DevISSues volume 11, number 2, November 2009

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Migration in a Globalizing World

Also in this issue: Environment and Development: The Contributions of Hans Opschoor Roundtable with Human Rights Defender Tulip Award Winner Justine Bihamba

DevISSues DevelopmentISSues

Volume11/Number2/November 2009

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From the Guest Editor Migration: is the 21st century different?

In recent years migration, again, has become one of the most controversial and emotive social and economic issues. This despite its being as old as human beings who moved around to improve their living conditions, for safety and even adventure! In previous phases of globalization and since the eighteenth century, the development of the rich ‘North’ depended on the movement of millions of people through slavery, indenture and wage labour.

The current phase of globalization is little changed; modern migratory movement can best be understood in the context of a globalized market economy that directs the flows of goods, money and labour within and beyond nations. People, however, have much less freedom to move than the goods that they produce and the profit and financial wealth that they create, and the rich who accumulate the wealth. Labour is not like other goods, it is embodied in human beings with all its physical, gendered and cultural characteristics that are shaped by history, giving labour migration its political and cultural dimensions. It is people who move in search of work or safety and offer their labour in different locations and contribute to a globalized labour market. Yet this simple fact is often ignored in the debate on migration and reveals itself in: ‘we asked for labour but then people came.’

This special issue is devoted to the contribution of migrants and considers forces that shape their lives, policies needed to protect them and how migratory flows are to be understood. Historical evidence and current practices point to states’ ambivalent attitude towards migration (see the opening article by Harris and that by Davin on Chinese migration). Migrants are essential for national and international economic development, yet their lives are governed by xenophobic, racist and fear mongering policies and culture.

Most migration takes place at national or regional levels within the ‘South’. Awumbila and Kujima cover migration in West Africa and Asia respectively and show how a gender pattern of migration is governed by labour market demands. Awumbila and Opschoor (interview with Pellegrini) also draw our attention to the long-term impacts of environmental degradation on rural livelihoods and migration.

Much of migration is voluntary and as part of the household strategy to improve living standards, but not all voluntary migration is legal, nor do all migrants have legal protection, even at a national level (see Davin on migrants in Chinese cities). People smuggling and trafficking further complicates the matter. Kujima shows how female migration in Asia is driven by a labour demand for private care and commercial sex services, with the latter being closely linked to trafficking. Yet both services share a precarious and unregulated employment pattern, in which migrants live a marginal life that is shaped by their gender, class, ethnicity, race and occupation, without many labour or civil rights. Kujima argues that migration policy reforms should aim to protect all migrants, rather than being preoccupied with irregular migration and trafficking. The universal protection of human and worker rights remains the best strategy to prevent abuses of one section of the population that happen to be migrants.

Migrants have their own strategies to deal with vulnerability that include temporary tolerance of and bargaining for improved conditions (Kujima) or organizing urban associations based on ethnicity and regional ties (Davin) or formation of transnational community organizations (Smith and van Naerssen). Maintaining family links through remittances is also important (Grabel), as is ‘escaping’ home when conditions at destination deteriorate. It is generally agreed that remittances and migrants are important and valuable sources of capital, knowledge and information to the areas of origin and should be an integral component of national and international development policies.

The hope is that, given the importance of migrants to both the ‘North’ and ‘South’, migration policies should focus more on the regulation of migration and management of its benefits rather than on control which presently seems neither practical nor to the benefit of destination and sending regions.

About the cover

The cover photograph is a section of a painting entitled ‘Mothers who go abroad to work’ by school children whose mothers have left the country as migrant workers. It was created as part of an art competition held in celebration of the 2002 International Migrant Day on 18 December 2002. The photograph was kindly

Mahmood Messkoub

provided to us by Yu Kojima, one of the contributors to this DevISSues. She was sent it by the Sri Lankan NGO Woman and

Mahmood Messkoub is Senior Lecturer in Development Studies at ISS and guest editor for

Media Collective (www.womenandmedia.net) which aims to bring

this issue. He has worked and published on migration issues in Middle East, Europe and

about change based on feminist principles for a society free from

China. He is currently the ISS coordinator of a cooperative project with colleagues from

violence and militarization. Our thanks go to the Women and

the University of Ghana, the Radboud University (NL) and MDF consulting (NL) to support

Media Collective for permission to use the photograph. Thanks

the work of the Centre for Migration Sudies at the University of Ghana (Legon). He can be

also to Action Network of Migrant Workers (ACTFORM), Sri

contacted at messkoub@iss.nl.

Lanka and Migrant Services Centre (MSC), Sri Lanka.

DevISSues is also available on the ISS website at www.iss.nl

The views expressed in DevISSues are those of the original authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Institute.

Contents 3

Page

4/ Immigration and State Power

Nigel Harris Page

8/ Intra-Regional Migration In West Africa: Changing

Patterns And Dynamics Mariama Awumbila Page 11/ International Female Migration and Trafficking Continuum in Asia Yu Kojima Page 13/ Internal Migration in China Delia Davin Page 16/ Remittances, Political Economy, and Economic Development Ilene Grabel Page 19/ Migrants: Suitable brokers of development?

Lothar Smith and Ton van Naerssen Page 22/ Environment and Development: the contributions of Hans Opschoor Lorenzo Pellegrini Page 24/ A roundtable with Human Rights Defender Tulip Award winner Justine Masika Bihamba The views expressed in DevISSues are those of the original authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Institute.

The online versions of all articles with full bibliography can be found at www.iss.nl/devissues

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Immigration and State Power

Nigel Harris For the past thirty years, the study of economic migration has been almost exclusively preoccupied with the social and economic impact of immigration on labour-receiving countries (as opposed to, for example, the impact of emigration on labour-sending countries). But now, in the new century, it seems that the key issues are not economic but rather concern the political implications of immigration for State sovereignty, for the viability of nation-States. The processes associated with economic globalization make the questions at stake much more urgent than before, progressively raising immigration as an issue in the policy agenda of almost all developed countries.

Globalization, as understood here, is the beginning of a process that creates a single global economy, by implication superseding the old world of separate and politically defined national economies. Such an economic order implies the increasing mobility of capital, goods and labour, just as the earlier creation of national economies required the increasing mobility of the factors of production within national borders. However, whereas the creation of national economies usually enjoyed the supervision of one governing authority, the political State, economic globalization has no such single supervisor. On the contrary, the world remains politically governed almost exclusively by a mass of separate States, each in principle limited to a geographically defined fragment of the whole, and each therefore immobile in a world of growing mobility. To put it in a simplistic form, the economics of the new system collide directly with the politics of the old.

This question is briefly explored here in three parts: internal migration; international migration; and the ‘integration’ of immigrants.

Internal Migration A central concern of the State, one of the underpinnings of its capacity to rule, is control of the country’s population.

One component of this historically has entailed attempts to regulate or prevent movement, at an extreme, to enforce on the inhabitants, a measure of immobility.

Efforts vary over time and in impact, limited always by the administrative capacity of the State relative to its many other objectives.

Some of the more extreme historical cases occur in authoritarian regimes, requiring the inhabitants to carry internal passports (the identity card is perhaps the relic of this order), permits or visas to move, domestic and inter-provincial check points, and in some cases direct prohibition on movement between provinces, districts, parishes, villages and cities. There are many examples here but some of the best known might include medieval France, Tsarist Russia, seventeenth and eighteenth century Prussia, and, outside Europe, Tokugawa Japan.

More generally, serfdom in European feudalism – tying the worker to the soil - illustrates an extreme form of legal

immobilization, the subordination of the labour force to the will of the lord.

In the twentieth century, comparable regulatory regimes existed in, for example, the former Soviet Union and its allies. Tying the population to its place of registration or birth survives in the identity card or propiska. Such an immobilization of the workforce is economically tolerable only when married to forced labour or worker conscription, directing workers to move to places where they are required (to, for example, the large construction projects, dams, power stations etc undertaken in the 1930s in the Soviet Union). In essence, the difference between the soldier and the civilian is eliminated; the workforce is reduced to being an army, subject to State orders, with severe penalties for those who move without permission.

In a number of newly independent developing countries, governments assumed they knew where the population should be best located, and proceeded to try to employ police power to enforce this – as with transmigrasi policy in Indonesia, Malaysia’s FELDA programme to populate the western provinces; policies to prevent urbanization in many countries for example the ujaama villagistion campaign in Tanzania.

More brutally, the apartheid regime in South Africa endeavoured to control the black population by classifying them as foreigners (citizens of the bantustans), and enforcing exclusion from white areas through the notorious pass system and extensive internal police checks. A comparable system is enforced in the occupied Palestinian territories (the West Bank and Gaza), again through identity cards, numerous check points, controlled routes and other obstructions to movement.

While there may be different local justifications for internal migration control, in all cases the mobility required for rapid economic development – the creation of a national labour force with the ability to move to wherever work is created - is sacrificed to the need for political control.

One of the more interesting cases in this connection is the evolution of migration

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policy in China. After the success of the 1948 revolution in China, it was made clear there that the new Republic took for granted that tens of thousands of rural dwellers would move to the cities in the normal process accompanying industrialization; by implication, freedom of movement was assumed. A decade later, following the extraordinary growth of the first Five Year Plan period (and the major effort required by the Korean war), the government’s nerve seems to have failed in the face of a major surge of urbanization (a panic replicated in many other developing countries at that time). Freedom of movement was ended. The Chinese government adapted the pre-revolution household registration system – hukou – to register the urban population entitling the legal urban-dweller to social security, pensions on retirement, housing, education and medical care, rights denied to those registered as rural inhabitants. Elaborate controls were introduced to prevent transfer from rural to urban residence – non transferable food ration cards; requirements for permission to leave the rural commune, to travel, to enter urban areas, to reside and work there. Police raids at railway and bus terminals and in poor city areas were designed to enforce this regime and expel the illegal migrants to their place of origin or registration.

Such an order could work only with forced labour to direct workers to the places where the State required them (for example, for oil or other resource exploitation in under-populated areas, to settle areas with low population density – for example, Inner Mongolia, Tibet etc). During the Cultural revolution, there were also, for political reasons, mass expulsions of the urban population to temporary exile in rural areas. However, accelerated economic growth also raised the demand for

unskilled work in existing cities in jobs the urban dwellers refused. The regime allowed cities to import rural labour on temporary contract (and without a hukou), what the regime called a ‘worker-peasant system’, supposedly a revolutionary attempt to overcome the ancient contradiction between town and country. The scale of resentment among the rural migrants concerned exploded in the Shanghai general strike of 1966 during the early phases of the Cultural Revolution.

The controls on mobility were completely incompatible with accelerated and sustained economic growth, and while, following the Deng reforms of the late 1970s, they were not formally removed (and hukou was not ended), they were allowed to lapse, or applied only selectively.

The sheer pace of economic growth washed away the politics of mobility control.

The cumulative costs of immobilization must have been considerable, not just in terms of foregone economic growth, but in losses to the rural population in earnings from migration. According to a Chinese survey in 2003 remittances of inter-provincial migrants accounted for about 60 per cent of rural household income. The costs of State policies to restrict or prevent migration were borne by the poorest segment of the Chinese population, the rural inhabitants.

In sum, the State’s efforts to control, curb or prevent internal migration provide policy lessons on the issues at stake in international migration – and the sacrifice of the immense potential to reduce world poverty to the maintenance of the world political order. It is thus not entirely fanciful to identify rising immigration and free world mobility as an existential threat to the inherited forms of the State.

International Migration The creation of national economies since the 18th century forced radical changes to an inherited hitherto borderless economic geography.

It forced also an increase in the mobility of the factors of production, capital and labour, within national boundaries, severing linkage that had hitherto extended beyond the borders. It also created new patterns of domestic interdependent economic specialization at the expense of what had now become external transactions.

This experience provides us with some suggestions as to the results of globalization, the creation of a single global economy.

However, some aspects of economic globalization featured even as national economies were being created, particularly when much of the world was dominated by European empires.

Thus, large scale movements of forced and free labour took place in the modern period – of slave labour from Africa to the Americas, and following the end of slavery, of indentured labour. Furthermore, in the first great surge of economic globalization in the second half of the nineteenth century, there were unprecedented flows of migrant workers from Europe, to the Americas, the Antipodes, and to Africa. The second surge, in the second half of the twentieth century, led to some 150 million living outside their country of birth (the UN figure is an underestimate since it excludes returnees, whereas gross figures must be very much larger). Again, these are figures that cover only countries, excluding the very much larger numbers who migrate within.

