, about the lack of status and the lack of rights that migrants have in many contexts.

A lot of the work that’s been done around access to justice and rights for migrants is rightly oriented towards the employment sphere, but that’s hardly the only one that matters. They also have aspirations in relation to education for themselves and their children, access to healthcare – there are multiple other ways in which people feel they have injustices in the migration experience.

Oliver Bakewell:

I agree with Heaven that, actually, we need to move a lot of the focus away from migration. It’s – again, as both Dilip and Heaven have suggested – it’s often seen as a problem to be managed and addressed. I think in terms of policy and practice, moving that focus will probably be very helpful. But as analysts, I think we still have a lot more work to do in terms of understanding how migration filters through into the way we conceptualise the world, conceptualise processes like development.

So it’s try to understand – so rather than focusing on migration as something to be tackled, it’s an underlying process. It’s there, and how do we bring that into our analysis of the things, the politics, the sociology, the economics of the world that we see around us?

Heaven Crawley:

Basically, you need to create more, what you might call safe and legal pathways to migration. You know, people become illegal because there are no other opportunities to leave. It’s very straightforward. And the demand, because of reasons of demographic change and otherwise, is very high for that movement to happen, including to Europe. It’s really about the political will to do it.

I mean, I’ve personally, after sort of 30 years of this, come to the conclusion that, as much as anything, we need to get that evidence to different people. Not to politicians and policy-makers, but to groups of interested parties who have potentially not had nothing to do with migration in the past, but are interested in issues of social justice and injustice, and can mobilise around some of these issues – not in a way that focuses on migration, but focuses on inequality and in social injustice for large numbers of people who are being marginalised, including, but not exclusively, migrants.

So I think mobilising from the bottom up right now is probably the best way that we can try to do that, and by getting our evidence to those people and engaging them in that process, really.

Dilip Ratha:

I think the policy message has to shift from addressing root causes to putting up with migration means that we need to move away from keeping this issue in the south and say, ‘Let’s look at south–south migration, let’s look at only addressing the problems there,’ to sort of look at ourselves in the mirror and say, ‘Hey, what can we do to live with migration?’ I think we need to do that.

End transcript: Video 2.5 Theme 4: What policy responses might we imagine?

Video 2.5 Theme 4: What policy responses might we imagine?

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Discussion

The discussion was broad-ranging and jumped from quite focused and ‘tangible’ issues (like remittances) to very important global issues that have no obvious focus, such as climate change and the future of the nation state. All the speakers agreed that migration and development are closely intertwined, and saw mobility as central to development processes rather than something ‘wrong’ that needed to be managed away.

An interesting point raised by Dilip Ratha was that migration researchers may focus on something tangible or smaller-scale because it is manageable in terms of analysis or in recommending policy actions. As people who have done this for much of their professional careers, the speakers were not arguing that this was the wrong thing to do, but they were insistent that we must also look at the ‘bigger’ picture. For Dilip, one of these bigger issues was what he called the social contract between people and the state. He argued that nation states are somewhat artificial constructs, yet they exert a powerful force on all our lives even as they create huge contradictions and tensions as a result. We have inter-state conflicts, migrants are often stopped from moving by national borders and forced into illegality as a result, or ‘citizens’ may feel their nation is being swamped by migrants who are at the same time delivering vital services. He said that things like climate change showed the limitations of thinking in terms of territorial states because many powerful forces don’t operate by such logics.

Heaven Crawley usefully framed the links between migration and development as about inequality; she even argued that the issue is not the migration aspect but the inequality aspect. Inequality can drive migration and migration in turn shapes (in)equalities. If we take this view, she argued, then we need to understand what creates inequalities in the first places – such as capitalism – but equally to acknowledge that migration can only ever impact on these inequalities to a limited degree. At one point she discusses the point that only the better off migrate and that the really poor and the really rich rarely migrate, because the poor can’t afford to and the rich don’t need to. In this way, she also linked more focused issues of migration and inequality to much wider challenges around the ways in which capitalism creates winners and losers.

This insight about migration, inequality and development also opened a point that all speakers agreed upon about migration and development being a two-way process that links the different locations where migrants are living and where they are ‘from’. Heaven mentioned remittances and Oliver mentioned cross-border trade. This two-way set of flows also meant that we have to focus on the local contexts where migration is occurring.

The speakers also agreed that ‘development’ was much more than financial flows, like remittances. Dilip mentioned the ‘intangible’ aspects that people only discussed anecdotally, while the other speakers also mentioned things like skills, values, beliefs, etc. that are part of these two-way flows. It was interesting that researchers may focus on more tangible aspects like remittances and investments because they can be ‘counted’, whereas intangible aspects – like women’s equality – is harder to pin down and so gets relatively ignored.

Running through various discussions were important questions of scale and geography. All speakers noted that south–south migration is important, and that international migration is not just about south–north flows. Heaven also noted that ‘the south’ is not homogenous, so we must avoid talking in too general terms – which brings us back to the question of context being important. Another interesting aspect to this was an issue raised by Oliver about whether Africa was somehow ‘different’. His argument, echoed by the others, was that migration in, to and from Africa raises similar questions to other migration flows. He echoed Dilip in arguing that some of this is about the nation state and how well migrants are ‘integrated’ into their host societies; no country anywhere in the world has dealt with this well.

