Report on Youth Consultation on Migration and Development

Partnerships for Migration and Human Development: Shared Prosperity – Shared Responsibility

Produced by Young People We Care and UN Online Volunteers with support from Taking It Global,Google and Facebook.

Project coordinator: AusrinePasakarnyte

With contribution from: Céline Lemmel, Lindsay Bayham, Michael Boampong and JikshaPandya.

November 4, 2010

Introduction

For the fourth time governmental representatives from all over the world will meet in the annual Global Forum on Migration and Development to discuss what has been already achieved and what is still needed to bring Millennium Development Goals closer to reality. In the past four years, GFMD has addressed numerous aspects of international migration in relation to development. One thing is clear: unilateral and bilateral agreements between countries are not enough to reduce the negative outcomes affecting international migration. As the recent economic crisis has shown, global problems need global solutions.

For the third time, YPWC is inviting youth from all over the world to address multidimensional aspects of migration and development. This year, youth were encouraged to concentrate on building a comprehensive approach between different actors in order to create well-balanced and win-win migration policies. Three main topics of this year’s consultation were:

Partnerships for migration and development

Human mobility and human development

Policy and institutional coherence to address the relationship between migration and development

This year’s consultation (and the GFMD) also introduced the issue of global climate change, which falls under the 7thMillennium Development Goal.

Partnership involves not only international cooperation on migration regulation, but also encourages sharing best practices to discover how migration can be managed and built into a policy agenda that will be beneficial for all involved – both migrants themselves and their countries of origin and destination. Additionally, partnership in the context of global economic crisis requires extra economic coordination and reduction of discrimination, xenophobia and criminalization of migrants in the face of broad public prejudice against them in countries around the world.

Human mobility and human development involves freedom of movement and the ability to make decisions about one’s life. Also included in this topic are acceptance and inclusion in host country; strategic areas for maximizing the human development potential of migrant men, women and youth; migration’s effect on gender roles and family structures; and overall benefits to the host country from migration.

Policy and institutional coherence involves various institutional agreements, combining not only migration issues but also climate change; strengthening cooperation between various governmental and non-governmental actors; shared responsibility and accountability for migrants’ welfare; and better research and data analysis to guide migration policies.

Mutual understanding and a will to commit to partnerships are most likely to enhance migration’s expected outcomes and human development potential. A comprehensive approach is essential to define how each actor involved can contribute to sound migration policies and international security fostering development.

Demographic overview of the study

The demographics of this three-week study can give us important information to help us answer the questionof who was most inspired to share their views about migration and development. This is the third consultation since 2008,and it is interesting to observe the changes in respondents.

For starters, it is very important to define the sources of media that were used to spread the information. Three main sources were:

Taking it Global – Migration topic subscribers.

Facebook – YPWC subscribers.

Personal contacts.

In contrast to the past two years, the consultation was also announced throughFacebook this year, since YPWC also uses it to publicize their other activities. Additionally, we introduced a new format of the study this year – an online survey created using Google documents. Overall,respondents showed great interest in this new type of format,as a record number of people participated in the threeweeks consultation– 40 people from around the globe.

Let’s look more closely at the demographic distribution of the respondents.

Gender

The same patterns as in the past two years were also observed this year – there are far more male respondents compared to female. But since there was an overall increase in number of respondents, it means that even more women could express their voices this year.

Age distribution

This year we observed quite different tendencies regarding the age of the respondents. The majority of respondents were from 26 to 35 years old, and there were no respondents younger than 19. Also, a considerable number of respondents were 36 or older. It is very interesting to observe how the age of people interested in this topic has shifted to older respondents over time. Does this mean that this is no longer a youth consultation on migration and development, or that more mature people are willing to share their views with youth? How might we target younger respondents next year?

Continent

Similarly to previous years, the majority of respondents are from Africa, followed by Asia. One implication from this distribution is that people from underdeveloped regions are more interested in migration and developmentthan people from more developed regions. This is natural and also very meaningful, showing that people do care about their and their country’s wealth.

Country

More precisely,respondents come from a handful of countries.The majority of respondents are again from Nigeria and Ghana, followed by Cameroon, Kenya and Philippines. This study is organized by YPWC, a Ghanaian-based organization that for the past few years has developed close connections with youth from Nigeria – this is likely the main reason why we have so many respondents from these countries. Respondents from Cameroon and Philippines have also shown their interest in this consultation in the past few years, but it is surprising to have a noticeable number of participants from Kenya. All in all, representatives from various countries have expressed their opinion on migration and development,showing the global interest in this topic.

