Welcome to the final week of the course. So far, you have been learnt about how inclusive growth might help us to understand the development outcomes of migration, and what role migrant entrepreneurs play in enhancing growth.
In a sense, this has all been an analytical task of how we can better understand migration and development in Africa. But what if we want to make a difference? How have people been intervening to enhance the development potential of migration? And what else could be done to promote inclusive growth through migration? This week, we will explore these questions of policy and practice.
In doing so, we address two of the course’s learning outcomes:
Before starting on the learning for this final week, try the following activity.
As discussed in Week 1, inclusive growth (IG) has been actively championed by some of the leading international organisations such as the Asian Development Bank and the OECD. The following extracts are from All on Board: Making Inclusive Growth Happen, the OECD’s landmark publication on inclusive growth.
As you read the extracts, identify some very broad recommendations for enhancing IG. You may also like to think about policies that affect your life and whether any of these recommendations can be applied to them.
Inclusive growth is about identifying policies that can deliver improvements in the population’s living standards with a more even sharing of the benefits of increased prosperity among social groups. In a context of widening worldwide inequalities – in the distribution of income and social outcomes that matter for people’s well-being – policy makers in advanced and emerging market economies, alongside their counterparts in developing countries, are examining the potential of inclusive growth policies to kick-start growth by turning equity into a driver of economic performance. […]
Accounting for the multidimensional nature of inequalities calls for broadening the focus of policy analysis beyond income, by evaluating the effects of policies on both income and non-income outcomes, as well as for different social groups. […]
The way policies are designed and implemented matters for Inclusive Growth. An inclusive policy process must be well informed and reflect the public interest. As such, it should be inclusive across the policy cycle, which requires effective and representative citizen participation as well as mechanisms to curb the undue influence of money and power.
The recommendations are broad, but involve:
These all sound very laudable aims, but how feasible are they in the contexts that you live and work in? The UK (where this author lives and works) has, like everybody across the globe, been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The UK’s politicians and policymakers were vocal that the whole country had to be protected from the virus; their vision was inclusive. But in practice, particularly in the early days of the pandemic, there were tensions and miscommunications between central and local government, while some social groups – notably those from racial and ethnic minorities – suffered far worse than other groups. So it’s not easy to ensure inclusiveness in policymaking and implementation in any setting.
This week, we want to examine in more detail how existing policies:
Before getting into more detail about the migration policymaking process, we need to appreciate that policies have intended and unintended outcomes. Health or education policies can influence IG and migration without being explicitly focused on them. Some policies may be explicitly designed to enhance inclusion – such as a publicly funded health system – whereas others designed for other purposes may also achieve that, such as exchange rates. Printing more money is an example of a policy that is direct in its outcomes for growth, whereas early years education for girls is more indirect. These direct/indirect and intended/unintended outcomes are captured in Table 4.1.
Intended | Unintended | |
Direct | +/– | +/– |
Indirect | +/– | +/– |
In Figure 4.1, the ‘+’ and ‘–‘ signs refer to the degree of inclusiveness.
Let’s take the example of policies for early years education for girls. Table 4.2 has some possible outcomes in each of the four quadrants, although there are many others that could be identified.
Intended | Unintended | |
Direct | More young girls get educated to a basic level, literacy levels increase, etc. | Girls in school more often and so receive better nutrition |
Indirect | Girls’ confidence grows, which feeds into other areas of their lives | Girls may become more economically active, which creates tensions within the household |
The top-left quadrant of Table 4.2 reveals that policy is often seen as a rational process of intentionality; a policymaker wants something specific to happen and so people talk about pulling ‘policy levers’ as though it is easy and has direct outcomes. However, the other three quadrants show that policymaking and policy implementation are complicated, socially mediated processes. As you work through this week, remember to look at policy outcomes, and which of these quadrants they fall into. The next few sections begin to delve deeper into these complexities of migration policy.
Policymaking is a complex process but is only one part of governance. Governance is somewhat different from government because it:
However, a great deal of policymaking is done at the national level by governments, so we must focus on that. And when it comes to migration policy, a lot of legislation and regulation is nationally centred because it concerns crossing national borders.
But there are other levels and actors involved in migration governance, so we do need to get a sense of this wider governance picture. In this section, we will look at debates about ‘multi-levelled’ migration governance and then use some of these insights to examine migration policymaking in the four MIAG countries in Africa.