The present phase of steady growth in global migration is, so far as the developed countries are concerned, much exaggerated by two special features: 1. The demography of the developed countries (and China), leading to a decline in the active population, as a result of a declining birth rate. This is threatening the end of selfsufficiency in the national labour forces of the developed countries and, other things being equal, a growing incapacity to sustain

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current output with existing levels of technology and capital-output ratios. Indeed, to sustain current output requires the developed countries either to locate activity to areas where workers are available (‘out-sourcing’) or create mechanisms for the recruitment of additional workers from abroad, whether as permanent or temporary residents.

2. The long-term emphasis in the developed countries on raising the skill-intensity of their respective national outputs, is producing almost perpetual scarcities of workers with a range of appropriate skills. This has produced a growing dependence by developed countries on foreign-born skilled workers, a growing competition for the world’s stock of skilled (to the relative impoverishment of many developing countries), and the establishment of mechanisms for permanent recruitment (now affecting the recruitment of foreign students to higher education in developed countries). The dependence is most pronounced for the most highly skilled, as US figures suggest –in the year 2,000 nearly 47 per cent of the US stock of scientists and engineers with doctoral qualifications were foreign-born (as were two thirds of the net addition of such workers to the labour force in the last half of the decade of the 1990s). It seems that the foreign-born contribute disproportionately, and increasingly so, to innovation in the United States (where in 2006, the foreignborn were included on 25 per cent of applications for patents, up from 7.6 per cent in1998). Furthermore, the continual enhancement of the skills of the native-born workforce is exaggerating the scarcity of workers willing to undertake unskilled or low skilled work, or at least undertake it at the wages on offer.

Within a global economy, one would expect patterns of territorial specialization to emerge to contribute to a global output. The same phenomenon might emerge in relation to skilled labour, whether as the result of deliberate government policy or a global market organizing

the distribution of training facilities.

A striking, if limited, example of government initiative here is the Filipino supply of two categories of workers nurses and merchant mariners, both produced by Filipino training institutions in numbers far in excess of the domestic requirements. In the future, given current investment in higher education, possibly China and India will come to provide the world’s main supply of engineers and medical doctors.

However, we should note in passing that we are still employing the ‘archaic’ concept of countries, politically-defined units, to identify what are often borderless economic transactions. Outsourcing now covers global networks of interdependent collaborative activities in many countries where the States concerned may be entirely unaware of the economic logic involved. What has happened in advanced manufacturing and services, may now be affecting what were formerly identified as ‘non-tradeables’ - for example, medical services (where patients are treated in different locations internationally, according to local specializations) or higher education (where students travel between different campuses for different special fields of a global university). Such developments might well reduce the need for workers to travel to different countries.

Will the present economic conjuncture affect these trends, restoring the old national economies? There is certainly evidence that governments have reached for economic nationalism to offset the slump – from trade protection measures to national financing of banking. However, I believe, governments have left it far too late to restore the old order. The attempt itself would be economically – and therefore, politically – devastating. Whenever the world resumes growth, as it certainly will, it will start from where it left off which suggests that while economic globalization (and its relationship to national States) may be changed in important ways, it will be a process in substance resumed.

In sum, whatever the current position, the developed countries will be obliged to establish mechanisms for the permanent recruitment of workers (if not settlers) if governments are going to be

able to meet the welfare expectations of their inhabitants and thus secure political survival.

The integration of immigrants If mobility of the factors of production remains a fundamental feature of the new global economy, States remain preoccupied with their own immobility – not with facilitating circulation in the interests of the welfare of the world and their own populations, but with migrants as settlers, new members of the national political club. The economic question of facilitating mobility is subordinate to the political issue – migrants as new citizens or as invaders. Such an approach almost completely dismisses the economic benefits of migration for the native-born to concentrate on the fears of losing political power. It is this context which in the developed countries leads to a preoccupation with the ‘integration’ of immigrants, turning them, whether they wish it or not, into citizens.

However, as many people have discovered it is almost impossible to say what constitutes a native, a rightful member of the national club. Most of us have no choice – we are born into the club and spend our lives within it whether we approve of it or not. It is an existential condition, not a free choice. Some of us, in random swings of the political pendulum are violently excluded – as were the German Jews under the Nazis, and with a terrible shock bludgeoned into being foreigners. Fortunately most of us never have to face this crisis (unless you live in the Balkans or Rwanda etc). But the occasional violence of exclusion justifies the earlier point that immigration constitutes an existential threat to the nation-State.

There are various approaches to trying to define what constitutes a true member of the club and a loyal citizen (even though the majority of the nativeborn are not required to adhere to the club or declare their loyalty). Let us restrict ourselves to two extremes: 1. The nation is defined by a common culture, adherence to a common set of values. However, in practice it is impossible to make explicit this common culture, or to specify what values all or a majority of the inhabitants share. Either the

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specification is impossibly vague (and does not exclude things shared by many non-natives), or it is subject to the prejudice or vanity of the person concerned – we are all kindly and truthful. More to the point, the native-born are not obliged to accept either the culture or the principles. Governments retreat to the archaic – all newcomers to Britain are expected to swear loyalty to the monarch although there are no explanations to why republicans are excluded from British nationality (and natives are not).

2. The second approach lays down no such conditions for acceptance; the newcomer has to do no more than accept the rules until changed.

The first approach illustrates, in my view, a dangerous authoritarianism, an illiberalism, implicit in the procedure, and its dependence on hypocrisy about the status quo. By contrast, liberal principles might suggest as long-terms objectives: 1. In general, people should be free to travel, to work and settle where they choose, and to be able to do so with their rights protected by the State in whatever country they reside. In essence, the conditions

of international migration should be the same as those for domestic migration.

2. People should have freedom of thought, and not be obliged to abandon their existing beliefs or adopt other beliefs because these are locally fashionable; 3. All residents should be treated equally – nothing should be required of the foreign-born which is not required of the native-born.

Implicitly, joining the national club means accepting the club rules, paying club dues etc, without necessarily sharing the same opinions or customs as existing members. These were broadly the conditions that pertained in parts of Europe in the past.

In current conditions, such principles are completely utopian. In Europe, the legacy of xenophobia and hundreds of years of internecine war makes foreigners potential or actual enemies.

Furthermore, human rights are currently secured only by States, and those without citizenship may be severely disprivileged.

onerous and expensive is liable to considerably increase the disincentives to try. Even now passports are no longer sacred badges of identity so much as simple conveniences for travel.

Given what has been said before about increasing mobility in the world, the disincentives to seek citizenship might suggest increasing numbers of inhabitants will choose not to naturalize where they live and work. In addition, the growing bureaucracy seeking in vain to match labour demand and supply will give great incentives to move illegally or move legally and work illegally. Such workers will accordingly slip out of whatever control the State retains until such time as governments recognize reality and assume responsibility for all who live within their domains, regardless of origins. But there may be many who are severely damaged before such a state of affairs comes to prevail.

Professor Emeritus of the economics of the city, University College London; former director of the Development Planning Unit (UCL); Senior policy adviser, European Policy Centre (Brussels); and consultant to the World Bank etc.. He is author of the book ‘The New Untouchables’ published by Penguin. His article is based on his lecture entitled ‘Population, Migration, Urbanization’ given at

However, the attempt by many governments now to make the conditions of entry to citizenship both

ISS in May 2009 as part of the SID lecture series ‘Population Question and Development: The need for a debate in the Netherlands’.

ISS News The next issue of DevISSues will be a special alumni issue.

We are inviting alumni to tell us their ideas on development, from their own work and life perspective. How, if at all, was this influenced by their studies at ISS? How are they using the knowledge and insights you gained at ISS? If you are interested in writing then please first visit the ISS website for more details at http://www.iss.nl/Alumni/Alumni-news/ DevISSues-call-for-papers ISS Honorary Fellow Elinor Ostrom has won the Nobel economics prize. Ostrom won the prize with Oliver Williamson for their analyses of economic governance — the way authority is exercised in companies and economic systems. Dr Ostrom is the first woman to win the prize since it was founded in 1968, and the fifth woman to win a Nobel award this year — a record.

Dr Ostrom devoted her career to studying the interaction of people and natural resources. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate at ISS in 2002, the

year in which ISS celebrated its 50th anniversary.

The ISS research project ‘Unlocking Potential: Tackling Economic, Institutional and Social Constraints of Informal Entrepreneurship in SubSaharan Africa’, submitted by Michael Grimm and research cluster Macro-Micro Dynamics of Poverty, has been selected for funding by the World Bank Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) in the area Labor Markets, Job Creation and Economic Growth: Scaling up Research, Capacity Building and Action on the Ground. Read more about this important research on the ISS website at http://www.iss.nl/informality ISS recently welcomed its 1000th alumnus to its Facebook ISS alumni group. Qazi Ahmad studied Agricultural and Rural Development in 2001/2002 and comes from Pakistan. Join the ISS alumni group at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/ profile.php?id=582877974&v=info&ref=ts

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Intra-Regional Migration In West Africa: Changing Patterns And Dynamics Mariama Awumbila Introduction Migration has gained significance on the global agenda with the increasing interdependence of the world economy.

Popular views of an ’invasion’ of African migrants into the European Union and other parts of the developed world permeate policy discourses and the media landscape. However, contemporary mobility patterns in West Africa indicate that only a small share of migrants actually moves to Europe and the USA and that intra and inter-country movements within the region are and continue to be a central feature of people’s life. Thus in reality, south-south migration involving different categories of migrants such as temporary crossborder workers, especially female traders, seasonal migrants, clandestine workers, professionals, refugees, farm labourers, unskilled workers and nomads remains the bulk of migration streams. Much of the movement takes place in diverse political, economic and ecological settings but remains essentially intra-regional. These movements play fundamental roles in the livelihood strategies of many families and communities in West Africa. Yet neither much research nor media focus is given to these migration streams. I will focus on these intra-regional migration dynamics in West Africa and argue that a focus on intra-African mobility is necessary for designing holistic migration policies for Africa’s development. Evolution of West African Migration Patterns Africa’s migration history is complex, and present-day migration trends are deeply rooted in historical antecedents. In West Africa, migration has long since been a way of life, and has always played a central role in livelihood strategies of both rural and urban populations. Pre-colonial

migrations in West Africa took various forms and were initially dominated by traders, fisherman, and nomadic farmers. The introduction of economic development policies of both colonial and post colonial governments however changed the dynamics of migration (Adepoju, 2005). During the colonial era the development and expansion of cash crop production (cocoa in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, coffee in Côte d’Ivoire) attracted a workforce from various parts of the region. Ghana for example became a net receiver of people as the opening up of cocoa and oil palm plantations, mines and infrastructure development drew large scale immigration from other West African countries. Migrants came in from neighbouring countries: Togo, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali and francophone Africa. Following independence, the consolidation of boundaries by national governments began to hinder cross-border migration. By the early 1960’s, both South-South and SouthNorth migrations had developed simultaneously. By the 1980s a ‘culture of migration’ had emerged where migration especially to Europe and North America, had become not only a coping strategy and a form of economic mobility for individuals and families in West Africa, but also a form of transition into adulthood in some West African countries.

Dimensions of Contemporary West African Migration Patterns Contemporary migration patterns indicate the overwhelmingly regional nature of West African international migration. In Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Togo, over two-thirds of emigrants are living within West and Central Africa. For the region as a whole,

over the last decade, 61.7 per cent of emigrants have moved to another part of the region, 8.2 per cent to Central Africa, 0.3 per cent to the Gulf, 14.8 per cent to various parts of Europe and 6.0 per cent to North America (de Haas, 2008). Thus, despite the recent diversification of West African migration, it is important to highlight that intraregional migration remains far more important than migration from West Africa to the rest of the world. Table 1, showing the destinations of Ghanaian emigrants in 2005, similarly indicates the overwhelmingly regional nature of Ghanaian emigration.

Table 1: Destination of Ghanaian Emigrants Countries

Percentage

Côte d’Ivoire

32.0

Nigeria

13.0

Burkina Faso

10.0

Guinea

9.0

USA

7.0

UK

6.0

Togo

4.0

Germany

2.0

Liberia

2.0

Canada

2.0

Others

13.0

Total

100.0

Source: Sussex Global Migrant Origin Database, 2005.