Education

Education also seems to be a very good indicator of participants background, showing that people interested in migration and development arebright and educated or seeking education.

There were no respondents with a High School Diploma/equivalent (this can be explained by the age distribution diagram – 19 years and above), and only a few respondents hadan education certificate. The majority, however, are college/university degree holders and people with advanced degrees or PhDs.

As mentioned before, it is very inspiring to observe the increased number of respondents interested in this topic and wanting to have their voices heard internationally.

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For the third year, YPWC organized this interactive youth consultation on the same topics that have been presented at the Global Forum on Migration and Development. (

The consultation was as usual divided into three weeks, where people from all over the world could answer a simple survey on each week’s topic. All three topics and the results will be presentedin the following sections.

Partnership for Migration and Development

Aging population and migration

It is clear that the solutions to global problems, whether involving the economy, nature or development processes, always require international partnerships and hand-in-hand work to ensure recovery and sustainability. The recent economic crisis has shown that a new and more advanced approach is needed to ensure stable and productive organizations and management of resources. It has also shown that immigrant labour is more vulnerable to economiccycles thanlocal labour. However, one must not forget that the immigrant labour is one of the answers to the developed world’s expected shortfalls in labour supply as its population ages. (The other solutions are “technology, outsourcing and greater mobilisation of the domestic labour supply[1]”.) However, migration tends to bring both advantages and disadvantages to the host countries and migrants themselves. Both the advantages and disadvantages can be divided into 3 categories: economic, cultural, and psychological.

Advantages / Disadvantages
Economic / Reinforcement of the labour force in countries that have started feeling the outcomes of an aging population
Stimulation of “the economy by providing a new source of customers, rent homes, shop, and do jobs that other members of the society may not consider doing”
 “The immigrant labour available of the standard (skilled/ unskilled/ semi skilled) qualifications required”
“The hired labour will be relatively cheaper, hence less financial burden”
“The country’s expenses on training and education will not be wasted on the immigrant labour” also, “it will not be a permanent liability of the country like pension and other social benefits etc.” /  “There may be pressure on the economy of the host country” and “it can lead to lay off of workers during any slight economy problem”
“It causes competition for the local society in terms of accessing jobs. If an employer can pay someone less to do the same task, chances are they will”
“The work output may not be of high standard as the immigrants have mainly their financial interest in the country of work”
“If the labour immigrants are interested in citizenship, it will have added economic burden over the country of immigration”
“Brain drain, countries of origin looses bright and intelligent people”
Cultural / Enrichment of cultural context and multicultural exchange gives more opportunities for “intercultural mix and learning”
“Exchange of knowledge among the immigrants”
“It increase the amount of skilled and talented people in the country, the capital in a country increases as well”
Immigrants will be able to bring home fresh ideas about their host culture
“Encourages unity between the countries” / “Limited capacity to integration”
“Some of the immigrant labour is not well trained and others face a lot of cultural shock working in another country”
“There may be socio-cultural issues as the immigrants belong to different ethnicities and mostly are living without their families”
“They may also come with a culture which does not go well with the local people hence influence them negatively”
Psychological / “Increased skills and entrepreneurial development: others bring new set of skills, open businesses etc.”
“More dedicated, enthusiastic, and diligent people because of the money that they will earn will be sent back to their loved ones back home
“Labour immigrants provide skills and expertise that a country lacks”
“In most cases, immigrant labour is very hard working and more reliable compared to the local source” / High risk of demoralization, discrimination, acts of racism, exploitation and marginalization of people, all that “adds the infringement of their basic rights”
“Increase in risks of strumentalization by local criminality”
“It could also increase the HIV acquisition rates and this will not help the country live up to the expectation of helping achieve the Millennium Development Goals in 2015 (directly and indirectly)

It is clear that no matter why a country has to deal with immigrants, the interaction itself has both positive and negative effects on the local people, their culture and governance mechanisms, as well as on the migrants themselves.

Government approaches to migration

Currently, developed destination countries cannot absorb all the workerscoming from foreign countries. That is why a clear government approach is necessary to ensure the requisite flows of immigrants during economic cycles. Migration frameworks transformed into government programmes could be beneficial to both destination and origin countries in migration management.

We asked respondents to rate the importance of each governmental approach towards migration management. Here is the detailed diagram showing the distribution of ratings across approaches and respondents.

