Intraregional Migration and Development Assistance

Human resources play a crucial role for economic development in all nations, perhaps Asian policymakers and academics should begin to pay more attention to migration trends. Economic theory argues migration is simply the redistribution of the labor force. Supply and demand disequilibrium and wage differentials in labor markets in rich and poor nations are understood as the main driving forces. In order to achieve optimum resource allocation, migration should benefit both labor exporting countries and receiving countries.

But in the real world, we know of other strong factors—political, social and environmental—which contribute to migration. Illegal migrant workers have been increasing at a rapid pace, not only in the Americas or Europe, but now in the Asia-Pacific region. This in turn causes various degrees of social friction and even unrest in some countries. What can the international donor community do to help?

We can start by recalling an oversupply in the labor market of developing countries is usually caused by a high birth rate and then a population explosion, which brings on poverty. Before thinking about optimal resource allocations across nations, we could focus again on the reality of poverty in developing countries and try to help them establish industries and create job opportunities without relying on the export of labor (and brain power) overseas. Next, as the famous Ehrlich equation teaches us, in order to alleviate environmental stress, you have to limit populations or reduce people’s living standards or enhance technology.

Certainly, the donor community could be promoting more technology transfers and assisting in minimizing population explosions through family planning, health care services etc. In such a case, developing countries could then address environmental degradation without further aggravating poverty or relying on the export of excess labor.

Since lack of accurate data on migration is another obstacle to tackling this problem, donors could also provide more technical assistance in this field. Finally, to cope with illegal migration, we need forums where policymakers, NGOs and international organizations could exchange their views and share information on possible solutions.

Comment(s)

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1. Bala Bhaskaran
   (posted 21 April 2008 / 11:12:39 AM)
   
   The brief paper offers insight into the dynamics of currency apreciation and its impact on the economy. Can it not give references of research papers and case studies on the same subject? That will be a lot more useful to the researcher.