There was much discussion around policies and actions that respond to these migration and development challenges. We will return in more detail to this in Week 4 of this course, but some of the speakers’ provocations are worth noting here:

• The first issue relates to the normality of migration. If we accept that migration is part and parcel of all development, then it should be encouraged. Policymakers and international organisations should do more to facilitate mobility, but this runs into the logic of the nation state system, which seeks to limit and control movement. This is one of the biggest tensions in the world today.
• All agreed that there’s only so much that policy can achieve, and that we should not feel we need a policy for everything – Dilip talked about addressing more ‘tractable’ issues. Policies also tend to look similar and do not address contextual issues, and the speakers raised the issue of whether the audience for these policies are domestic constituencies or in fact international institutions, such as donors.
• Heaven picked up on this to say that migration is always politicised and used by vested interests to make some political capital – for example, they may ‘blame’ migrants for some inequality, whereas the inequality was deep-seated and existed irrespective of migration.
• Similarly, when discussing climate change and migration, commentators often see the problem as one of climate migrants coming to the Global North to escape poverty and ecological change, whereas the real problem is excessive consumption of goods, which generate greenhouse gases. In this case, migrants become the targets of political debate and so divert attention from the actual causes.

While these experts have many years of researching migration, we all have our own experiences and expertise. On these matters, as with all the social world, there are no unequivocally ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ opinions. So, you may wish to reflect on whether you agreed more with one or more of the speakers and, if so, why? There is no ‘correct’ answer. All standpoints are valid, and it is up to you to justify your own position using ideas and evidence.

From the activity, you can see that these experts tend to agree on a number of things that are central to our framing of migration and IG:

• the intertwining of migration and development
• development encompasses many tangible and intangible aspects
• migration creates two-way flows so we have to understand multiple contexts
• south–south migration is very important
• addressing the development challenges associated with migration may mean addressing ‘big’ structural issues rather than home in on migration as ‘the problem’.

In different ways, the speakers also raised methodological challenges about how you research these things, which we now turn to.

2.4 Analysing migration and inclusive growth data: quantitative

In Week 1, you looked at some quantitative data from the World Bank and other international organisations to understand some global trends in growth and how far they were ‘inclusive’ or ‘non-inclusive’. Week 1 also covered the need to combine data to get a fuller picture of what sorts of growth were occurring in any given context. In this and the next section, we want to put some of those general observations into practice by analysing some data on migration and inclusive growth drawn from the MIAG project.

Broadly speaking, the MIAG project sought to understand what role migration played in Africa’s inclusive growth. As discussed in Week 1, ‘big’ data can help us to understand trends at the national level and patterns of growth and inequality between nations. Likewise, data on migration can get a sense of the numbers of migrants in a country, as well as the net flows in and out of that country. We call this macro-level data. Of course, all this ‘official’ data only counts what can be counted, or what a nation state is able to count, so it is never fully accurate. For example, some states have weak capacity and so do not routinely collect some data, or when it comes to flows of migrants, many may enter a country illegally – which means they won’t get counted in formal immigration records. Despite these limitations, big data can help us understand some general trends.

But if we wanted to understand, for example, how migrant businesses recruit labour and what sorts of labour they prefer, it’s very difficult to get this information from national-level data. Equally, if we wanted to know about the skills levels of women migrants, we can’t get that from an international database. Because MIAG sought to understand migration’s impact on growth outcomes, we had to use other data-collection methods to get at these micro-level issues, such as:

• a business survey with immigrant businesses in the four African countries
• a survey of a smaller number of non-immigrant businesses to see if one type of business was more or less likely to bring about IG
• semi-structured interviews with various kinds of participants, such as migrant associations, leading figures in a particular migrant community, or officials with a responsibility for immigration and business matters.

MIAG sought to collect different sorts of data and combine them to help us analyse the complex links between migration and development. These data-collection methods break down crudely into quantitative and qualitative approaches. You don’t need to worry about understanding these methodological approaches in detail, but Table 2.1 summarises the key differences.

The semi-structured interviews are a qualitative approach, and the analysis of the macro-data is a quantitative approach. The surveys lie somewhere in the middle. A survey can generate quantitative data with factual or closed questions, such as ‘How many people do you employ?’ But a survey could have more open-ended questions or a spectrum of possible responses, like ‘What was the biggest barrier to setting up your business?’ In our survey, we combined both sorts of questions

Now you can try analysing some quantitative data.

You may have come up with different potential relationships and tentative explanations. What this activity shows is that big data can help us look at trends, but when it comes to definitive answers about whether immigration has caused such trends we can only speculate. This speculation is helpful to an extent, because it points in certain directions that need more investigation. Certainly, we need to know more about whether immigrants bring new investment into the country and whether they create businesses that help reduce the vulnerability of employment. And it is here, as we will find out, that micro, qualitative data can help.

Activity 2.6: Linking immigration to inclusive growth in Africa

Timing: Allow approximately 25 minutes

Now watch Videos 2.6–2.9, where the country experts for Kenya, Mozambique, Ghana and Nigeria try to explain some of the trends in the data, given their local expertise.

As you watch, use the space below to make notes in response to the following questions:

• How has immigration in each country changed over the last 30 years?
• Has this immigration been driven by any changes in the opportunities within each country?
• To what extent has this immigration in turn driven changes in each country’s development?
• Are there any common trends across the four countries?

Show transcript|Hide transcript

Transcript: Video 2.6 Immigration trends in Kenya.

Giles Mohan:

So could you give me a sense of how has immigration to Kenya changed over the last 30 years or so?

Linda Oucho:

There’s more immigration out of the country in the ’90s due to the political and economic situation in the country. So many people are looking for opportunities outside. From 2000 to 2010, we saw a change in the policies in terms of economic opportunities, and we saw an influx of immigrants to the country.