Migration and Global Governance is an anthology of what its editors considered to be key academic articles and chapters related to governance and migration published prior to 2012.
Read an extract from the book’s introduction (Gamlen and Marsh, 2012), which is a useful overview of the book’s contents, and make notes on the three main modes of migration governance that it discusses: national, international and transnational.
The authors argue that international migration governance is a patchwork of actors and frameworks. They explain what they mean by ‘global’ and ‘governance’, which is more complex than simply things happening at the global scale. Scales are constructed through actions and so are often uneven; that is, things are rarely fully global, but selectively engage some actors in some places. They also note that governance is different to government, which makes it trickier to pin down, given that it involves many actors and can be much more informal than national-level government action.
Next, they outline the three modes of migration governance:
Such a review of the literature is helpful but is necessarily quite general and abstract. Some of the academic language can also be confusing until you are familiar with the terms and concepts.
But what actually happens when it comes to implementing migration policy? While migration governance is clearly complex and multi-levelled, it often involves some national-level policy or policies – which are not produced in a vacuum. As you have just seen, some levels or modes of governance that exist may support a particular national policy, whereas others might undermine one. The next activity looks at implementing migration policy.
In the last section, you focused on migration governance and policymaking; here, you will look at how migration policy is implemented. Policies are complex entities and reflect many competing pressures in a political system, but also in a wider society. For international migration, these pressures are even more complicated because migrants cross borders, which means they may be subject to policies of multiple nation states. Moreover, in many countries we see ‘good’ policies and laws, but their implementation and enforcement are weak.
We begin this section looking at general models of policy implementation before turning to the more specific case of migration policy and why it can fail. Finally, we hear from our MIAG experts again about the implementation of migration policies in the four African countries that are our focus.
Read an extract from a free course from the OU called The public policy–action relationship (OpenLearn, 2016) and make brief notes on the four models of implementation: mechanical, organic, cultural and political.
Mechanical | Organic | Cultural | Political |
Your response may be similar to the notes below:
Mechanical | Organic | Cultural | Political |
See the policy process as a sort of machine where ‘levers’ can be pulled to achieve goals Relationships between parts of government seen as fixed and predictable It is hierarchical in that only top officials can learn, whereas all other actors simply respond to directives |
Policy system is made up of interacting elements in an adaptive system Feedback loops mean that implementation is not the endpoint of the policy process but part of the whole system Policies are also not unambiguous and so objectives may clash |
Human beings understand and interpret the world in different ways These cultural constructions are not haphazard and individualised, since they draw on repertoires of meaning This focus on culture moves the focus of policy beyond the obvious organs of government |
The policy is made up of many actors with differing interests and amounts of power Power can play out in different ways, with some being about officials using discretion through to forms of resistance to policies |
Now we draw on an extract from a paper on migration policy (Castles, 2004). It is quite academic, with technical language and with many references to cited works. Don’t let this put you off! Castles’ stated aim is to look at migration policy failure, arguing that such failure can happen in any country – although his focus is mainly on migration from what he calls ‘less-developed countries to industrialised countries’.
In his view, the failure is due to a combination of:
The extract relates to this final set of factors, because these relate to the policymaking process that you have just studied. Now read the extract and, using your notes from Step 1, analyse what Castles is saying about migration policy.
Mechanical | Organic | Cultural | Political |
You haven’t entered anything for this space. Use the ‘Original location’ link if you’d like to enter something now. |
You haven’t entered anything for this space. Use the ‘Original location’ link if you’d like to enter something now. |
You haven’t entered anything for this space. Use the ‘Original location’ link if you’d like to enter something now. |
You haven’t entered anything for this space. Use the ‘Original location’ link if you’d like to enter something now. |
You may have made some of the notes captured below:
Mechanical | Organic | Cultural | Political |
Encouraged labour migration Manage flows, control measures Stable/able |
Political systems are complex and contradictory |
Idea that the inability to provide Hidden agendas, political cultures Ethnocentric ideologies, public opinion, rhetoric, heated polemics Social structure of policymaking |
Competing interests Political mobilisation, failure of the state Structural dependence, lobbying, interest groups Clientelist politics, powerful organised interests Rights Civil society, campaign, resistant |
Much of what Castles discusses seems to fall into ‘cultural’ and ‘political’ categories, but there is evidence of other theories or explanations. As a general observation, he seems to see the policy process as organic, and made up of many complex systems and sub-systems. His style of analysis is such that he sometimes suggests what the mechanical view is – for example, ‘managing’ migration in an orderly way – but then shows that cultural and political explanations mean that these rational intentions get undermined.