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Another important dimension of contemporary West African migration is that many West Africa countries are now simultaneously immigration, emigration and transit countries. The main countries of immigration in the sub-region are Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Senegal and Nigeria The major labour exporting countries include Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali and Togo, involving a lot of cross border movements, female traders, farm labourers and unskilled workers who pay little attention to the arbitrary borders. Rural to urban migration has also intensified as farm labourers have moved in search of waged labour in the cities. Conflicts and environmental degradation further aggravate the pressure for migration from poorer to relatively prosperous regions, within and outside the sub-region.

Since the late 1980s, traditional labourimporting countries (Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana) and attractive destinations for migrants (Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal) have experienced political and economic crises, which have resulted in the outmigration of their nationals. In recent years, Ghana has, however, experienced a flow of return migrants facilitated by improved economic conditions and political stability. There is also some evidence of a pattern of replacement migration, in which migrants of rural origin move to towns to occupy positions vacated by nationals who emigrate abroad as appears to be occurring in Mali, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal (Adepoju, 2005).

Since the 1970s, there have been movements of highly skilled migrants first to more prosperous parts of the region (e.g. Ghana to Nigeria) and later to other African countries, Europe and North America, attracted by relatively higher salaries and better prospects for improved living conditions. Senegal has become a transit country for migrants seeking to enter Europe via the Canary Islands. Thus countries that were once immigrant-receiving have become migrant-sending and transit countries.

Another significant development particularly since the 1980s has been a clear diversification of migration patterns within and from the continent away from migration patterns determined by colonial and linguistic divisions. For instance, Ghanaians, Nigerians, Moroccans and Senegalese

emigration has increasingly focused on countries outside their main language community. Intercontinental migrants have begun to go to countries other than the respective former colonizers.

Examples include Senegalese and Malian migrants to Zambia and more recently to South Africa and the USA. OECD (2005) data shows that Ghanaians for example are increasingly moving to non English-speaking European and African countries, indicating the dynamic nature of West African migration and the ability to adapt to new constraints.

Despite the dominance of migration within the continent, however, since the 1980s there has been growing regular and irregular migration from Africa to Europe, the Middle East, Asia, North America. There has also been growing migration towards some West African countries, such as the increasing numbers of Chinese, South Africans and other West African nationals into Ghana.

An increasing number of West Africans have migrated to Southern Africa, such as Ghanaian and Nigerian health workers now found in South Africa and Botswana. Likewise, more West Africans have migrated to Libya and Maghreb countries, creating a vital link between sub-Saharan, North African and transMediterranean migration systems.

Women are playing important and presumably increasing roles in

international migration. The traditional pattern of migration within and from Africa which has been male-dominated is increasingly becoming feminized.

A significant share of migrants is now made up of women who move independently to fulfill their own economic needs. Women dominate short distance emigration to nearby countries, accounting for 64, 57 and 56 per cent respectively of Ghanaian emigrants in Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Togo in the mid 1990s (Twum-Baah et al, 1995). The extent to which the mobility of women may be providing opportunities for changing gender roles in Africa requires further focus, as in many cases women’s mobility is still largely determined by unequal gender relations that either inhibit their movement or force them to leave their homes. Despite this the gendered nature of migration drivers and processes in West Africa needs to be recognized.

Trafficking in persons is also a characteristic of West African migration.

Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, among others, are all involved in human trafficking in a complex web of being origin, transit and destination of trafficked women and children.

Côte d’Ivoire for example, is a major destination for trafficked children from Mali and Burkina Faso as forced labour to work in plantations and as domestic servants.

Cross Border Migration: Fulani Migrant Women from Burkina Faso / Awumbila, M. and Tsikata, D.

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Drivers of Contemporary Migration Patterns Studies indicate that most West African migration is driven by essentially the same social, economic and political forces (such as poverty, conflicts, environmental factors and other crises) as in other world regions. Despite this similarity, studies also indicate that in reality a much more complex mix of factors have helped to shape people’s movements across and beyond West Africa. The assumption that every migrant is escaping from poverty, squalor, deprivation and want, and that the focus of such migrations is Europe and the western world does not necessarily hold, as it neglects the social factors that influence emigration from the sub-region. The conventional causes of migration in Africa are often reinforced by processes of globalization.

In particular, diminishing environmental resources as a result of sustained exploitation have led to violent conflicts among resource users which have in turn induced forced migration in many African countries. In Ghana since the 1990s there have been violent clashes between ethnic Dagombas and Konkombas, Nchumurus and Gonjas and in Nigeria over land ownership and farming rights.

Contemporary migration in the Western African sub-region has also been influenced by conflicts. Liberia, Sierra Leone, Togo and Côte d’Ivoire have all experienced conflicts in recent times, leading to the dispersal of nationals of these countries into the region and elsewhere. Liberia’s contagious civil war, which started in 1989, soon engulfed neighbouring countries, almost turning into a regional conflict and destabilizing the entire West African sub-region.

Nearly 70 per cent of Liberia’s population was displaced during the war in that country and about 750,000 people were internally displaced within Côte D’Ivoire when civil war broke out in 2002.

West African Policy Response to Intra Regional Migration The role of West African states and regional blocs have been important in shaping migration dynamics Africa.

Although many African states do not have clear policies on mobility, the creation of regional blocks such as the

Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Maghreb Union have had an impact on inter-regional mobility and particularly on the direction of labour migration flows. The creation of ECOWAS in 1975 has promoted a progressive abolition of obstacles to the free movement of people, services and capital in the region. Despite these provisions, the free movement of labor is still severely impaired by the fact that regional and national regulations are not synchronized, thus impinging on the practical implementation of the migration policies across borders in the region. A number of member States have implemented their own migration policies that remain more restrictive and highly sensitive to the fluctuations in their labor markets. For example, massive expulsions of migrants by Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire in 1983 and 1986 respectively occurred after the approval of the ECOWAS Protocol on the Free Movement of Persons and the right of Residence and Establishment in 1980, which guaranteed free entry of Community citizens without visa for ninety days. At the continental level, the Africa Union’s Strategic Framework for policy on migration adopted in 2004, and to a less explicit extent, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), include the promotion of labour mobility among their key aims and the recognition that migration is an important engine for regional cooperation and integration. These frameworks and policies have the potential to address and manage intra-regional migration in West Africa.

What appears to be lacking now is a translation of these frameworks into workable programmes at national levels.

Conclusions and Implications for a Responsive Migration Agenda This overview of contemporary migration patterns and trends in West Africa has shown that although migration on the African continent is generally characterized by tremendous diversity, there are also commonalities in the West African region. A clear feature in these trends is that although there has been an increase in trans-Saharan and trans-Mediterranean migration

to the Maghreb and Europe, intraregional migration within West Africa remains far more important, at least in terms of numbers and significance in people’s livelihood portfolios, than migration from West Africa to the rest of the world. While emigration from many West African countries still largely follows colonial patterns, there has been an increasing diversification in destinations and in the gender distribution of migrants since the 1990s.

The current demographic, economic and political situation in West Africa is likely to continue to fuel emigration both within and out of the region. The diversities and inequalities between countries in the region imply that intra-regional migration is inevitable.

The huge and growing economic differentials between the West African sub-region and the North will also continue, for the foreseeable future, to attract migrants in spite of tightened entry requirements and controls, including policing by the EU agency FRONTEX. This means that more responsive policy-making that would take these issues into consideration in designing comprehensive migration policies will be needed. As a first step, it is important that governments of West African countries take advantage of the current existing regional migration policy frameworks to work out a West Africa-owned approach to migration management that would take account of not only the issues of growing south-north migration, but also issues of intra-regional as well as internal migration and which will take account of the realities in the lives of individual migrants and their families. Such an approach will need to see migration not simply as an outcome of poverty, but as an important livelihood diversification strategy in the fight against poverty.

This will require that migration be fully recognized by both northern partners and southern governments as an intrinsic part of broader processes of structural change in West Africa rather than as just another development problem to be solved.

Mariama Awumbila is Head, Centre for Migration Studies at the University of Ghana, Legon. Website: www.ug.edu.gh/centres www.cmsgh.org

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International Female Migration and Trafficking Continuum in Asia Yu Kojima As a social phenomenon, the evolution of international trafficking in women and girls appears to be closely linked with two areas: i) changing demands for women’s labour in the global political economy and ii) the changing patterns of international migration. The shift in the role of women in migration from being the dependent of male migrants to becoming the major economic agent in many developing countries has become increasingly visible, partly in response to the global economic restructuring process beginning in the late 1980s. Massive gender-selective mobility has been induced in step with the expansion of manufacturing industries in developing countries.

Increasingly, this flow of female migrants from developing countries has diverged into the sectors of private care services (PCS) and commercial sexual services (CSS) located in the ‘global cities’. This is mainly to satisfy growing demand of migrant labour by high-income professionals/expatriate communities in cities such as New York, Hong Kong and Manila (Sassen, 1998& 2002). State policy has also accelerated gendered patterns of migration, as particularly evident in the case of female migration for PCS and CSS. Women with limited employment opportunities in less developed economies are deliberately channelled into particular sectors through a combination of labour migration and immigration policies by governments on both sides. As part of their economic strategy, governments of Asia and Europe with serious labour shortages have encouraged migrant labour use by adopting training schemes to share corporate skills and specific quotas for service sectors jobs such as entertainers and house maids.

Equally, governments keen to secure

alternative forms of revenue have been drawn to the possibilities of their citizens contributing such labour abroad through massive government promotion of female migratory work (Abella and Abrera-Mangahas, 1995; Wille and Passl, 2001).

From an empirical perspective, two key characteristics can be drawn from a rising trend in female migration in the Asian region: i) fluid and unregulated employment patterns that share features with trafficking in women and girls and ii) the marginalized socioeconomic status of female migrants in terms of gender, class, ethnicity, race and occupation.

In the absence of an international instrument providing labour standards for workers in PCS and CSS, female migrant workers are often denied or have limited access to labour benefits and protection (Ramirez-Machado, 2000; Anti-Slavery International, 2003).

The vulnerable social status of female migrants in PCS and CSS is further reinforced by discriminatory practices which are grounded on sexist and racist assumptions. A common management practice that determines the treatment of female migrants workers based on nationality rather than educational background or skills is such an example (Yeoh and Huang, 1998).

In legal terms, human trafficking and migrant smuggling are considered two distinctive categories. What differentiates trafficking from smuggling is the element of consent.

While an element of force is a major determination of trafficking, the UN Trafficking Protocol (2000) definition stipulates the irrelevance of consent by the trafficked person in determining

whether human trafficking has taken place. In contrast, the smuggling of migrants is defined by an element of consent, regardless of the reality that it often takes place in dangerous and degrading conditions (UNODC 2006).

Nevertheless, empirical evidence suggests that both undocumented and documented female migrants increasingly find themselves in situations where they are trapped in conditions of trafficking/exploitative migration for limited episodes within their entire migration experience. The narrow scope of legal definitions therefore, has downplayed the fact that smuggled migrants are as equally vulnerable to exploitation as trafficked individuals, while trafficked women are victimized by being stripped of their autonomy.

Our study conducted in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Sri Lanka (Kojima, 2007) further demonstrates two distinctive situations that draw women and girls into trafficking. The first situation is related to high mobility in job placement. Women move from one job to another not only to satisfy their immediate needs but also as the result of the management strategy widely adopted in PCS and CSS. Undocumented migrants who are smuggled into a country without any legal documentation or legitimate visas often experience trafficking during their first job placement or in subsequent employment. In this respect, trafficking episodes tend to be sporadic and spread throughout the overall migration experience.

The second situation which makes women and girls more vulnerable to being trafficked is through bilateral labour migration agreements for female

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understanding of their position and status in the migration process.

Empirical data also suggests that particular decisions made by women and girls contribute to shaping their vulnerability in the migration process.

The level of vulnerability changes according to their bargaining capacity.

It is also shaped by external factors such as their relationship with employers and colleagues, conditions of employment and forms of resistance, if any. In sum, vulnerability and the tolerance threshold of women and girls, alongside the complexity and dynamics of their selfimage, are highly significant because they demonstrate how women and girls undergo trafficking experiences on the continuum of the overall migration process.