Then in the past ten years, we’ve seen an increased influx of diaspora and immigrants to the country. But the only thing that has remained constant has been the inter-regional migration: so, migrating between Kenya and Tanzania and Uganda. That has been always on the increase. So it has always been on the constant, since 30 years, even 40 years ago.

Giles Mohan:

And could you give a little more information about how some of those migration trends have been driven by changes in opportunities? So have more people come to Kenya as a result of economic opportunities? And if so, what kind of things has been happening in the Kenyan economy that has drawn people in?

Linda Oucho:

In terms of immigrants from outside of the region or the continent, we have seen more immigrants coming to take advantage of growing sectors, like manufacturing, infrastructural development, agriculture, and also oil and gas. So we see that the trend is based on existing and growing sectors that are in the region.

I think manufacturing is mostly dominated by a lot of the Indian nationals, because we’ve seen them work in the sector for some time. In terms of retail – this can even include hospitality – we saw a mix of both British and Indians as well, but it was mostly dominated by British nationals.

In terms of infrastructure development, we saw a lot of the Chinese that have actually dominated that sector, and that includes building of roads, houses. And in terms of trade of like small goods, if you’re looking at trade of food, clothing – second-hand clothing – or just African material, we found that with the migrants from the region in Tanzania and Uganda. We also saw a lot of Nigerians and West Africans in the ICT and banking sector in Kenya. And that, I think, has been in the past ten, 15 years.

Giles Mohan:

Can you give us a sense of what development impacts or inclusive growth impacts we might have seen, if any?

Linda Oucho:

We’ve actually seen the sectors change because they were very rigid before. A lot of different sectors are embracing new types of products. There’s an aspect of skills transfer because they obviously hire locally, so they have to teach them how do the work that they’re doing. So there’s this aspect of they could be creating job opportunities on a long-term basis and not just temporary for that particular sector.

And also, their presence has created competition. Because when there’s competition, people need to be able to give you good-quality products or results or services, and that [leads] businesses in this sector to change the way they do business in Kenya.

End transcript: Video 2.6 Immigration trends in Kenya.

Video 2.6 Immigration trends in Kenya.

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Transcript: Video 2.7 Immigration trends in Mozambique.

Giles Mohan:

Could you just give us an overview of some of the main trends in immigration into Mozambique over the last, say, 20 or 30 years?

Inês Raimundo:

Mozambique is no longer a transit country. Now it’s been a receiving end, because in the previous 30 years it was really a transit country, people coming from northern Africa even before the great invasion of Africa. They were just using Mozambique as a transit to reach South Africa, but now what we are witnessing in Mozambique is a reversal of the process.

For many reasons: from one side, the xenophobic attacks in southern South Africa. That country is no longer a friendly country, which means that people are no longer willing to go to meet or to work in South Africa because of that situation. Since 1992, after the Civil War that we had in Mozambique for 16 years, it means that the conditions of peace were already there and also the investment in country was open for foreign investment.

And behind this investment, of course, we can find migrants. Migrants, those are coming from the countries that are investors, but also the other people that are seeking the opportunities in Mozambique. So actually what is happening: we can see there’s already changes in the city, within the city of Maputo. Twenty years ago or 30 years ago, hardly you could see Muslims people here. Hardly you could see people wearing these long dresses, which means that now we are receiving people, more and more Muslims, and also we are receiving people who, in terms of the way that they’re dressing, are completely different with the normal, all the city-dwellers of Maputo.

But beside Maputo, also up north – if you go up north of Mozambique, also you’ll find a lot of people – migrants – because there are opportunities in the mining sector, forest sector. When I’m talking about mining sectors, I mean the gold mine in the western part of Mozambique. Unfortunately, gold mining is where we find looting in the other regions there, the mining, et cetera.

Because of these investments, the economy is boosting, which means there’s also the infrastructure. The building sector is growing in Mozambique in terms of housing, in terms of roads and including bridges.

Giles Mohan:

Infrastructure obviously is one benefit that these new migration flows have brought, especially with the Chinese. Are there any other benefits that immigration has brought, or is it mainly that area of infrastructure investment?

Inês Raimundo:

We have other categories of migrants. In fact, they are not involved in this big investment or big business. These migrants are formed by Africans. The Africans, of course, they’re coming – opportunities – and the Africans who tried to continue their journey to South Africa, but they didn’t get that opportunity. And they settle here.

The local people, they feel that the Africans give more opportunities to local Mozambican. Even Nigerians, a Nigerian health story. At least one or two Mozambicans, but these big companies, they don’t hire Mozambicans because the argument is Mozambicans are not skilled. They need highly skilled people.

They just find that they came because of bilateral agreements between the government picking the local language. They pretend that they don’t speak the language. The Chinese, they bring even the lowest skilled person. They bring here, not hire the locals Mozambicans. Their own way of doing things.

End transcript: Video 2.7 Immigration trends in Mozambique.

Video 2.7 Immigration trends in Mozambique.

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Transcript: Video 2.8 Immigration trends in Ghana.

Giles Mohan:

How has immigration to Ghana changed over, say, the last 30 years?

Joseph Teye:

Ghana has a long history of immigration, actually it dates back to even the colonial period, where a lot of people migrated to Ghana from the West African subregion to work, in those days, in the cocoa and the mining sectors. And then there were mass expulsions in the 1960s and the 1970s, where a lot of people left Ghana as a result of the mass expulsions which characterised migration governance in West Africa in the 1960s, ’70s, and the early 1980s.

But then there have been increased inflows of migrants again since the year 2000. So you will realise that although the figures on immigrants are not really reliable in the sense that the number of people moving to Ghana through unapproved routes, and those ones are not recorded, the figures shows that. The former figures show that the number of immigrants move from 190,000 to, in 2000, to about 420,000 as of 2017. So it tells you how the figures have been going up in recent years.