The cultural explanations for migration policy failure, in Castles’ view, is a whole set of rhetorical strategies whereby opinions are shaped by the media and tensions are stoked. These cultural ‘repertoires’ (to use the language of The public policy–action relationship extract) are related to the political causes: according to Castles, powerful interests can disrupt policymaking and implementation. One of the strategies for making these claims is through using ideologies, ideas and polemics. But some (often less powerful) forces within civil society can mobilise to resist the more powerful interests and actors.
Castles’ paper emphasises that situations are rarely straightforward or are susceptible to ‘either/or’ solutions. Any given situation will contain one or more elements of these theoretical models of policymaking and implementation; each element may highlight or obscure some features and illustrate why some things work and others do not. This policy analysis can help actors to intervene in new ways that they hope will make the differences that they see as desirable. We now turn to such policy possibilities.
In the last section, you looked at how migration policy is made and implemented. The fact that such policies don’t always get implemented as intended prompted Castles to title his paper ‘make and unmake’ – policies can easily be unmade. But this isn’t particularly good news if you are trying to develop policies that support migration’s role in development.
In this section, we want to look at what policies could be developed to promote migration’s role in development and to hear from our MIAG experts about innovative policies that are being tried in the countries and regions where they work. The first part of this section looks at what some of the international organisations are recommending should be done to ‘optimise’ – in the words of one of the reports – the economic and social impacts of international migration. The second part examines the innovations taking place in the four MIAG countries in Africa.
International organisations involved in migration and development often undertake research to suggest ways of improving policy and practice. The two extracts you will read are based on different types of research: the first is based on a multi-country survey, whereas the second is based on what it identifies as ‘megatrends’, which could influence the direction and scope of future policies.
Activity 4.4 highlighted that there are many things that could be done to enhance migration’s developmental role. It also showed a fair degree of agreement around the types of policy and their duration, as well as needing to work in collaboration with migrants.
But these recommendations are just that: suggestions for what could be done. What about what is being done? In the next activity you will hear about what policies are being tried in the four MIAG countries.
So far, you have studied the multi-level architecture of migration policy, what factors affect migration policy implementation and how some international organisations suggest that migration policy could be improved. This has all been rather abstract, so in this activity you will examine the policy process in much more detail based on the experiences of the four MIAG countries.
As you explored in Activity 4.3, policies are usually quite general but signal a direction of government activity. They are important for setting the tone and providing broad parameters to guide more specific actions and interventions. In this activity, you will look at the policies in each of the four MIAG countries, but also the more targeted interventions designed to achieve some aspect of these policies.
Videos 4.1–4.4 feature the MIAG country experts who have been engaged in the migration policymaking processes in their own countries and across Africa. As you watch, use the space below to make notes on the following questions, and think about any similarities or differences between the four countries:
Policies, policymaking, implementation and innovation in Kenya are as follows:
Policies, policymaking, implementation and innovation in Ghana are as follows:
Policies, policymaking and implementation in Mozambique are as follows:
Policies, policymaking, implementation and innovation in Nigeria are as follows:
Regarding the similarities and differences between the four countries, all but Mozambique have policies. What is interesting about the three countries that do have policies is that they are all quite similar: diaspora, national migration and labour migration. You may recall that the experts in the videos in Activity 2.4 also pointed out that African migration policies are very similar, despite the contexts across the continent being very different.
The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM) has funded and advised in various ways in all four countries. This may help to explain why the policies are quite similar, since they draw on similar roots.
Another similarity is that implementation has been weak and uneven. In some cases, this was a financial issue because governments could not afford to put in place the necessary activities to implement the policies; in others, there were too many other priorities to be able to focus on migration.
One area where things seemed to have worked quite well is around remittances and diaspora investment – although it is unsurprising that anything that is relatively straightforward and brings income is facilitated. In Activity 2.4, Dilip Ratha referred to these as ‘tractable’ issues that are easier to address.