Bangkok Post 22 July 2004

migrants for PCS and CSS. These agreements often mandate women to accept conditions that compromise their basic socioeconomic rights as workers and citizens. This suggests that women who migrate as documented migrants are, in practice, as equally vulnerable to abuse and exploitation by employers and agents as women who are undocumented migrants. Consequently, documented female migrants who lose their legal status as they attempt to fulfil their survival needs are not uncommon.

These women become undocumented migrants or worse, they are trafficked into exploitative working conditions.

By placing trafficking on a continuum of the overall migration process, some key theoretical and policy implications can be drawn. Mindful of the significant contribution yielded by economic migration paradigms, emerging issues surrounding female migration for PCS and CSS highlight the need for a theoretical inquiry into how gender relations and individual identity structure migration processes and define the scope of women’s agency, choices and preferences. Growing evidence suggests that international migration processes involving women and girls in care and sex work cannot be accounted for by economic factors

alone. Family violence and strong personal aspirations are viable factors that lead women and girls to decide to migrate (Phetsiriseng, 2003; SWAN, 2002) while feelings of deprivation are individual and gendered (Curran and Saguy, 2001). The migration process is further structured by changing gender dynamics within individual households in communities where migration has become established as an acceptable livelihood option.

In this context, a more profound understanding of female migration can be gained through rigorous analysis of the sociological aspect of the coping strategies and vulnerability of women and girls in migration. The migration process is composed of a series of decisions made by the individual concerned. Women and girls who wish to migrate or to extend the migration process are constantly under pressure about whether to accept a new job offer or to remain in their present job.

This is where the individuals’ threshold of tolerance is relevant, since it shapes their choices and preferences.

Depending on the shifting scope of individual tolerance, women and girls develop different types of coping strategies alongside their own unique

Recognizing trafficking as an integral component of female migration for PCS and CSS also poses some serious challenges in policy implementation. It questions the relevance of the victim or criminal framework commonly adopted in migrant screening processes in terms of identification of trafficked victims and in regulations to safeguard participants in official migration schemes. The notion of ‘victimhood’ prominent in present legal measures does not fully reflect the process and context of migration experienced by the women and girls concerned. Consequently, the narrow conditions set forth as proof of victimhood in screening criteria may exclude many women and girls in exploitative migration who deserve legal redress.

In this connection, two key civil society-driven initiatives undertaken in Thailand are noteworthy (with special acknowledgement to the members of the Foundation for Women for sharing this information). First is the amendment of the Trafficking Act (1997) initiated by human rights advocate groups to reflect the practical needs and realities of those who are involved in exploitative migration. The second key development is related to a new strategy that taps into the Domestic Violence Act (2007). Rights advocate groups in Thailand have launched a campaign to promote the use of this new legal framework to promote more timely and effective intervention in reporting

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and investigating labour exploitation involving migrant domestic workers.

Moving away from the conventional approach that relies on the government’s sole role in protection of migrant domestic workers, this campaign plays a significant role in reporting incidents of violence against domestic workers. By linking the maltreatment of migrant domestic workers with domestic violence, the campaign also attempts to challenge the sociocultural norms that condone gender and ethno-racial discriminatory practices prevailing within households.

This is a highly relevant point as violent practices against domestic workers are often under-reported as job expectations and rules often applied to migrant domestic workers are commonly drawn from the family virtues and house rules of her employer,

thus disguising the abuse of domestic workers (interview with an NGO executive, 2009).

In sum, policy remedies that rely on the establishment of migrant labour law that does not necessarily question the associated cultural valuing mechanism is insufficient for resolving the gender and racial injustice evident in the context of female migration for care and sex work. Shifting away from such a ‘transitional’ strategy, thus, we suggest a transformative policy strategy that is based on a critical inquiry of the social and cultural norms and values that reinforce the institutional practice of disrespect and demeaning treatment of migrant women and girls in these sectors. In this respect, emphasizing the potential of civil society in pursuing social transformation from a women’s rights perspective, the Domestic

Violence Act in Thailand promises to break new ground. It calls for the advancement of migrant workers’ status by focusing on revaluing the norms associated with female migration.

This strategy also provides new scope in the fight against gender violence in migration by shifting the focus of criticism away from individual men to the masculine structure and associated social practices that justify gender violence. Practitioners in other regions and international agencies could benefit from lessons learnt by the Thai experience.

Yu Kojima acquired her PhD degree from ISS in 2007. Her most recent work and interest includes trafficking/smuggling of Burmese migrant families into the fishery sector in Southern Thailand with particular focus on the agency of child migrants.

Internal Migration in China Delia Davin From the start of China’s economic reforms in the early 1980s, tens of millions of rural people began to seek employment in the urban areas. There they hope to find higher

building a new house or putting a relative through school. They then returned to live either in their home village or in nearby small towns.

incomes, to acquire useful skills and to see something of life beyond their villages.

According to the 2000 census, they numbered over 120 million. More recent estimates have been as high as 150 million.

This migration has been especially striking because in Maoist times mobility was severely restricted. Few people moved at all, and rural to urban migration was particularly difficult.

When the restrictions were relaxed in the period of economic reforms, a clear distinction was maintained between people with rural residence papers (nongye hukou) and those with urban residence (feinongye hukou). Only the

latter had the unconditional right to live in the urban areas and full entitlement to urban welfare and health and education provision. Rural migrants in the urban areas (mingong) on the other hand, retained their right to a share of land in their villages. Much migration was circular. Young people went to the urban areas for a few years until they had saved enough to achieve such goals as marrying, setting up a small business,

Labour migration was stimulated

by China’s rapid economic growth.

Established cities attracted migrants to work in manufacturing, in the service sector, on construction sites, and also as petty traders, while booming export industries in the coastal zones created a tremendous demand for assembly-line labour. Increased economic inequality since the 1980s between the poor agricultural provinces of the interior and the industrializing coastal regions provided more incentives to migrate.

Migration brought considerable advantages to rural people and the cut in migrant employment that has

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accompanied the current recession has inevitably caused them losses.

Migrant life in the cities Although migration has been legally permitted since the 1980s, migrants continue to suffer considerable discrimination in the cities. Most mingong have some high school education and are well educated by the standards of their own communities. In urban areas, however, they are looked down on. Marked out by regional accents, unsophisticated appearance and most of all by their rural residence papers (hukou), they are excluded from the better jobs. They cluster in heavy, dirty work such as cleaning or construction, and in unskilled assemblyline manufacturing. They do not enjoy the subsidized health care or education to which urban residents are entitled.

Construction workers are usually accommodated by their employers in shacks, while factory workers are housed in cheaply built dormitories. Other mingong tend to congregate together in shanty towns on the outskirts of towns. Helped by friends or relatives to find jobs and housing, they often live and work with people from their home region. In the early years, most migrants were young, single and male. However, as migration chains became established, many women also went to the urban areas, usually either as factory or service workers.

the early years. They were frequently subjected to roundups and trucked out of town if their papers were not in order. However, the authorities came to recognize the utility of rural migration.

Cheap migrant labour made China attractive to foreign investors and kept manufacturing costs low. Migration also eased the problems of labour surplus in the countryside and remittances contributed to rural development and poverty alleviation. The state therefore began to develop policies intended to control rather than to prevent migration.

Migrant settlement was permitted in small and medium-sized towns. In larger urban settlements, a system of temporary residence permits allowed the state to monitor migrant workers and assisted in urban planning and the maintenance of social order. There was official concern that rural migrants might undermine the success of the one-child family policy in urban areas and married women migrants are therefore required to show ‘birth-planning cards’ issued in their home towns, recording their fertility history and the contraception they use.

Labour protection and the migrant labourers The Chinese state has shown considerable ambivalence toward labour protection in relation to the migrant labour force. The 2005 Labour Law, further strengthened by the 2008 Labour Contract Law, requires that every worker should have a contract, that the maximum work week should be 40 hours with one day off, that overtime should be paid and that wages may not be delayed. Women workers have maternity rights, child labour is prohibited and working conditions are required to be safe and sanitary. These laws are almost universally violated where migrants are employed, and there is insufficient effort at enforcement.

Newly-arrived mingong, ignorant of their rights, will often work under almost any conditions.

Workers can take disputes to a mediation committee or to the official trade union. In some cases such action helps, but often official bodies have been unwilling to intervene on the side of migrants. Local protectionism opposes real changes in the system.

Local governments benefit from

Migrants’ lives are hard and insecure.

Employers facing cut-throat competition in both the construction and manufacturing industries attempt to keep their labour costs as low as possible. Pay and conditions are therefore poor, especially at the lowest level of subcontracting. In the worst cases, employers pay less than has been promised, or do not pay at all. Most factory workers work 10 to 12 hours a day, many have no regular day off.

Health and safety standards are poor and there is a high rate of work-related accidents and ill health. Migrants who are sick or injured must usually pay for their treatment themselves, and if they are unable to work, they return to their villages.

Urban reactions and government policy Migrants have often been seen as a threat to social order, especially in

Migrants in Guiyang, August 2009

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investment in their areas and from the fees they levy on migrant workers. They do not wish to drive investment away to areas where easier labour regimes prevail.

Under pressure from international organizations, some multinational firms have made efforts to ensure minimum wages and good working conditions at the factories from which they source their goods in China. But subcontracting makes such codes difficult to enforce. Moreover, the multinationals push subcontractors to produce at lower prices. While some foreign companies welcomed the Chinese labour laws, others lobbied against them and threatened to take investment elsewhere. Local Chinese, Hong Kong, Korean, and Taiwaneseinvested enterprises have tended to show the least interest in maintaining minimum pay and good working conditions. Chinese non governmental organizations such as the All-China Women’s Federation and the Youth Federation, along with international ones such as the Asia Foundation and Oxfam Hong Kong, are increasingly involved in welfare, advice and rights education work with Chinese migrant workers.

Links with home Migrants endure hardship to send money to their families or save for their futures. If successful they may earn in a month what they would receive in a year working on the land.

Although some rural migrants dream of settling down in the cities, for the majority it is too difficult. Some settle in smaller cities and towns which allow long-term settlement for migrants who meet economic criteria, such as having a permanent job or buying their own apartment. Other migrants go home to get married. Afterwards, if earning opportunities at home are scarce, one or both spouses may ‘go out’ again, leaving any child for grandparents to care for. Migration takes an essentially circular form, in which migrants move between rural and urban areas but regard the village as home. As older migrants settle back in the villages, younger ones take their place in the urban workforce.

Migrant-exporting provinces such as Sichuan have sometimes raised the complaint that they function as nurseries

and old people’s homes, producing labourers whose productive years are spent elsewhere. More recently, some migrants have begun to settle permanently in the destination areas.

In general, however, big cities resist granting permanent residence to incomers unless they are highly qualified or exceptionally wealthy.

Impact on the rural areas Large-scale migration has both negative and positive effects on the rural areas.

Age and gender ratios in the sending areas are distorted. There is a lack of people in their early twenties in some villages, while in others it is mainly men who are missing. Many children grow up with absent fathers. Others are brought up by their grandparents because both parents are working away. Old people and women have heavier farm work burdens.

On the positive side, migrants send remittances and bring back knowledge and capital. Knowing that they will return one day, migrants maintain close contact with their families.

Remittances increase the disposable income of farming families: they are invested in new housing, education and small enterprises, thus raising living standards in the villages. Returning migrants may set up building firms, tailoring shops, restaurants, or other small businesses in the sending areas, using skills, entrepreneurial know-how, and contacts acquired during their time as a migrant. Migrants influenced by urban lifestyles also bring back new ideas. They press for electricity, running water and improved sanitation and introduce new technology such as the use mobile phones into the area. They understand life beyond the village, have smaller families and attempt to improve their children’s life chances through education.

Recent developments - the impact of recession China’s export industries, in which so many migrants work, are inevitably vulnerable to international recession.

As world trade began to slow in the last months of 2008, many factories in the previously vibrant coastal areas closed down. In February 2009 it was estimated that 20 million migrant workers who had returned to their villages for Chinese New Year would be staying there. They

had been laid off and had despaired of finding another job. It was feared that the knock-on effects would be falling living standards in the countryside as remittances dried up. Children would be pulled out of school and housebuilding postponed. Young people who thought that they had escaped the drudgery and boredom of village life for ever would be angry and depressed at their enforced return. Those who still sought jobs as migrant labourers would be willing to accept even lower wages. There was even speculation that political stability could be affected.