So the peak was from 2000. We are increasingly seeing more people from especially Asian countries who are coming to invest in Ghana. They are largely migrants that are investing in the agricultural sector, in the mining sector, in the manufacturing sector and then in also IT sector in Ghana.

Giles Mohan:

Is there anything, I mean, that you can point to that’s happened in the last 15, 20 years, around that 2010 period onwards, that explains that growth? Is it political stability? Is it new opportunities in the economy? Are things going on in Ghana that we can help explain some of those inflows?

Joseph Teye:

So the major thing here is the oil production. So as you see, Ghana found oil in commercial quantities in 2007, and then oil exploitation became dominant from 2010, 2011. And you realise that in the year 2011, Ghana’s economy grew very high. It was one of the highest in the world, growing by 14% in the year 2011 alone. And so because of the oil sector development, new opportunities emerged. That is, also, in addition to investment opportunities that were created.

As early as 1985, Ghana then implemented a new investment promotion code, which sought to give tax exemptions and other tax holidays to foreigners that have come to Ghana to invest. But that did not achieve remarkable results in the 1990s. But in 2010, 2011, when the oil fight and the oil petitions started, it also expanded opportunities in these sectors, as well as existing opportunities in agriculture and the trade sectors. And that is why we have more people moving into Ghana.

The economy has also moved to what is called a low- and middle-income economy with more opportunities for business. We do have a lot of political problems in the West African subregion, and Ghana appears to be more stable. So since 2000, we have an increasing number of people fleeing conflicts in some of the countries into Ghana, and that also accounts for the increased number of people in Ghana.

Giles Mohan:

Do you think these new immigration flows are driving positive changes in Ghana’s development in terms of things like job creation, investment, demand for other supplies and things like that? Or is it a less inclusive form of growth?

Joseph Teye:

Thank you so much. So, the issue is slightly complicated. On one hand, the companies that are coming to Ghana are creating jobs, especially if you are talking about the oil and gas sector. In the oil and gas enclave of the Western region, Takoradi area, some of our earlier researches have shown that new jobs have been created for Ghana. So you have both direct jobs – that is, people who are employed directly by these companies – but you also have indirect jobs, those industries that is trying to provide services to these people.

So, on one hand, jobs have been created and that is good for Ghana. Then there is also increased revenue, revenue in the form of both the taxes that have happened and the royalties that the government gets. So, apart from the oil and gas sector, many of the foreign-owned companies or firms pay taxes, and even the people they bring to Ghana to work also pay taxes, so those are positive.

But having said that, here is also the other side of the development that we need to look at. There are sometimes some Ghanaians feel that foreigners are competing with them for jobs. So the last three companies that had tried to employ Ghanaians, but when we have individual migrants migrating to work in the informal sector, like from China or from Nigeria, there have been agitations from the Ghana trade unions, that these people are competing with them for jobs. So they are seeing the presence of immigrants as negative. So it means they are thinking they are not able to sell their goods, and which is why some of them are out of a job.

The other side that has also come out clearly in the public arena is the environmental consequences, which, if you are looking at inclusive growth, you may also want to look at the effect of the activities of the migrants on the environment. And that has also come out, clearly, especially when you are looking at Chinese in the mining sector of Ghana.

End transcript: Video 2.8 Immigration trends in Ghana.

Video 2.8 Immigration trends in Ghana.

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Transcript: Video 2.9 Immigration trends in Nigeria.

Giles Mohan:

Could you tell us a little bit about the kind of main immigration trends in Nigeria over the last 30 years?

Aderanti Adepoju:

The Nigerian migration architecture has changed dramatically over the past 30 years – 50, 30 years. And the changes have been associated either directly or peripherally with changes in political systems and the economy. 30 years ago, Nigeria was a vibrant economic-based country that had a lot of employment opportunities, particularly for highly skilled persons in petrochemical industries, and manufacturing, and so on.

And that attracted a number of immigrants, semi-skilled and skilled, from across the world. Salaries were highly paid, infrastructure was functionally doing well, and it was an icon of development in Africa then. And it was attracting workers of all categories from neighbouring countries to fill the gap that the nationals couldn’t do.

Ironically, at the same time, nationals also were emigrating out to engage in training and capacities to equip themselves with additional skills to match the demand at home. People were going for educational ventures, learning in technology and medicine, and in allied [industries]. Sadly, that trend didn’t last for too long.

Due to political changes and the intervention of the military that rules in Nigeria for several decades – four or five decades – most of the developmental trends were completed. And that also affected the perception and the flow of people that came to Nigeria to work.

Salaries, one, slowly started a little bit. Labour strikes were unusually common. Universities closed shop severally. And there was contentment in the economy, in the society and equality. In particular, in equality. And that generated not only a stop in the inflow of migrants to Nigeria, but stalled outflow for people that thought they had economically viable credentials to be able to secure employment internationally, because they were marketable internationally then.

Secondly, the currency, the naira, was particularly strong – some people would say overvalued. But it was so strong that people who migrated were able to send money home and invest in business ventures, industry, home construction and so on. People were economically viable and they profited from the ventures.

Thirdly, the Nigerian military developed all kinds of strategies that were not sustainable for the economy. Migration outflow, particularly of qualified personnel, took a very rapid turn. And this meant manpower leakages. Nigeria gradually turned almost dramatically from a labour importing to a labour exporting country.

Giles Mohan:

Would you say of the last few years, has that been reversed? I mean, are you seeing some of those people that left, say, in the ’80s to pursue careers and lives in the UK or in the US –, are those people beginning to come back to Nigeria now? Or is it still a case of net outflow?