Trying to design and implement policies for something as complex and unpredictable as the movement of people is difficult in any country and at any time. And as the three experts in Activity 2.4 discussed, it may be unwise to try to devise a policy for everything. These experts argued that the ‘big issues’ are the processes that generate inequalities and the whole model of the nation state – these issues are so big that a single country with a single policy can never address them adequately. What policy can focus on is what Dilip Ratha termed more ‘tractable’ issues, such as reducing remittance costs – but we should never ignore these bigger challenges.
This week, you looked at migration policy in more detail and sought to address issues of how migration policies are made – but also, to use the words of Castles, how they are ‘unmade’. You started by examining broad recommendations for achieving IG that centred on broadening and integrating policy, as well as joining up policies in different geographical areas.
The issue of different scales of governance was addressed next in examining how different actors in the migration governance process operate and often fail to interact and plan coherently. You then looked at policy implementation: policies may be appealing in theory but in the cut and thrust of ‘real-world’ politics they may get diverted or watered down.
You applied all this to migration policy and whether and how it could stimulate IG. Policymakers at the international level are in some agreement about joining up policies in various ways, which echoes the more general recommendations for achieving inclusive growth – different policy areas and geographical areas being more coherently connected over the longer term.
Then, you heard about policy interventions in the four MIAG countries and how the policies in Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria are good, and were arrived at in a consultative way. Mozambique is just embarking on its migration policy development – but the policy has the backing of the country’s President, so our expert was hopeful that it would succeed. In those countries with policies, their implementation has been uneven and varies between ministries, as well as between central and local levels of government. But in Week 2, you heard from other migration experts – Dilip, Heaven and Oliver – who were somewhat sceptical about what policies can ever really achieve, given the enormity of the problems they try to address. So, the key is to be selective about which policies might make a difference and which won’t.
Congratulations, you’ve finished studying the course. Now try the short end-of-course quiz to test your knowledge. Good luck!
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources:
Course image: Arthimedes/Shutterstock.
Images: Figure 1.1: UNCTAD; Step 1.1, cartoon: Cartoon Resource/Shutterstock; Step 1.3, Lagos: Jordi Clave Garsot/123RF; Step 1.3, process vs outcome: adapted from Trevor Day, ‘Process versus outcome’, 15 April 2019; Step 1.3, gender scales: © teshimine/GoGraph; Step 1.3, risk and reward: William Potter/Shutterstock.
Text: Activity 1.7: CLES (Centre for Local Economic Strategies).
Video: Video 1.1: World Bank, https://youtu.be/ Y-2ZIxUtivM; Video 1.2: World Economic Forum, https://youtu.be/ ukHIIg28xQQ; licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) licence, https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/ by/ 3.0/; Video 1.3: The OECD Development Centre, https://youtu.be/ lZFQAuKkNr0.
Audio: Audio 1.1: Omolola Olarinde, contributor.
Images: Figure 2.1: Anne Jose Kan/123RF; Figure 2.2: David Peinado Romero/Shutterstock.
Table: Table 2.1: adapted from Minchiello et al., 1990 (p. 5), source McLeod, 2019 (30 July), https://www.simplypsychology.org/ qualitative-quantitative.html.
Text: Activity 2.2: IOM, 2019.
Images: Step 3.1, planning: © Nuiiko/Dreamstime; Step 3.1, café: © Stefan Dahl/Dreamstime.
Text: Activity 3.4: Naudé et al., 2017, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution licence, http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/ by/ 4.0/; Activity 3.6: Mauldin, 2020, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike licence, http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/ by-nc-sa/ 4.0/.
Video: Video 3.2: The Fraser Institute; Video 3.5: IWRAW Asia Pacific, https://youtu.be/ U8ni5GkMNGM, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial licence, http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/ by-nc/ 4.0/.
Text: Activity 4.2: Gamlen and Marsh, 2012; Activity 4.3: Castles, 2004, © 2004 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications, Inc.; Activity 4.4, Step 1: IPPR (Institute for Public Policy Research) and GDN (Global Development Network); Activity 4.4, Step 2: OECD, 2020, https://www.oecd.org/ migration/ mig/ migration-strategic-foresight.pdf.
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