In fact the recession seems to have had limited impact. Some incidents in which aggrieved workers demonstrated or rioted have been reported but these have been small-scale and scattered.

Migrants may be angry or frustrated but they lack organization and the fact that when unemployed they have to return to their home villages, makes concerted action difficult. Moreover, job loss does not mean destitution. Most have some personal savings – the savings rate among Chinese workers is impressively high. Their landholdings in their rural homes also provide some security.

The Chinese government was of course anxious to mitigate the negative effects of the recession. The central government instructed local government to set up training and job creation schemes for the unemployed.

The major sending provinces have increased provision for migrant training courses - Guangxi Province for example has allocated $35 million to free education for migrants. Other provinces have put millions into startup loans for migrant businesses. The central government has also attempted to stimulate domestic demand as a substitute for export demand and to create jobs wherever possible. However, there is a limit to what can be done for China’s migrant labourers. Their jobs were created by the export boom and until the recession in world trade eases their employment is not likely to recover its former levels.

Delia Davin (Emeritus Professor of Chinese Studies) taught Chinese economic history at the University of York and Chinese development at the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Leeds. She retired in 2004 but is still a regular visitor to China and continues to write and do research.

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Remittances, Political Economy, and Economic Development Ilene Grabel Remittances are the international financial flows that arise from crossborder movements of people. In recent years, remittances have begun to receive attention from a number of quarters, including academics, policymakers, bankers, non-governmental organizations, and activists working on behalf of migrant communities. For a time, and especially in the policy community, it seemed that remittances were being positioned as the next great development panacea, following a professional tendency that Hirschman (1965) noted long ago.

The initial euphoria about remittances has subsided, and has given way to more nuanced assessments of their developmental contributions.

This more sober view of remittances is welcome. The vast body of work on the subject raises as many questions as it answers, particularly for scholars interested in the political economy of development and international financial flows to developing countries.

Here we relate remittances to other capital flows to the developing world (bank loans, foreign direct investment (FDI) and portfolio investment, and official development assistance, ODA).

Our goals here are to draw together findings from the rapidly growing multidisciplinary study of remittances, and to identify what we know, what we do not yet know, and what we still need to know about their economic, political and social consequences.

Remittances raise a range of important political economy concerns. One is the contribution of remittances to what I term public moral hazard.

Specifically, remittances cause states in the developing world to reduce expenditures on public goods that have traditionally depended on public support - such as public

investment in infrastructure - and on human capital and social services, and protect governments from the political consequences of poor policy choices and/or those that induce social dislocation.

Empirical Dimensions and Lacunae Officially recorded remittances to developing countries are estimated to reach $328 billion in 2008, up from $285 billion in 2007 (see table 1). The World Bank forecasts that the slowdown in remittances that began in the 3rd quarter of 2008 will deepen in 2009 because of the global financial crisis.

The majority of remittances do not flow to the poorest developing countries (table 1). However, when compared to GDP and import income, remittances are relatively more important to low-income than to middle-income countries. Remittances are far less concentrated in large developing economies than are other types of international private capital flows.

In 2007, remittances were more than twice as large as ODA inflows, and nearly half as large as FDI and PI. The importance of remittances relative to other international capital flows to developing countries is expected to continue into 2009. In many developing countries, recorded remittances are the largest source of external finance of any sort. And, for many small countries, remittances are the main source of income. Moreover, remittances are less volatile than other international private capital flows, that in general have been pro-cyclical (i.e. remittance flows increase during economic booms and decrease during slowdowns) in relation to world economic fluctuations.

Up until the current global financial crisis, remittances were strongly counter-cyclical (i.e. remittance flows to

developing countries increase following economic and political crises and natural disasters in recipient countries).

Economic, Political and Social Effects of Remittances In what follows, I examine some of the diverse and cross-cutting economic, political and social consequences of remittances.

1. Savings, private investment by small businesses and agriculturalists, and investments in human capital There is unambiguous evidence that once basic needs are met, remittances are used for savings, debt repayment, consumer durables, land and housing purchases, small enterprise development and agriculture, and investments in education and healthcare. Indeed, these effects are largely responsible for the enthusiasm about remittances among policymakers.

It is clearly important that remittances support these investments. But these achievements must be placed into a broader context. It is widely known that the formal banking system and the state in the developing world have long underserved the poor, small business and agriculture, as far as the provision of credit. This problem has become more severe in the neo-liberal era as states have dismantled long-standing programmes that provided some assistance through the provision of working capital at subsidized rates. And so, it may be that remittances now patch over the gaps in public funding and bank financing that have grown ever larger thanks to neo-liberal policy.

States in the developing world have also long under-invested in human capital.

But this situation, too, has become far more severe in the neo-liberal era when state support for education

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and public health has been curtailed radically and essential public services have been privatized. Though the hard numbers have yet to be assembled, it is reasonable to assume that these large shortfalls in support for small business, agriculture and human capital could not possibly be filled by remittances. In this connection, it is worth recalling that only 8.7 per cent of remittances to the developing world in 2007 went to the poorest countries, and these flows were themselves concentrated in particular regions within these countries.

In this context, I think it is important to learn whether remittances create a public moral hazard on the part of developing country governments.

That is, by partially resolving important bottlenecks, do remittances actually encourage states in the developing world to ignore their traditional responsibilities because they perceive (or hope) that remittances will fill various voids?

2. Public investment in infrastructure and other public projects There is some evidence that in certain countries remittances support some public investment by providing capital for health clinics, land, wells, irrigation, equipment, and schools in particular communities. Most of the financing for public investment by remittances comes from organized ‘Home Town Associations’ of migrants that have pooled and channeled remittances for public projects in their towns of origin.

There are anecdotal studies of the activities of Home Town Associations around the world but these localized studies are not conducted with sufficient rigor to allow us to assess the scale of the positive contribution made by remittances to public investment across the developing world.

If remittances catalyze public investment that would not otherwise occur, then naturally the net effect is positive.

But if remittances crowd-out public investment by inducing a public moral hazard, then their contribution may be marginal or even negative. It may thus be that these new institutional forms mask a net reduction in public finance.

Public moral hazard might unfold behind the backs of those sending and receiving remittances.

3. Remittances and economic and social instability A very interesting role played by remittances is that they function as a form of social insurance that sustains consumption and household investments in human capital by providing critical support after economic, financial and political crises and natural disasters. The material support provided by remittances to the vulnerable during crises is an achievement that cannot be dismissed.

But, in my view, the relationship between remittances and economic shocks is more complex than is generally understood.

One aspect of this complexity concerns the relationship between remittances and the neo-liberal regime. In this environment, states have curtailed the social programmes and public institutional arrangements that traditionally helped the vulnerable to shoulder shocks (and, in some cases, even reduced the likelihood that these shocks would occur). In the absence of public shock absorbers, remittances function as private mechanisms that displace the burden of adjustment to shocks onto transnationally-dispersed family networks. Moreover, neoliberalism creates an environment wherein shocks become more frequent and severe and thus where the shock absorption role of remittances becomes all the more necessary.

However, the destabilizing role of remittances should not be ignored; there are a few cases were remittances are actually an independent channel of destabilization. The case of Albania is particularly interesting in this connection, as research by Korovilas (1999) makes clear. Remittances from Albanians working in Italy and Greece fueled pyramid schemes in the country during 1995-96. These remittance-financed pyramid schemes attracted deposits equal to almost half of Albania’s GDP in 1996. The pyramid schemes collapsed in 1997, leading to serious economic and political destabilization, which was only stabilized by a new round of migration and remittances from Albanians.

Finally, by linking the economies of nations so closely, remittances can

be seen as yet another channel of contagion that can transmit economic instability or contraction from one country to another. For example, the economy of Burkina Faso contracted quite dramatically when remittances of Burkinabè working in the Côte D’Ivoire dried up following an economic and political crisis there (Mutume, 2005).

On the issue of forcible deportation, there are some interesting issues that warrant investigation. It is obvious that forcible deportation brings a halt to remittances, but what we are also starting to see is that the slowdown of remittances is triggering housing market crises in the developing world because remittances are so often used to support home and land purchases in migrants’ country of origin. In addition, there is anecdotal evidence from El Salvador that forced deportations have also placed the Salvadorean state under considerable pressure because it is now faced with the challenge of providing healthcare and education for returnees, as well as with generating the growth necessary to provide them with jobs.

Up until the current global economic crisis, there was some evidence that remittances remained stable when there was an economic downturn in the sending country (Ratha, 2003:163). But at present, the depth and the spread of the crisis is causing remittances to exhibit pro-cyclicality.

4. Public sector borrowing costs and credit ratings An unexpected effect of remittances is that they have been used in some countries to lower government borrowing costs and lengthen debt maturities on public issues. Brazil, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama and Turkey have securitized remittances along with other ‘future-flow receivables’, such as telephone and credit card receivables (Ketkar and Ratha, 2009). Remittancesecuritized bonds have been issued on terms that are considerably less costly to the government than non-securitized public bonds, and they receive higher credit ratings, something that gives the government access to a wider range of investors.

It is quite easy to see the benefits of securitizing remittances to developing

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example, the Indian government has for some time been selling diaspora bonds as a vehicle to support the government budget and to keep the diaspora financially engaged with the country (Ketkar and Ratha, 2009).

country governments. But there are significant obstacles in the way of more widespread use of securitization.

Not least of these obstacles is the fact that there are high, fixed legal costs associated with structuring these deals.

Moreover, the benefits of greater access to credit at more favourable terms must be weighed against the costs of greater debt burdens and the addition of inflexible securitized debt. Today’s global financial crisis makes clear that policymakers in developing countries should exercise extreme caution when considering further securitization of remittances or any other future financial flow.

5. Political effects of remittances

The Eritrean government has attempted to direct individual remittances into government channels. Since independence, the country’s diaspora has been asked to pay two per cent of their income to the state as a ‘healing tax’. During the conflict with Ethiopia, even greater demands were made of the diaspora. Indeed, Van Hear (2003) notes that contributions by the diaspora financed much of the conflict, an issue to which we return below.

There is very little research undertaken to date on the political consequences of financial engagement via remittances sent by diaspora communities. The Philippines, Eritrea, Mexico and India have active policies that specifically aim at keeping diasporas engaged with the country through remittances. For

As beneficial as the remittances can be as a source of finance for the country of origin, it is important to investigate the political consequences of remittances from diaspora communities. On the one hand, remittances from the Philipinne diaspora were thought to provide crucial support to pro-democracy forces

that ultimately toppled Marcos. But, in other cases, the effects have not been so benign. Remittances have been used to provide funding for civil and border wars and have also provided crucial support for some cessessionist movements. There has been some research on this matter that deals with the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora in the UK, the Indian Hindu diaspora, and the Eritrean diaspora in connection with the border war with Ethiopia. There is also the need to investigate whether remittances leverage the political voice (in the sense of Hirshman) of diaspora communities unduly relative to those at home.

Research on remittances and domestic politics should also consider their effect on national economic policy choices.

There are some reasons to expect that the Dutch disease (i.e. the real currency appreciation that is generated by large inflows of capital) and other economic effects of remittances make it harder for a government to sustain particular policy regimes, such as

Table 1. Migrant Remittances to Developing Countries (US$ billion, current dollars)*

INFLOWS

-All developing countries

1990

2000

31

84

2006

226

2007

285

2008 est.

328

2009 Remittances as a share of forecast 2007 GDP (%) range 304-313

2.0%

By country income group: -Low-income countries

5

8

29

25

31

29-30

6.0%

-Middle-income countries (MIC)

26

76

197

261

297

275-282

1.8%

By regions: -East Asia and the Pacific

3

17

53

65

78

74-76

1.4%

-Europe and Central Asia

3

13

39

51

57

49-50

1.8%

-Latin America & the Caribbean

6

20

57

63

64

60-61

1.7%

-Middle East & N. Africa

11

13

27

32

34

32-33

4.6%

-South Asia

6

17

40

55

74

71-74

3.1%

Sub-Saharan Africa

2

5

11

19

20

18-19

2.6%

*Dilip Ratha, Sanket Mohapatra, and Ani Silwal, ‘Outlook for remittances flows, 2009-11,’ Migration and development brief No. 10; July 13, 2009; Migration and remittances team, Development prospects group, World Bank.