Aderanti Adepoju:

The workforce has become largely unemployable. Universities have been on strike. Sometimes a course that can take four years now takes about seven years because of regular, sporadic strike. And the output of graduates are largely unemployable. And that’s a very terrible aspect of the Nigerian labour markets.

End transcript: Video 2.9 Immigration trends in Nigeria.

Video 2.9 Immigration trends in Nigeria.

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Discussion

Kenya

The trends, opportunities and impacts of migration on Kenya are as follows:

• Trends:
  • Political instability led to emigration in the 1990s
  • More recently there have been changes in policies, meaning diaspora return and immigration to Kenya
  • Intra-regional mobility is a constant
• Opportunities:
  • Existing and growing sectors
  • Manufacturing (Indians)
  • Retail and hospitality (Indians and UK)
  • Infrastructure (Chinese)
  • Trading (regional)
  • ICT and banking (Nigerians)
• Impacts:
  • New products
  • Skills transfer and hiring locally
  • Job opportunities
  • Competition

Mozambique

The trends, opportunities and impacts of migration on Mozambique are as follows:

• Trends:
  • Mozambique is no longer a transit country
  • It now receives migrants
  • South Africa is no longer friendly
  • There is peace in Mozambique
  • There are more Muslims in Maputo
  • Migration is not just focused on Maputo
• Opportunities:
  • There is peace in Mozambique
  • The country is open for investment
  • Mining
• Impacts:
  • Buildings and infrastructure
  • Africans are given more opportunities than locals

Ghana

The trends, opportunities and impacts of migration on Ghana are as follows:

• Trends:
  • Long history of migration from colonial period
  • West African region
  • Expulsions in the 1960s and 1970s
  • Immigration has increased since 2000 from 190,000 to 420,000
  • Immigration from Asian countries is increasing
• Opportunities:
  • Mining
  • Agricultural
  • IT
  • Oil discovery in 2007
  • Other investment opportunities following investment policy change
  • Lower and middle income status
  • Political stability
• Impacts:
  • Jobs in some sectors, such as oil and gas
  • Service jobs more indirect
  • Taxes and revenues
  • Competition for jobs
  • Environmental consequences (such as Chinese in mining)

Nigeria

The trends, opportunities and impacts of migration on Nigeria are as follows:

• Trends:
  • Nigeria used to be a vibrant economy
  • Emigration for education and training
  • Military rule undermined development
  • Lots of emigration and reduced immigration
• Opportunities:
  • Nigeria has lots of immigrants, especially from neighbouring countries
• Impacts:
  • Skilled people left
  • Local employment is tight

In terms of common trends, political stability emerges as critical: it has brought inward migration flows in Ghana and Mozambique, whereas political instability in Nigeria and Kenya has led to emigration.

In most cases, immigration is driven by one or two economic sectors, such as oil or mining. Africa’s place in the global economy has largely been as a supplier of raw materials, so these trends are to be expected.

But there are some signs of diversification, with ICT appearing to be a growth area. Chinese migration also seems common across all four cases – as the Chinese economy has grown there has been a growing need for raw materials, while competition in China has forced many Chinese to seek a living overseas.

2.5 How can we delve deeper into these processes?

The last activity on quantitative data revealed some big trends at the national level, but we concluded that it is difficult to establish whether and how migration is linked to IG.

We need qualitative data at the micro-level to try to understand these possible connections. As noted in the last section, we used semi-structured interviews with some key participants. Conducting these interviews usually followed some well-worn paths, but equally, we needed to tailor the approach to the specific project rather than use a one-size-fits-all approach.

For MIAG, we had to:

• identify possible participants
• discuss the project and get their consent to participate
• conduct the interview
• transcribe the interview
• analyse the transcription through a process of coding.

In the next activity, you are going to get involved in the latter stages of this process by coding some of MIAG’s interview transcripts.

Before that, read this short description of what a semi-structured interview involves. As you read, consider why might it be a good technique to unpack some of the processes linking immigration to inclusive growth.

The key is that while we had what Given describes as a ‘tentative conceptual model’ – that migration is linked to IG – we did not want to assume what the mechanisms were that linked the two. We wanted the participants to tell us about their experiences as immigrant business owners, and having a range of topics to be discussed seemed the best way. It also left room for them to go off in directions that we hadn’t necessarily predicted, but which gave us useful insights into the questions we were seeking to answer.

Activity 2.8: Coding transcripts

Timing: Allow approximately 30 minutes

Now watch Videos 2.10–2.13, where Craig Walker and Ben Lampert, both of The Open University, discuss how the MIAG project coded and interpreted these transcripts in relation to the IG concepts.

As you watch the four videos, use the space below to make notes on the following questions:

• Why did MIAG use semi-structured interviews?
• How were the interviews designed?
• How was the data analysed?
• How did MIAG make sense of this data?

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Transcript: Video 2.10 Part 1: Asking structured questions.

Ben Lampert:

Hi. I’m Ben Lampert. I’m a member of the MIAG research team, and I’m here today with Craig Walker, a fellow colleague on the MIAG team who’s been heavily involved in leading the research on the project. So Craig, what I wanted to talk to you about today was your involvement in the semi-structured interviews. You’ve used a number of different methods in the project: why did you decide to add semi-structured interviews into the mix?

Craig Walker:

Yeah. Thanks, Ben. I think inclusive growth is such a complex concept. But not just that theoretical understanding, but actually to analyse it empirically. We’ve seen this from all those frameworks that are out there.

