Leaving Home: The Impact of Global Migration on Economic, Social and Human Development

With approximately 200 million migrants across the world, global migration has become not only a reality but also a spur to essential policy discussions in several countries with high immigrant populations. At the same time, very little is known about the impact of migration in the countries from which migrants originate. The effects on those left behind, the significance of remittances, and the consequences of returned migrants on quality of life, labor and development are among the important issues requiring further study.

On February 24, the Latin America Initiative at Brookings hosted a discussion of two recently released reports on the development impacts of global migration. The first panel focused on the United Nations Development Programme’s 2009 Human Development Report, “Overcoming Barriers: Human Mobility and Development.” Jeni Klugman, the report’s lead author, presented the report’s findings. The second report, “”Development on the Move: Measuring and Optimizing Migration’s Economic and Social Impacts,” a joint product of the Institute for Public Policy Research and the Global Development Network, was presented by Laura Chappell, senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research.

A panel of leading immigration and migration policy experts discussed the main lessons of the reports after each presentation.