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export-oriented growth. However, there are other cases that suggest that remittances can actually protect national governments and particular sectors from the consequences of misguided policy decisions (see point 3 above). In this connection, we can think of the protection that remittances offer to governments as the public sector equivalent of the social insurance function that they play for households. Thus, the support provided by remittances makes it possible for governments to overlook the problems that lead to migration and the dislocation induced by neo-liberal policy.

One final political economy issue is whether recent recognition of the empirical significance and self-insurance aspect of remittances is having an effect on the proclivities of wealthy countries as far as ODA. That is, do we have a reversal of the usual ‘crowding out effect’ - in this case, are remittances (a private flow) discouraging ODA (a public flow) by providing a rationale or justification for governments that may already have political reasons to curtail

ODA? In this context, I should note that skeptics of ODA and of international aid bureaucracies have embraced remittances as part of what has been called the new ‘privatized foreign aid’ (Adelman, 2003).

Conclusions There is still much that we need to know about remittances. Nevertheless at this preliminary point, we can already start to see that the political economy effects of remittances are complex, contradictory, contingent upon many factors that vary from cases to case and so are not amenable to generalizations.

In this sense, remittances carry with them complexities that are no less significant than those that have been illuminated by the study of other types of international capital flows. Thus, we should be neither disappointed nor surprised when future research reveals that remittances do not have uniform or unambiguous political economy implications.

change dramatically as a consequence of the current global economic crisis.

In the context of the crisis, it appears that remittances are behaving procyclically, making them more like other international private capital flows. This suggests that those members of the policy community who, just a few years ago, celebrated the developmental impact of remittances may be compelled now to recognize that these and other international private capital flows are neither substitutes for ODA nor for economic development strategies that mobilize and channel domestically-generated resources in the service of development.

Ilene Grabel is a Professor of International Finance and Co-Director of the Graduate Program in Global Finance, Trade and Economic Integration at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver (USA). She is co-author (with Ha-Joon Chang) of Reclaiming Development: An Alternative Policy Manual (London: Zed Books, 2004; US distributor: Palgrave Macmillan, second printing 2005).

We should also not be surprised to learn that conventional wisdom on the developmental role of remittances may

Migrants: Suitable brokers of development?

Lothar Smith and Ton van Naerssen In 2007, leaders of Africa and Europe met at the EU-Africa Summit, in Lisbon, to discuss cooperation on development and migration between the two continents. One of the main outcomes of these talks was the Joint Africa-EU Strategic Partnership framework, in which African migrants were explicitly – for almost the first time – given an important role in the promotion of sustainable development in the continent. This reflects a trend; international migration and its impact on development processes is currently one of most discussed issues in development policy circles. In this short article we present a ‘state of the art’ of migration and development, reviewing

some of the pros and cons of this new approach.

Overseas migrants can play a positive role in the social and economic development of countries of settlement as well as in their countries of origin.

Both World Bank and International Organization for Migration reports have influenced this discourse and contributed to recent policies. The conferences of the Global Commission on International Migration (GCIM) in 2005 and the UN High-Level Dialogue on Migration and Development in 2006 also highlighted that international migration contributes to poverty alleviation and economic growth

worldwide and pointed to the huge potential for development to benefit from migration in countries of emigration and immigration.

Migrants’ financial remittances, knowledge transfer, investments and trade all have an impact on how localities, regions and countries of origin of migrants develop and change.

Although economic growth generated by remittances is generally considered positive, there are criticisms of wasteful consumption (e.g. large houses being constructed). There is however a general consensus that private remittances need to be shielded from the intervention of governments. At the same time, more

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Engaging African Diaspora in Europe / African Diaspora Policy Centre

collective forms of peer support for migrants, notably through transnational community organisations (TCOs), are increasingly recognised as playing a vital role in successful migration experiences and impacts.

Transnational community organisations Migrants often establish their own, ethnic or locality-based networks in countries of settlement. These local, regional or national associations often help them create a ‘home away from home’ feeling of risk-sharing and ‘social capital’. Newcomers in a foreign and largely unknown environment can thus be accommodated and helped to ‘learn the ropes’, sometimes even helping the newly arrived migrant to start up their own business. TCO’s vary greatly in age, size, formal status and key goals. Some TCOs primarily lobby for equal rights and access to facilities. These are often formalized so that specific migrants’ voices can be heard and recognized by the authorities concerned. Other TCOs, including neighbourhood groups, may not be based as explicitly on specific national identities, but may be regional or inter-regional. They tend to remain small in size and are often informal and relatively harder to research, being mostly invisible to outsiders.

Most often the main aim of TCOs is to support their fellow countrymen and women in the process of adaptation to the specific circumstances in the country of settlement – temporary or not. TCOs can be vital to a successful integration process in the new society.

In this way, migrants come to be part of new networks, yet remain embedded in transnational networks that connect them to their countries and regions of

origin. Thanks to increasingly global transport and communications networks (TV, video, mobile phone, and internet among others), migrants can stay in touch with their families and friends ‘at home’ and elsewhere abroad. This process contributes to the formation of their newly acquired transnational – double- or multi-rooted - identities.

Although these transnational networks often start out as the initiative of individual migrants, over time they may develop into collective efforts in which not only migrants but also host and ‘home’ country individuals and communities can play important roles. Thus TCOs are established whereby, through socially organized bonds between migrants and their areas of origin, social and economic development can be achieved through organized remitting and local development activities. Indeed, with time, making collective contributions to development at ‘home’ can become an explicit goal of many TCOs. They may commit themselves to small-scale development projects and programmes in the field of education, health, and/ or infrastructure in their communities and regions of origin. TCOs can help to collectively transfer skills and knowledge through contacts with networks of professional migrants, such as medical doctors, agronomists and engineers amongst others. Such initiatives can help to create a transnational sense of identity.

Many governments have become more aware that TCOs can play a positive role in local development, and this has produced all kinds of efforts to capitalize on emigrants’ collective initiatives. A well known example is the growing

role of Mexican TCOs in the United States. Many of these organizations are referred to as ‘hometown associations’.

Over time, they have become involved in developmental initiatives in and around their hometowns. The Mexican government discovered that it could tap into this potential by implementing policies targeting its countrymen and women abroad to gain their participation in development projects. For instance, the government programme Tres-por-Uno, which involves the federal, state and municipal governments, provides 3 US$ for every 1 US$ collected and transferred home by migrants.

From co-development to the Global Forum Governments of Western countries, UN institutions and civil society organizations have begun to show a growing interest in TCOs as development agents. From a developmental point of view, efforts to promote cooperation between state agencies, development cooperation organizations and migrants’ business and professional networks is of great significance. Indeed the concept of networking now runs through nearly all current international migration programmes. For instance in the Netherlands, we find various TCOs partnering the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a range of initiatives. Such TCOs include the African Diaspora Policy Centre (bridging African migrant communities and policy makers at EU level), the Global Society Foundation (capacity-building training to migrant organizations) and SEVA Network Foundation (development activities based on Hindu philosophy). Such cooperative initiatives take place within a broader framework of a diverse network of actors.

There are also European multilateral initiatives, such as the Cotonou Agreement, an initiative taken together with African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and the partnership between countries of the Mediterranean region. Globally, an important step was taken with the first meeting of the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), in Brussels, in July 2007. This meeting was preceded by a meeting between invited civil society organisations, including TCOs, which were to improve cooperation at a

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global level. The GFMD meeting turned out to be relatively successful, in the sense that further cooperation arose, with a second meeting in Manila in 2008. A third meeting is to take place in Greece in November 2009.

In the wake of governmental interest in TCOs as partners in development aid, development agencies and TCOs have also begun to develop partnerships. At present, small-scale projects, peace and reconstruction initiatives and return migration have been given a place on the agenda. This agenda could be broadened further by paying attention to and encouraging collective remittances, transnational entrepreneurship opportunities, private investments and tourism by migrants, their descendants and relations to their countries of origin. Special attention should also be paid to opportunities for TCOs to engage in programmes in the field of good governance and democratization processes in their countries of origin. Increasingly, TCOs are also accepted as partners in peace making and conflict resolution.

Can TCOs make a difference (and for whom)?

The positive role of TCOs in development cooperation now seems to be taken for granted. But is it really such a simple and given matter? First of all, much depends on patterns of migration, past and current, and on the composition and relative size of the migrant population. All kinds of migrants – whether classified as labour migrants, refugees, permanent migrants, temporary migrants, or otherwise - maintain links with their countries of origin, but the nature of these ties will vary, and the consequent impact will also influence the development of home areas in very different ways. In the current discourse, there is a tendency to treat diaspora and migrant associations as a homogenous category. But this does not reflect the reality that migrant communities are diversified along lines of class, ethnicity, religion, gender, age, geographical location and political orientation.

Second, social networks and knowledge of different cultures can be both a strength and weakness of TCOs as actors concerned with initiating development processes in the countries

of origin. Social networks are useful but can also constrain development since strong links and obligations may produce their own forms of inefficiency.

Local knowledge and local relations are important but cannot always make up for the lack of professional and technical skills where economic development is concerned. Where larger infrastructural projects are needed, for instance, such expertise will be essential.

Third, whilst abroad, although keeping in touch, there will be changes in the ‘home’ environment that many long term migrants may be less aware of than those who remain ‘at home’.

Migrants may be westernized by their education, their economic outlook and, in some cases, may come to be considered virtual outsiders in their own, or their parents’, places of origin.

TCOs may strive to engage positively with democratic political debate, and may see themselves as playing a part in efforts to strengthen civil society.

However not everyone will welcome such engagement as in many less developed countries patron-client relations and authoritarian positions prevail.

Fouth, TCOs can be more effective agents of development than traditional NGOs because of their strong sense of engagement and motivation. Their objectives are often clearly spelled out and they tend to have long term ties to the region concerned, as well as often quite intimate knowledge of local circumstances.

Clearly then, it is still too early to say how and to what extent local knowledge and transnational social capital are decisive for the success of local development projects.

Development-oriented TCOs may indeed possess such valuable and specific skills as knowledge of the cultures and languages in which people work, but these by themselves are rarely sufficient to give such organizations any privileged positions in development cooperation programmes more generally. The targets of development are located in the home countries of the TCOs, and not in the global North, where they are based. The major criteria for funding are the professional quality of the implementers, the quality of the project design and

the involvement of local agents.

The last factor raises difficult issues, including whom TCOs should seek to cooperate with? It has been suggested that a more prominent role by local governments as stakeholders and partners can encourage the involvement of migrants in local development. Yet a study in Ghana has demonstrated that substantial conflict can arise over whether collective remittances are distributed by traditional chiefs, local development councils or development NGOs (or TCOs). Development can thereby become an even more fraught process than before.

Finally, the fact that the concept of development itself is contested continues to often be overlooked.

Besides economic development, the term contains all kinds of other, often inter-related, aspects. Indeed ‘development’ has been defined as sustainable economic growth, as social advancement, as increasing equity, as increasing democracy and freedom, or as various combinations of these.

While this reveals the complexity and multidimensionality of the linkage between international migration and development, it would be of additional value to also focus on whose development it is we are speaking about by exploring the roles played by TCOs and other actors such as the state, development NGOS and local NGOs. Given the heterogeneity of TCOs and their strongly varying interests, the challenge is to try and realize firm ties between TCOs and development cooperation agencies in host countries as well as the major actors in the countries of origin. However, this should not be realized at the expense of more spontaneous and informal initiatives and processes of transnational development cooperation. This requires sufficient room for new approaches such as transnational dialogues and capacity building programmes in order to develop new forms of sustained modes of transnational cooperation.

Lothar Smith (l.smith@fm.ru.nl) is assistant professor in development geography at Radboud University Nijmegen and member of the Migration and Development Research Group.

Ton van Naerssen (t.vannaerssen@fm.ru.nl) is senior researcher at the same research group.

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Environment and Development: the contributions of Hans Opschoor Lorenzo Pellegrini

This interview is to mark the valedictory lecture of Professor Opschoor. During our hour-long discussion, Hans provided an impressive overview of the past decade at ISS, of relevant issues for the environment and development debate since the 1970s and other topical questions. (I refer the reader to the full text of Hans’ valedictory for a more detailed exposé of his thoughts on climate change - http://www.iss. nl/News/Valedictory-Address-HansOpschoor).