That multitude of multilateral agencies from the World Bank, United Nations, African Development Bank – they all have these complex sets of indicators, because it is such a slippery slope. It’s such a slippery idea. And I think to really develop MIAG’s understanding of inclusive growth, we needed to reflect that complexity in the data that we were collecting. So we had the quantitative data – so we were gathering existing data from the World Bank, International Labour Organisation to build up our framework of indicators. But that quantitative data is very descriptive. So it will tell you what is happening, but it’s very difficult – not impossible, but difficult – to really get to grips with the cause and effect. So while we might see things like GDP going up, increases in employment, we’re not necessarily getting behind it to understand why that is happening.

Now, moving to the survey, that allowed us to start to do this. But again, a survey is largely quantitative data. We introduced some open-ended questions – and bearing in mind, the survey was very much focused on the migrant business owner themselves, so we were mining down behind that macro data at the national level to start to unpack and understand the migrant business owner, but it was still largely quantitative data.

The semi-structured interviews, being qualitative, provide a richness and depth that you can’t get through that quantitative data. So they really allowed us to start to get behind those descriptive accounts, which they did in two ways.

First of all, that individual migrant journey: they provide us with detailed interpretations of the individual migrants’ stories to really interrogate and explore the intricacies of their lives and their business operations.

But secondly, what the qualitative data allows us to do through those interviews is move from what is happening to why. So it really allows us to start to make those causal links. So for example, looking at that survey data, what we noticed quite early on is that large numbers of migrant business owners were employing nationals – which we hadn’t necessarily expected, because in the literature, there is perhaps a tendency for migrant business owners to employ members of their own family, or members of their own nationality. So for example, Indians in Kenya, there is a literature on that, and we had, perhaps, expected, for reasons of familiarity, that they would employ more Indians. That wasn’t what we were seeing. But what that survey data didn’t allow us to do is to start to unpack it and understand why that was happening.

So for example, then, through the interviewing, it allowed us to mine and ask specific questions around that. So we started to find out some of those business owners were employing nationals because it was cheaper labour than if they were employing other Indians, or that, actually, the nationals held knowledge which helped their business operations. So for example, they knew the landscape of petty politics at the local level. So they were helping navigate the bureaucracy with filing applications for particular work permits, business permits. Also, for example – again, we saw this in Kenya quite a bit – is you will have nationals fronting a business. Just for ease of setting up and operating businesses, you will have a foreign migrant who is working with a national – the national is actually fronting that business for them.

So while MIAG focused on migrant business owners, these interviews weren’t exclusive. The survey was; we did focus just on migrant business owners. But actually, we broadened out who we were interviewing.

Ben Lampert:

OK. Thanks, Craig, that really makes a lot of sense, and it’s clear that the interviews really add something that you couldn’t quite get from the survey and from the background quantitative data.

End transcript: Video 2.10 Part 1: Asking structured questions.

Video 2.10 Part 1: Asking structured questions.

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Transcript: Video 2.11 Part 2: Designing an interview.

Ben Lampert:

It’s clear that the interviews really add something that you couldn’t quite get from the survey, and from the background quantitative data, but how do you go from realising that they’re going to add something to actually designing interviews that can get at these things, and working out what to ask all the different types of respondents that you’re engaging with in this project?

Craig Walker:

Yeah, good question. As I’ve just said, we broadened out who we were interviewing, because we needed to build up a broader picture than just the experience of the migrant business owners themselves. You should bear in mind that MIAG had a very practical focus of wanting to inform migration policy as a result of this project.

Now, we broke our sample of interviews down into five key groups, the logic being that, as you’ve just said, each of them adds something different to complement the data and our understanding that we’re building up for that empirical analysis through the interviews.

So those five groups, the first are what we termed MDAs. So these were ministries, departments, agencies – so effectively, government – any formal body that had some kind of connection to migration and migration policy.

The second were CSOs, so civil society organisations. And we targeted, there, specifically organisations who will be working with or supporting migrant populations in those countries. We engaged with a couple of charities, for example, that support micro start-ups for migrant business owners.

Third category were what we termed representative – so these could be, loosely, community leaders. So for example, in Nigeria, there is the Nigerian British Business Forum. So their role is to broker business relationships between Britain and Nigeria, so you will find British migrant business owners there. And the logic of targeting that group is that the interviews with the migrant business owners themselves allow us to understand that individual journey. But what the representatives do is they give us that broader picture to look at the wider trends of, say, the British migrating to Nigeria over the last 30 years – any changes in levels of migration, types of sectors, people might be investing in, et cetera.

And then the fourth were the migrant business owners themselves, which were the largest sample group. And then the fifth and final were nationals. So we wanted to interview and speak with, say, Mozambicans who were working for migrants, because it just introduces a very different perspective, because I think with interviews, the actual technique itself, there is a risk that people are telling you what they think you want to hear – so actually speaking to a range of people who are working for these migrant business owners just introduced that extra layer of experiences.

So the entire sample size, the interviews, were 115 in each of the countries. So we ended up with 460 interviews! And the structure of those questions – so while each of them, each of those five groups would have had questions specific to them: so for example, with the MDAs, so the government interviews, there were very specific questions there around the types of data that government may be collecting on migration, how that data is stored, how it is shared across different agencies, and how it might be used to inform policies. Very specific questions for that group that aren’t necessary to ask the others.

But we had a consistent line of questioning across all of the five, which was designed specifically to try and understand the different ways that migrants were contributing to growth. And the way that we did this is the line of questioning reflected that framework that we developed. So those indicators, it allowed us to be consistent in terms of our line of inquiry across that quantitative secondary data, to the survey, and then into our interviews.