It is clear that the most important government approaches involve anti-discrimination measures and careful supervision of the market and labour flows. This implies that the tension between local people and labour immigrants is likely to be reduced if the government has a clear response to what is happening in the market and economy, andhas an exact action plan of how to prevent any potential outbursts of discrimination.

Respondents saw a long-term governmental perspective, youth participation in international events on migration, and labour migration programmes based on partnership between countries of origin and destination countries as approaches of secondary importance. All of these approaches could be combined in a partnership between youth/potential migrants, government and related institutions, and inter-governmental bodies that shows the interest in inter-sectorcommunication and negotiation that could lead to win-win-win outcomes.

Of least importance according to the respondents were more involvement in migration flow regulation, established formal recruitment channels for low-skilled labour, and effective boarder control. All of these approaches comply with formal procedures of migration regulation, which implies that there is a lack of information about possible migration outcomes and governmental approaches towards it, where government and migration institutions are seen as unnecessary institutions only restricting migrants and not helping them.

Further analysis revealsa clearer view of respondents’ opinions towards migration through the perspective of possible governmental approaches:

More inter-governmental help from developed to underdeveloped countries would help “so that less number of people would try to emigrate for greener pastures.”

“We should only discourage illegal immigration. Immigration is not bad if proper channels are taken”.

“There must be strong vigilance and coordination between two nations and should ratify the UN Convention against Human Trafficking including the 2 Optional Protocols.”

 “A clear regulatory system should be created and/or revised to have legal immigrants come into country while governments should intensify their care of good governance through equal resource allocation to enhance the existing resources so as to control and avoid the youth and other unemployed skilled labour go brain drain.”

Government programmes, international cooperation, reduction of bureaucratic thresholds, measures to prevent irregular migration and human trafficking, as well as partnership with target groups, could be a part of new approaches towards migration issues. Governmentsmust reassess the needs of high-skilled and low-skilled migrants. This will help to prioritize certain sectors and occupations that can easily be filled with immigrant labour.

Low-skilled migrants

Low-skilled irregular migration might decrease if governments establish formal recruitment channels and reduce the bureaucracy of work permits and visas through bilateral or multilateral treaties. Depending on the needs of the destination country, some programmes in countries of origin can be introduced to ensure a basic level of education and literacy that will undoubtedly benefit both countries and low-skilled migrants’ personal capacities. According to respondents, this would also ease the process of integration, provide more necessary information about migration possibilities, strengthen motivation to migrate, and encourage migrants to gain new skills; all this would help to control migration flows and reduce the number of human rights violations.

Easier integration / It would enhance the capacity of immigrants to integrate into the labour market and into destination societies. Furthermore these programmes could be used to ensure immigrants take free and INFORMED decisions regarding their future prior departure.
Control over migrants flow / The "preparation" for migration will reduce illegal immigration to destination countries, enable the destination country to estimate the amount of immigrant labour they need at any given period, prevent the immigrant labour from introducing an epidemic (unconsciously) into the destination country and ensure that both countries benefit equally from the immigrant labour process.
Information / There should be dissemination seminarsat the international, regional and national levels; they would give governments the opportunity to respond to the issue of irregular migration and lay out what they intend to do.
Motivation / Information will discourage the illegal migrants with criminal history to enter into another country; and the country in charge will have greater returns in the long run e.g. where the skilled labour allowed to migrate sends back remittances to their home country. Countries could also establish good relationships with clear-cut jobsand creating peace through advanced security measures put in place.
Skills and expertise / Migrant workers will be more equipped and prepared in order to meet the standards and needs of the enterprise that they will be working in. This would also enable them to become oriented with the tasks and with the available technology that they will be using. It would also help them acquire more skills and knowledge and be part of a productive and efficient migrant labour force.
Human Rights / Migrants will be able to exercise their rights when faced with ignorance. If a problematic situation occurs, he/she will know how to defend him/herself and to which laws to appeal.

A reduction of bureaucracy in formal recruitment channels would benefit migrants and both destination and origin countries. Enhanced formal recruitment systemswould provide more information and motivate migrants to fully prepare for possible travel, also reducing the negative and inhumane means of illegal migration today.

Possible measures to reduce illegal migration

One of the ways of reducing illegal migration is by introducingbigger penalties for the employers hiring illegal immigrants. If governments take full responsibility for regulating migration flow, such penalties would be enforced more often. However, reality shows that corruption and ignorance from all the sides involved can be blamed for the current status quo, where penalties are rarely enforced. Also, there is no common understanding about whether such measures are beneficial or not.