Radio Australia
Contrary to popular perceptions in the West, most economic migrants aren't heading from poor countries to wealthy ones.
The
vast majority move within their own countries, and most of those who
move abroad, do so from one developing country to another. The report,
"Overcoming barriers: Human mobility and development" warns that many
economic migrants are at risk of abuse.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker:
Indonesian maid Keni binti Carda; Jeni Klugman, lead author of UNDP
report, "Overcoming Barriers - Human Mobility & Development"
KLUGMAN: Well there were several key messages which emerged when we
approached this topic of migration from the perspective of people and
tried to look at broader dimensions of well being beyond income. And
what we found was that people who move and their families and those who
stay at home as well as in destinations, can all benefit from
migration. But there are important underlying inequalities coupled with
restriction which mean that the potential gains are much less than they
could be. So in that context we suggest a policy agenda moving forward.
LAM:
And one of the things that you discovered which may surprise many
people is that these people actually move frequently to neighbouring
countries, it's not always from poor to rich nations?
KLUGMAN:
No certainly I think that's one of the surprising facts that we came
across. The initial point is that most movement in the world does not
happen even between countries, it happens within countries. And so we
came up with new I think for the first time internationally comparable
estimates of the number of internal migrants based on census data,
which numbers around 740 million people who have moved. Whereas the
number of people who have moved across borders is to the order of about
200 million.
LAM: So what's the benefit of moving from one poor country to another?
KLUGMAN:
Well typically people are moving within continents, within regions to
somewhat better off countries. So they're normally moving to countries
which we classify in terms of their human development indexes, which is
a summary measure of income, education and health achievement. And
people are tending to move to countries or areas which offer better
opportunity. So for example in Africa towards South Africa, towards
Nigeria, towards Kenya in East Africa. In Asia there's significant
movement into Thailand, into Malaysia. But they're kind of formally
speaking developing countries but still offer much better
opportunities. And the differences in expectations can clearly be quite
large between someone born for example in Myanmar, and someone born in
Thailand.
LAM: And Jeni many of these people of course move
legitimately through officially sanctioned channels, but I understand
that governments don't always make that easy for them?
KLUGMAN:
No, no and so-called paper walls are very significant. These can range
from the costs of passports, which can exceed 10 per cent of GDP in a
number of countries, which in Australia would be more than $A3,500 for
a passport in equivalent terms. A lot of countries require a series of
other checks in terms of health, a whole range of administrative
requirements. And these can add significantly to the costs of moving so
that those can number even a year's worth of expected earnings in the
place to which people are going.
LAM: And the paper walls that
you mentioned that's obviously driven some people in Asia to turn to
people smugglers. What's the UN recommending to counter this problem?
KLUGMAN:
Well I think the way to counter it most effectively is through more
transparent and simple mechanisms which allow people to move which
recognise on the one hand the underlying pressures, but on the other
hand the demands for people in terms of filling much needed jobs in a
whole range of sectors. So that's with respect to future flows. With
respect to people who are already present in a country on an irregular
basis, sometimes because they entered on irregular basis, sometimes
because they've overstayed or more likely that they've overstayed, what
we're recommending is a consideration of different methods of
regularisation. The most feasible appears to be something which is
known as earned regularisation, which can be conditional on for example
a labour market record, no criminal record, whatever requirements the
government would like to impose.
LAM: And just briefly Jeni
let's end on a positive note, which countries in Asia are doing the
right thing to facilitate the legitimate movement of people?
KLUGMAN:
Well Thailand is actually quite a good example, it clearly faces large
challenges on a number of fronts, but in terms of provision of access
to services in particular health services, I think there's a good
record. And there's also been an attempt to extend regularisation. In
terms of origin countries I think the best known and rightly so is that
of the Philippines, which has had a longstanding program, which has a
strong emphasis on protecting the rights of its workers abroad which
has been quite effective.
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