So for example, we had a section looking at inclusive growth through quality of employment – so how many jobs were being created, what the gender balance was in employment, the ratio of nationals being employed to migrants. Another section was looking at the innovations in the market – so types of new products migrants might be introducing, the skills, the knowledges that they bring, and whether they’re creating competition with local companies.

Also, we had sections on wider social and political implications. So here we were looking at issues, as I’ve said, with those representatives. Are migrant groups organising – self-organising – through associations? Are they joining unions? But also, because of us looking at inclusive growth, the ways in which migrants are actually giving back to their community.

So there were questions around what you could broadly term CSR. So are they giving back to the communities? How do they do that? But then also, how migrants might be engaging politically – so do they have a voice? Are they able to engage with government? Are they being consulted?

Ben Lampert:

That’s really interesting. I think what strikes me, out of all of that, is just how much data you’ve gathered there. That’s over 400 interviews you mentioned, each covering quite an array of different factors related to migrants’ lives, and to inclusive growth. So how do you begin to start analysing all of that once you’ve had it all transcribed?

End transcript: Video 2.11 Part 2: Designing an interview.

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Transcript: Video 2.12 Part 3: Refining the data.

Ben Lampert:

What strikes me out of all of that is just how much data you’ve gathered there. That’s over 400 interviews you mentioned, each covering quite an array of different factors related to migrants lives and to inclusive growth. So how do you begin to start analysing all of that once you’ve had it all transcribed? Where do you start?

Craig Walker:

Yeah, 460 interviews. It’s a big job when some of those transcripts are 20 or 30 pages long! So we started by developing the code book, and to do this, we revisited that original framework because we needed that consistency across all those data sets.

So we had those key, inclusive growth variables based on that overall conception. But there is a risk, as we know, that inclusive growth is very complex. So we had to be quite systematic; we didn’t want to be too rigid with the coding. But we needed that deductive start, so using that conceptualisation to keep that consistency of framing.

So what we had, was we had three key codes that we started with in that code book. So ‘migrant’, ‘inclusive growth’ and ‘governance’ were the overarching codes. Then what we did was we broke each of those down into key dimensions, or aspects, of each. So for example, when it came to the migrants, we had subcategories, which were ‘migrant motivations’, ‘migration history’ and also ‘socioeconomic’ dimensions of their the lives. And so each of these categories allows us to start to mine down a little bit further into the detail.

We went down to a third level with each of the codes. For example, if we look at inclusive growth, we had a sub-code within that around ‘employment-generation’ and ‘skills development’. But it required more fine-tuning. So within that, we had a code specifically, for ‘jobs host’. So we would code data here, which referred to any passage in the transcript where a migrant business was creating a job or a job opportunity for the hosting community. So in Ghana, for example, you had a migrant business owner who was employing a local Ghanaian.

So the codebook provided us with this structure for interrogating the interview. So we would go through all of those individual transcripts and be highlighting and coding particular passages against each of those individual codes. That: very much a deductive approach to analysis and coding of the data, but actually, there was such a richness to some of these interviews, that as we started doing that – as we started that coding process – we very quickly started to notice findings emerging that we hadn’t anticipated. So we introduced some flexibility into the coding process. So here we moved more from that deductive, having a framework to work with, to more inductive, allowing some of those findings to inform new codes that we hadn’t anticipated.

So for example, as I have a particular interest in the political dimension of this project, and while we had, within that governance coding structure, formal engagement and political participation, so for example, we had a code, ‘Does government actually widely consult migrant communities when they’re informing policy?’ Likewise, ‘Do migrant communities organise to advocate or lobby against government?’ We had these formal ways in which we were coding for political participation engagement. But I was seeing in some of the interviews that I was doing, particularly in Nigeria, interesting patterns emerging where migrant business owners, they were telling me that, actually, we see government as a bit of a problem. So if we can keep them at arm’s length, it’s better for our business operations. And there were different strategies that they were employing to basically avoid, or circumnavigate, local government, because they saw it as hampering their business operations.

This is a form of informal politics that we hadn’t anticipated. So we introduced a code around that.

Ben Lampert:

OK Craig, I get that about the categories developed from looking at the inclusive growth framework and using that to deductively guide your coding, but how about things that emerged from the interview? Surely there was some stuff that you just weren’t expecting or didn’t necessarily fit neatly under the code you’ve already generated from the inclusive growth framework? Was there any examples of that happening?

Craig Walker:

Definitely. And another one that we saw – that we added – was local capacity, and how that impacts on business operations. There is the obvious here, in terms of hard infrastructure: so are there roads, secure power supplies to allow the businesses to operate?

But we noticed, coming through some of those interviews, that migrant businesses struggled with local capacity in other ways. And we’re talking, here, about sourcing raw materials having to be imported. But also in terms of, maybe, levels of education or training, that nationals had that they needed to operate their businesses.

One example that sticks out, actually, is we interviewed an Indian business owner in Kenya. And his business was events management. And to run his business, he said he cannot source any of his equipment within Kenya – the quality doesn’t exist at the moment, actually. So a barrier for him, and his business operations, was him having to import everything that he needs, technically, to run those events, from Europe.

Ben Lampert:

I really get a sense of a kind of two-pronged approach happening there, where you’ve got this deductive coding based on the inclusive growth framework and the kinds of indicators you’re expecting to identify in the data using that framework, but also letting stuff emerge from the interviews that you maybe didn’t expect or come through more strongly than you expect. Or in some ways isn’t captured by the inclusive growth framework –` you then inductively created new codes to capture those unexpected and new insights. So I really get how those two processes work together.

End transcript: Video 2.12 Part 3: Refining the data.