You first came to ISS in 1996 when you became Rector of the Institute.

What were the reasons for your interest in ISS? What were the most important issues you had to deal with during your rectorship?

Hans Opschoor during field work, Botswana 1979

I came to ISS in 1996 and served two terms as Rector (from 1996 till the end of 2004), seizing the opportunity to make changes in management and to further my own research agenda on global environment and development. I found ISS to be an extremely stimulating place: it is a truly international institute because of the origin of both students and staff and it is an ideal place to learn and gain perspective. ’Things look different depending on where you stand‘, as Gunnar Myrdal reminds us, and ISS offers an excellent observation point. As Rector, one of my main objectives was to move ISS away from being an educational institute and to focus on international capacity development and research. I felt we had to specialize in what we do best:

multidisciplinary research matched by an attempt to produce research that matters, i.e. to understand and also to change things. We started to move towards a policy aiming at the development of research potential arising from experience gained in a range of projects in the global South.

This research, which would be policy relevant and scientifically sound, would radiate back into quality capacity development and teaching.

It is now once again a time of change for ISS. What is your own perspective on the merger with Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR)?

This merger represents a challenge and also an opportunity for ISS. The challenge is to raise interest in EUR for the type of work we do and in issues related to global development.

Potential opportunities arise from potential linkages between ISS and the social sciences and medical faculties of EUR and, more in general, from the possibility of ISS being able to expand its research interests into areas where EUR is already present. ISS can certainly add an international perspective to the rest of EUR. In this context, I am thinking about issues such as poverty and migration in the Netherlands itself. Further complementarities arise from the fact that EUR does not have a development economics component anymore, while this is a strong field for ISS. You came from being the director of the Institute of Environmental Studies (IVM) of the Free University Amsterdam (VUA) to ISS. Can you tell me how environment and development issues came to be your main interest?

23

I started my career as a welfare economist. In the 1970s my work already focused on environment and development, and especially on poor people’s coping mechanisms with respect to environmental stress. In 1971 I started working on what later would be called environmental and ecological economics. This research resulted in several studies on themes such as environmental spaces, focusing on resource origin and resource use to highlight how asymmetries are bound to create problems. Other themes relate to irreversibilities, inequality and scarcity, biodiversity, agriculture, and more recently, of course, to climate change.

In the 1980s I became Director of the Institute of Environmental Studies. The main concerns there at the time were European environmental issues, but development issues were increasingly recognizsed as being important too.

The focus of my attention has been on the costs and benefits of climate change, on adaption and mitigation.

One continuing concern was always how to share the carbon space across individuals and countries and how to distribute responsibilities for staying within these limits. Also, I worked on issues in the field of environment and poverty.

Your contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports in 2001 and 2007 brings us to one of the main issues in the current debate on environment and development: climate change.

The issue of ‘shared but differentiated responsibilities’ arose from the 1992 Rio Conference and was incorporated in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in 1992.

The Kyoto Protocol should then have applied the concept, but the mitigation measures for the North and adaptation provisions for the South were far too modest. Now we are in the middle of negotiations for the post-2012 agreements. Certainly China and India should be part of the deal, but the question remains: who should pay, and how should we pay for the costs associated with any agreement? How is the principle of differentiated but shared responsibilities going to work in an agreement that is ambitious in terms of both mitigation (i.e. greenhouse gas

emissions abatement) and adaptation (i.e. adjustment to climate change) measures?

Experiences of local development and environmental objectives have been associated with the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) initiative, which was a Brazilian proposal inspired by northern actors. Unfortunately the implementation of these projects was flawed. While looking at efficiency measures (i.e. at achieving emission reductions in the least expensive way) the instrument basically allows the North to grab the cheapest abatement options that are often available in developing countries. On the receiving end, most initiatives are being undertaken by China, Brazil and India, but very little by African countries. Eventually, it is the countries that are growing anyway that get their investment in new/clean technologies supported by the North. A final problem is that CDM deals only with the state and with private enterprise; local perspectives are neglected and the bottom-up approach has remained theoretical at best.

Another scheme to involve and make developing countries partners and beneficiaries in the policies to fight climate change is emission trading with a cap and distribution mechanism. The problem is that the current experience within the EU is not convincing: there were technical problems since the emission rights were given for free and the whole trading scheme amounts to a commoditization of pollution.

Market mechanisms might not work anywhere: if they failed in Europe, that is often considered the top notch in terms of environmental policies, what can we expect from China and India?

When societies developed markets in the north, economists qualified markets by studying so-called ‘market imperfections’: market failures including externalities and a lack of concern for future generations. Traditionally we turned to government policies (e.g. taxation) as ways to correct these problems, while in a neoliberal approach more markets are being established to solve the problems created by already existing markets.

We need to understand the perspective of the poor and start to think and build

policies that are based on collective action. The issue here is to stop thinking as mainstream economists applying our science and our theories in a deductionist fashion by seeing every problem through the prism of markets.

The English saying goes that ‘if you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail’. If we economists only use neoclassical economics and market theory, we are only going to see market failures that can be corrected by marketbased adjustments.

In any case, trading mechanisms will result in pricing carbon that, in turn, will have an impact on income distribution.

We are not paying enough attention to the distributional effects that these mechanisms can have, especially at the individual level. One crucial issue here is consumption and emission related to the satisfaction of basic needs.

These emissions should be seen as entitlements whereas emissions related to luxurious consumption and wasteful production modes should be the ones to abate. Unfortunately, there is no distinction at the moment, nor is there is a clear debate about the distribution of responsibilities within countries.

Looking only at nations obscures the fact that in developing countries elites are contributing to emissions.

The UN initiative Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) is meant to create global environmental benefits, but it displays the same handicaps mentioned above. There are issues related to the consideration of indigenous people and their territories that should be the subject of new environmental regulations. The new constraints should be matched by compensation, but it is unclear how things will play out in practice. The mechanism does not consider people’s needs and there are only state to state deals. There can, however, be no trickle down of benefits – from the state to poor individuals – unless there is prior assurance that local people will benefit and that no damage to their livelihoods will be done. An upfront developmental orientation is needed, but missing.

The current DevISSues is focused on migration: how is migration linked to the environmental issues you have been studying?

24

Migration can be understood as an extreme response option to stresses, including environmental stress. The number of people that might choose this adaptation measure and ‘decide’ to migrate because of climate change could reach anywhere between one and three billion over the next 50 years. The main forces will be drought in Africa and the melting of ice caps in the Himalaya regions that, in turn, will affect major rivers in China and India, causing water scarcity problems and a rise in sea levels.

Given the potential size of this migration, the issue needs to be taken very seriously as even forecasts of ‘only’ 500 million people migrating would have enormous consequences. In developing countries in particular, the poorest have the least possibilities to adapt and migration might be their only option.

Alternative adaption strategies can be encouraged directly (e.g. building dykes to avoid floods) but also indirectly (e.g. developing local and regional capacities to cope with floods and storms). It is development per se that helps the poor to adapt, hence measures that are conducive to lifting the poor out of their poverty are ultimately helping them to cope and adapt to environmental stresses. Indirect measures to discourage migration include developing capabilities to predict climate change effects and measures to facilitate migration. Other examples include insurance (community-based and national) to deal with damage caused by extreme weather events.

In any case, we know that people will migrate and some migrations might

even be a result of climate-related adaption strategies (e.g. dam building).

The environmental problems driving migration are exacerbated by increasing competition for land due to high energy needs in the north. Energy use is essentially an addiction and, accepting that our energy systems are not sustainable, we need to look more closely at carbon-free and carbon-poor alternatives: sun, wind, nuclear, biomass.

Biomass in particular is problematic, especially when its production competes with food production and forest space. There are different generations of biomass: first (crops), second (dead wood, residues and shrubs) and third (algae). The first one in particular is problematic as the crops it depends upon (maize, corn, sugar cane, rape seeds) and the diffusion of the use of these crops for energy purposes, will certainly result in environmental and developmental problems. Second generation biomass and third generation might have more potential to provide for some energy needs without adverse impacts on development. Indeed, some second and third generation biomasses can easily satisfy the energy needs of marginal communities and contribute to decreasing oil dependence.

Now scarcities and competition for land are manifest when there are price hikes of primary commodities, but inevitably these problems will become more prominent in the future.

To conclude, what do you think are the upcoming issues for academics

interested in environment and development?

Some of the issues I mentioned pose challenges that will need engaged research for a number of years: I’m referring to all the issues linked to climate change and energy and especially the issues of land and water scarcity. We need to look at how globalization influences these phenomena and shapes institutional responses.

Now that the neoliberal paradigm is contested in terms of its environmental and developmental outcomes, a pending issue is to analyse the implications in terms of institutional structures beyond market mechanisms.

Last year’s economic crisis has lead to a requirement for new institutions, new responses and a new developmental model. Unfortunately, the G20 did not rise to this challenge, merely focusing on marginal regulation changes and strengthening existing institutions. We need to regain the control of markets that was lost with globalization, that is clear. The challenge is how to do this: how to build mechanisms to substitute some of the functions of markets?

We cannot look back, because the environmental and socioeconomic challenges we are facing are new. We need genuinely innovative solutions that can help us structure the institutions able to face contemporary developmental challenges.

Hans Opschoor is Professor of Economics of Sustainable Development at ISS (opschoor@iss.nl).

Lorzenzo Pellegrini is lecturer in Development Economics at ISS (pellegrini@iss.nl).

A roundtable with Human Rights Defender Tulip Award winner Justine Masika Bihamba Helen Hintjens (ISS staff): Were you surprised to be nominated for the Tulip Award?

I can say I was astonished to receive this award. It is very encouraging. When he heard about it, the Governor [of

North Kivu province, ed.] said. ‘Oh, Justine, I thought you only made noise here in Goma, now I see your noise is heard even outside!’ It was a very strong signal, and very powerful and encouraging to get this award. And we

hope some positive changes can be made as a result.

Helen Hintjens: Could you tell us how your organization started up?

25

Well, about six years ago we began to realize fully how huge a problem sexual violence against women had become.

We formed an organization out of 36 separate groups and were able to deal with different aspects of the sexual violence problem. Each group focused on what it did best and the overall result was that we could start to pursue the three main goals we set ourselves: •

To arrange help and treatment, including psychosocial assistance, for the victims of rape;

•

To raise awareness of the problem of sexual violence in Eastern DRC ;

•

To make those responsible for tackling the issue take their duties more seriously and to ensure those who committed crimes are brought to justice through the courts.

On the first two goals we have made some progress. It has been difficult, but we are achieving results. With justice, however, there is a problem. There are three Tribunals in the Kivu region. But the judicial process is very slow and is corrupt. There can be reprisals and cultural traditions weigh heavily against achieving justice, especially relating to sexual violence. Even so, over 200 organizations now work in North Kivu on this issue. In our own organization we have worked with 8,133 women who have experienced rape or other forms of sexual violence. Translating this work into legal cases has been difficult; of the more than 8000 women, only 280 women have brought any charges against those who attacked them. And of these 280, only 68 have had their cases completed, with prison sentences of between 5 and 20 years. On the other hand, women should be receiving some kind of compensation, as victims of sexual violence, but so far this has proven impossible. Victims have to pay 15 per cent of the total sum awarded to them to the Public Treasury. Since this is asked for in advance, and most women do not have this amount of money, they cannot receive compensation.

We observed that rape was a social problem. Women have been raped in front of children, husbands and relatives.

This means everyone in the community comes to be affected. So we went out to a number of villages (we currently

basic points yesterday when I was at the ceremony and reiterated these when I spoke personally with the Ministers after the event:

work in five) and started to speak to the leaders. These included teachers, nurses, youth and women leaders and also elders and chiefs. We first asked them if they felt there was a problem of sexual violence in their village. We already knew that raped women were rejected by many communities and we wanted to tackle this problem. There was a lot of work to do, but we had to move slowly; and this took time. By working with local leaders, we felt we could achieve something longer-lasting in terms of prevention and attitude changes. We hoped leaders might set a good example in terms of behaviour and attitudes towards rape and other forms of sexual violence.

Ed Maan (Hague Academic Coalition staff): In your acceptance speech yesterday [i.e. at the award ceremony] you referred to the role of the outside world. Do you feel our Dutch political leaders took your demands seriously?

