Research on migration and development has seen a dramatic
resurgence in recent years. As Michael Clemens, Çağlar Özden and Hillel
Rapoport outline
in their introduction to the special issue on migration and development of World Development in 2014[1],
part of this renewed interest and increase in published research is due to long
overdue[2]
improvements in the availability and quality of data. Estimates of
international migration and remittances are now published
by the World Bank
and the UN Population Division compiles census data to give estimates of migrants
stocks.
This improvement in data quality and data availability allows
us to make tentative statements about the extent of internal and international
migration. One of the most serious attempts to estimate internal migration is
underway by researchers at the IMAGE project who use census data to estimate that globally in 2005 there
were 229 million people living within the same country but in a different part
of that country compared to five years before. Estimates for lifetime internal migration
are much higher, with 763 million people in 2005 living outside their region of
birth.[3] Combining these with UN estimates of
international migrants of 232 million people living outside
their country of birth, suggest that nearly a billion people live away from their region of
birth.
Census data is useful for providing insights into how many
people are migrants and their demographic profile but is less useful for
understanding the why and the how of migration. Understanding why people
migrate and for how long, how that contributes to, or even changes, their and
their household’s livelihoods and well-being are just some of the questions of
great interest to migration researchers and policy makers. These questions can
be answered with qualitative research and there are some impressive examples to
draw on which provide rich and nuanced stories of migrant lives. Deirdre
McKay’s ethnographic
work provides new insights into the aspirations and experiences of Filipino
temporary labour migrants;[4]
Trond Waage uses visual anthropological tools to document the lives of
young migrants in west Africa; and Migrating out of Poverty (MOOP) partners at
the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, have used qualitative methods to
shed light on the recruitment of Indonesian domestic workers.
Complementing this qualitative work is a growing body of
evidence emerging from quantitative research using household surveys. These offer
the opportunity to include more people in the research sample than qualitative
research typically allows, anything from a few hundred to a few thousand people
is pretty normal, and to use more detailed questions that capture a wider range
of data than is feasible to collect in a population census. There are a growing
number of household surveys for developing countries which capture information
on migrants. For example, the Mexican Migrant Project collects and publishes data on
migration between Mexico and the United States, and a number of household and
labour force surveys now contain supplementary modules on migration.[5] These are encouraging signs that the migration
data gap is closing but there is still some way to go.
The Migrating out of Poverty (MOOP) consortium is contributing
towards this by publishing open access micro data from a set of five comparable
household surveys collected between 2013 and 2015, in five developing countries:
Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, and Zimbabwe. The
precise sampling strategy differs across countries, and we can’t claim that our
samples are nationally representative. However because we adopt a purposive
approach, selecting regions which are known to be migrant-sending and sampling
quotas of households with and without migrants, we generate large enough
sub-samples of households and individuals across different categories of
migrants and non-migrants to make us confident that our findings are robust.
Our sample sizes range between 1200 and 1400 households, with
data available on every member of those households. We adopt a near identical
survey instrument in each country, which facilitates comparisons to be drawn
across countries. Our household questionnaire includes a complete household
roster collecting social, economic and demographic data on both migrant and
non-migrant members of the household, and a specially designed module that
captures interactions between migrants and their households in the form of
remittances and social contacts. Our survey also explores perceptions of
migration as a way of improving the living standards of households.
One of the important contributions the MOOP consortium hopes
to make by collecting and publishing this data is to support more research into
internal and intra-regional migration. As the figures of migration estimates
quoted above suggest, three out of four migrants remain within their country of
birth and much international migration is within the global South. Our data
will help to shed more light on these movements and help to inform policies
that respond appropriately to those affected by migration.
The full data sets from the first three of our surveys undertaken in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Ghana, are now available to download for free from www.migratingoutofpoverty.dfid.gov.uk. Data is available in both STATA and
SPSS formats and users can access the questionnaire and a short user guide for
each survey. Data for Ethiopia and Zimbabwe will be made available in 2016.
We want
students, researchers and teachers to access the data, and policy makers to use
it. Feed back to us and let us know what you do with it.
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| Bangladesh internal and international migration destination maps |
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| Remittances help fund improvements in housing |
[1] Michael A. Clemens, Çağlar Özden, Hillel Rapoport (2014) “Migration and Development Research is Moving Far Beyond Remittances” World Development, Volume 64, December 2014, Pages 121-124.
[2]
Read about the “century of ignored recommendations” on the “biggest blind spot
in our view of the world economy” in Patricia
Santo Tomas, Lawrence Summers and Michael Clemens (2009) “Migrants Count: Five
Steps Towards Better Migration Data”, Report of the Commission on International
Migration Data for Development Research and Policy; Centre for Global
Development, May 2009.
Julie Litchfield is the Theme Leader for Quantitative Research for the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium (MOOP) and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Sussex. Working Papers discussing aspects of the findings of the Bangladesh, Ghana, Indonesia and Zimbabwe surveys are also available. A summary of key data from the Indonesia survey has also been published. See also Eva-Maria Egger's presentation of the preliminary findings of MOOP's household survey conducted in Zimbabwe and her related blog discussing the context: Migration in Southern Africa: A Visit to the City of Migrants.
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