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Transcript: Video 2.13 Part 4: Findings and insights.

Ben Lampert:

What I’d like you to tell us a bit more about is just moving from that process of coding through to actually making sense of the data in a broader sense, developing findings from that. You’ve got all these codes, but how do you how do you actually then determine what your key findings are and the key insights that have come out of the interviews as a whole?

Craig Walker:

It’s actually quite a difficult process to manage when you have such a large data set like this: 460 interviews. So we had to work very closely and collaboratively as a team. The first step was actually that we couldn’t rely on just individually [reading] those transcripts. We had to use some form of qualitative analysis software, which in our case was NVivo.

And we worked as a small team within the wider team by dividing those transcripts up and everybody individually coding their transcripts against that code book. But coding can be very subjective: what I’m coding against a particular code, how I understand it – can’t guarantee that you are in the same way. So we had, over a number of weeks, actually meeting as a team, running through that code book, testing it against a couple of transcripts. How are you understanding migration history? How are you understanding innovation? How are you understanding knowledge transfer? To try and, as close as we can, introduce that reliability that we are actually coding across our own sets comparatively, basically – so that we can try and ensure as close as we can we’re all coding in the same way.

And actually, it was really interesting. Through that process and through those meetings, we started to share insights and some emergent findings. One of the interesting ones very early on was actually, when it comes to gender, and some of the ways in which migrant business owners were talking about female employment and why they would perhaps choose to employ females over males. So through that very collaborative process, we were able to start to inductively see some of these findings emerging.

The second was that once we’d actually got an entire coded set on NVivo. Everybody could individually then interrogate that data for their own particular interests, because we are a large, multidisciplinary, multi-country team. We’ve got economists, qualitative researchers, sociologists, geographers. So everybody could then take away that data set and, through the software, you can mine that data by running reports against particular codes that you are interested in. For me, it’s the politics and the political participation; but for others, it’s something completely different.

And then the third was that once we got that data, you almost go back to the beginning of the project. So it was revisiting the literatures that are already out there on inclusive growth – those gaps that we’ve been identifying at the beginning of the project, those big questions that we were asking: how is that interview data speaking to what we were originally posing in this project?

Ben Lampert:

OK. Thanks, Craig. I guess there’s just conversations going on there at different levels. There’s the conversations between the team members and building up between what they’ve coded and how they see the bigger pictures forming from that coding, and then a conversation also between what’s emerged from the data and what we set out to do in the original research questions at the start of the project.

And that’s where we start to get the genesis of those findings that it will be written up as the project’s outcome, basically. So thanks, Craig. I think that’s a really rounded overview of what we’ve tried to do and how doing these semi-structured interviews has really added so much to the project, and really enabled us to link the patterns that we see in the quantitative data to causal mechanisms and social relationships that make these changes happen on the ground.

End transcript: Video 2.13 Part 4: Findings and insights.

Video 2.13 Part 4: Findings and insights.

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Discussion

Compare your answers to the following notes:

• Why did MIAG use semi-structured interviews?
  • IG is complex to theorise and analyse empirically
  • MIAG had quantitative data, but this is descriptive
  • Need to understand why things are happening
  • The survey started to address the ‘Why?’ questions, but is still quite quantitative
  • They provide richness and depth of the individual migrant journey and to understand causal links; for example, focused on employment practices
• How were the interviews designed?
  • Widened the scope of who was interviewed
  • Five groups were interviewed: government, civil society organisations, representatives such as community leaders, migrant business owners and nationals who were connected to migrant businesses
  • A range of people allow us to get different perspectives
  • 115 interviews per country, 460 in total
  • Questions were tailored to each group of respondents
• How was the data analysed?
  • Some interviews were quite long
  • Developed a code book, so MIAG went back to original IG variables (this is a deductive approach)
  • Had to be open to contextual issues
  • Started with three broad codes (migrants, IG and governance) and then broke these down further into different levels
  • Code transcripts using these codes
  • As the project started MIAG found lots of richness, so they moved to a more inductive approach and added these as new codes (for example, around politics)
  • Some findings fall outside our expected IG concepts, such as local capacities
  • In summary: a two-pronged approach
• How did MIAG make sense of this data?
  • It was not easy, because the data set was so big
  • Worked closely and collaboratively
  • Used qualitative analysis software
  • Had to meet as a team to generate a shared sense of how to interpret the transcripts; this led to greater consistency across the team and allowed people to share thematic findings
  • They then had to revisit the IG literature and see how these emergent themes spoke to these concepts and theories

The discussion between Ben and Craig around the semi-structured interviews reveals MIAG’s attempts to capture the complexity of the links between migration and development. The key here was around causality: that is, we can use other data to discern some patterns, such as discovery of oil leading to more skilled inward migration. But these patterns don’t tell us how all this happens, so qualitative methods are one way to explore the causal mechanisms linking migration and economic opportunities.

The question of causality linking migration and development, and vice versa, is highly complex and – as the experts discussed in Activity 2.4 – is also context-specific. By focusing on immigrant business, MIAG homed in on a critical area of causality: how businesses operate and how they create growth opportunities. Week 3 will analyse this in more detail and you will also learn more about other methods used by MIAG.

Conclusion

This week you have:

• looked at the debates around migration and development, which show differences of opinion between people and over time
• examined how IG concepts might help us to understand the ‘development’ side of the migration/development nexus
• been introduced to some of the methodological challenges of trying to analyse the relationship between migration and IG
• practised analysing quantitative and qualitative data relating to migration and IG.

The last activity about job creation by immigrant businesses raises bigger questions about the role of entrepreneurship in generating inclusive development, which we will turn to in Week 3.

References