Also, how can we, as academics, play our part?

Yesterday the Ministers told me that they had taken note of what I said.

I spoke with them again after the larger meeting, over dinner, and they reassured me that they would take my points into consideration. I made four

•

We want a reinforced and ‘time-bound’ MONUC [UN Mission in the DRC, ed.] with a clear mandate to disarm. There is a weak state in DRC and this creates a problem of human rights violations with impunity. Since 28 August 2008, fighting has returned to Kivu and the region of Eastern DRC. We ask for a sustainable peace, a lasting peace. MONUC, instead of protecting civilians, has watched them being killed in the most horrible ways. MONUC has witnessed, rather than prevented, war crimes in Eastern DRC. We need an additional armed force. We want something like the force sent to Ituri in 2002-3, which was able to disarm the various groups fighting at that time. We want MONUC reinforced and with a clear mandate to disarm and the force to be in place for a finite period.

•

We want the extraction of minerals and the import of arms to be more effectively controlled.

Justine Masika Bihamba with women in North Kivu Province

26

The wealth of the Congo has not been a blessing but a curse. It has brought pillage and perpetuation of the small arms trade, linked to the protection of illegal routes of mineral extraction. We do not make weapons in Africa. Weapons are made in the West. So if there are weapons, they come from outside.

We want certification of exports to be inspected and reinforced, in line with international agreements, for example on blood diamonds.

•

•

Third, we want mixed tribunals in Eastern DRC to try cases, including cases of sexual violence.

There have been many crimes.

Waiting for the ICC is not an option: it will take too long and very few cases will ever come to trial. Mixed tribunals, which could be supported by the ICC and the information that they have gathered but take place in Kivu, would be the best way forward for justice. We need to overcome impunity.

Women human rights defenders need special protection. Even compared with male human rights defenders, who are themselves vulnerable to attack, women are more so. Women are considered inferior and when they are attacked, they find little or no support from their male colleagues, even human rights defenders themselves. There is no defence for women defenders and this needs to be addressed.

The Minister of Cooperation went into concrete details on some of the proposals I had made. I proposed a programme of restorative justice in the East of Congo (DRC). At the moment one programme already in existence is being supported by the Dutch and is known as REJUSCO. The Minister wanted to know if this was helping at all. Mostly it operates only in Kinshasa, so I suggested that working through Kinshasa might mean that the effects are not felt that much in Kivu. Perhaps this work needs to move outside Kinshasa and I suggested a pilot project in Eastern DRC might be a good idea.

I think researchers and research institutes are there to do the important job of explaining how things are so that leaders understand the key issues.

The job of academics is surely to do the analysis for the leaders and help them see more clearly what matters.

REJUSCO is interesting as it is not linked with the DRC government – it was run for some time by a Belgian staff member alongside Congolese staff recruited locally. Our proposal is to create mixed tribunals. The Minister was concerned that these initiatives should not run on parallel tracks, and wanted to see an overview of the justice sector in Kivu and DRC. The Minister asked me, what should we do, meaning the Netherlands government. If the justice system worked well, then the UN soldiers would not need to come to DRC to try and stop the fighting.

Dubravka Zarkov (ISS staff): You mentioned your work with local leaders. Can you explain what means you use to work with these leaders? I imagine it may not always be easy.

Yes, we work in five villages and our strategy has been to first ask the leaders whether there are any rapes in their village that they are aware of. Then we ask them what they think of the situation, what they feel they can do; they often give their own response to the situation. We ask them, do they think that the woman consented? It took us more than a year to start being able to work constructively on questions of prevention and getting them to appreciate that rape and sexual violence are a problem for the society and not the fault of the woman.

Harry Hummel (Tulip Award staff): We have heard quite a lot about what is expected or wanted from the European countries; a fighting force, help with mixed tribunals and economic controls. I am wondering; this seems almost like a recolonization proposal for the Congo? Can you comment on that?

You have to remember that we in DRC, Zaire before, had thirty five years of dictatorship, and there have followed ten years of civil war. Before that we had colonialism of a very brutal kind.

To get out of this situation we are in, a very bad situation, we do need some help, this is quite true. We recognize our weaknesses and need support to enable us to pick ourselves up off the ground again. Even after the socalled democratic elections, there is neither peace nor democracy. The East

remains trapped in cycles of fighting and violence, including rising sexual violence. At the elections only those in Kinshasa and the West got peace. We did not. We don’t get peace because our neighbours continue to pillage resources from Congo. For Congolese people to start to reconstruct DRC, will definitely need a helping hand till we get back on our feet.

Dubravka Zarkov: You spoke of mixed tribunals. Some kind of mixed justice system has been tried in Rwanda, combining traditional and modern elements, in the form of gacaca. The experience there suggests it is not easy to get sexual crimes judged along with other war crimes. The results are mixed. Why are you so hopeful a mixed tribunal in Kivu can do better?

There have been crimes, including sexual crimes and rapes against women.

These crimes have taken place and they need to be judged and justice needs to be done, because these are crimes. I followed gacaca from a distance and I know that there has been corruption of the process. For instance, I know somebody personally who has been accused and judged falsely because somebody else wanted their job. This person, who was falsely accused, has been freed now, but he is now unemployed. Mixed tribunals would have to arrest rape perpetrators (suspects) in the context of a wider task of achieving transitional post-conflict justice, adapted to the special situation in Eastern DRC. We need the Tribunal to operate rapidly and efficiently and be well adapted to the context. Of course mixed tribunals would not hear only rape cases, but all war crimes, including massacres, torture and other abuses.

In response to your question, perhaps we’d propose that sessions on sexual violence and rape could be held as closed, rather than open, court sessions.

Helen Hintjens: How does getting this award help in your work? Does it create any problems as a human right defender? Or does it help?

It definitely helps. The situation for women human rights defenders like myself is extremely difficult. I myself have been attacked. I really do not have the words, words fail me, when I try to explain to you how people involved in the defence of human rights continue

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with our work every day, day in and day out, in the context that you find in Eastern DRC. When I was attacked, I put in a complaint, but nothing was done. So I asked to see the Governor of the Province, and he intervened on my behalf, and this was positive, because since then the complaint, which had been lodged with the military, was acted on. What human rights defenders in Eastern DRC face in their daily work is very serious. As Christians we get up every morning and pray for strength. We place our faith in God. Every day people are arrested, put in prison – and we live in the midst of miracles, since we live right next to those who violate the most basic human rights and do not want us to denounce them. They can threaten us or even come to kill us at any time.

We also draw power and energy from contacts with international organizations, contacts which are almost daily. These contacts help put pressure on the authorities – even when these authorities pretend not to listen to what the international community says. It

is absolutely vital to us, especially to women human rights defenders, that we have these contacts on the outside who can help in case we are threatened.

How else would we ever be able to escape the threats we get? Sometimes people’s lives are threatened and they need help for example to be able to move, say, either to Kinshasa, Kampala or further afield. Otherwise they would be attacked and could be killed just to silence them. People have been killed in just this way. Despite all the difficulties in Kinshasa, human rights defenders are safer there than in Goma or the Kivus. Yes, we need this international recognition.

Well it worked in Ituri, with the Artemis force. The good thing was, that force was finite and their job was to disarm.

They did the job of disarming the armed groups that were fighting in Ituri and now the same is needed for the Kivus. There needs to be a mandate for demilitarization of the armed groups and militias so that the force stationed there for disarming these groups is not on the ground for too long, and does not itself become involved in mineral trading and dealing activities.

Translated from French and transcribed by Helen Hintjens This roundtable was held on 11 December 2008

Eno Ufot Ekuere (ISS student): I am interested in your suggestion of an international, reinforced intervention force, and I know that problems of resource pillage are severe; we are also familiar with those problems in West Africa. But how can an armed force effectively hope to control the exploitation of mineral resources?

at ISS between Justine Masika Bihamba (winner of the first ever Dutch Human Rights Defender Tulip Award) and staff and students of ISS. Ms Masika Bihamba’s NGO, Women’s Synergy for the Victims of Sexual Violence, is based in Goma, Eastern DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo). Thanks to Harry Hummel for helping set up this event at ISS, which also acted as host for the Award Secretariat. For more details see: http://www.humanrightstulip.org/ eng/content/view/full/140

ISS News The ISS’ 57th Dies Natalis was held in November. On this occasion Professor Jan Breman received an Honorary Doctorate from the International Institute of Social Studies and delivered his acceptance speech entitled ‘The Great Transformation in a Globalized Perspective’ and Professor Peter A.G. van Bergeijk delivered his inaugural address entitled ‘I Come to Bury Globalization, not to Praise It’. The accompanying art exhibition, ‘Antidotes from the dismal science’ showed art work by several economists. The photos and speeches from the occasion can be seen on the ISS website at http://www.iss.nl/Conferences-Seminars-PublicDebates/Dies-Natalis-2009.

In September ISS opened the new academic year for the MA programme in Development Studies. For the first time in ISS’ history the number of new MA students has exceeded 200. The new students represent 51 countries from all regions of the world and their average age is 31.

Representing 58 per cent of the total, female students are a majority. The ISS MA programme runs for 15,5 months: it starts in September and ends in December of the following year.

Hence, between September and December there are two

batches of MA students. Apart from its MA programme, ISS offers a Doctoral programme and Diploma programmes.

Every two months, ISS sends out an electronic newsletter full of information about events at ISS, new publications by ISS staff and other items of interest. If you would like to subscribe to this newsletter please send an email to info@iss.nl Professor David Dunham has retired from ISS after 40 years spent here, first as a student and later as lecturer. DevISSues wishes him all the best.

Dr Sylvia Bergh has replaced Dr Kristin Komives on the ISS Research Committee. Another new member of the Research Committee is Pedro Goulart, ISS Doctoral fellow.

Dr Murat Arsel has replaced Dr Ben White on the Development and Change Editorial Board.

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The Kilosa Killings: Political Ecology of a Farmer–Herder Conflict in Tanzania The Kilosa Killings: Political Ecology of a Farmer–Herder Conflict in Tanzania

‘Social Development’ as Neoliberal Trojan Horse: The World Bank and the Kecamatan ‘Social Development’ as Neoliberal Trojan Horse: The World Bank and the Kecamatan Development Program in Indonesia Development Program in Indonesia World Bank Influence and Institutional Reform in Argentina World Bank Influence and Institutional Reform in Argentina World Bank-directed Development? Negotiating Participation in the Nam Theun 2 World Bank-directed Development? Negotiating Participation in the Nam Theun 2 Hydropower Project in Laos Hydropower Project in Laos Developing Exclusion: The Case of the 1961 Land Reform in Colombia Developing Exclusion: The Case of the 1961 Land Reform in Colombia Health Care Reforms in Developing Asia: Propositions and Realities Health Care Reforms in Developing Asia: Propositions and Realities Capacity Development as the Model for Development Aid Organizations Capacity Development as the Model for Development Aid Organizations BOOK REVIEWS BOOK REVIEWS

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Leonardo Vera Reassessing Fiscal Policy: Perspectives from Developing Countries Leonardo Vera Reassessing Fiscal Policy: Perspectives from Developing Countries Nikita Sud The Indian State in a Liberalizing Landscape Nikita Sud The Indian State in a Liberalizing Landscape Halleh Ghorashi and The Iranian Diaspora and the New Media: Halleh Ghorashi and The Iranian Diaspora and the New Media: Kees Boersma From Political Action to Humanitarian Help Kees Boersma From Political Action to Humanitarian Help Philippe Le Billon and Building Peace with Conflict Diamonds?

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Estelle Levin Merging Security and Development in Sierra Leone Estelle Levin Merging Security and Development in Sierra Leone Brian Dill The Paradoxes of Community-Based Participation in Dar es Salaam Brian Dill The Paradoxes of Community-Based Participation in Dar es Salaam Gabriel Medina, Benno Loggers, Development Agents and the Exercise of Power in Amazonia Gabriel Medina, Benno Loggers, Development Agents and the Exercise of Power in Amazonia Pokorny and Bruce Campbell Pokorny and Bruce Campbell Huck-ju Kwon and Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Huck-ju Kwon and Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Ilcheong Yi in Korea: Governing Multifunctional Institutions Ilcheong Yi in Korea: Governing Multifunctional Institutions

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