Foreign aid programs can improve the quality of life for millions around the world, and we may assume that a higher quality of life at home would prevent a potential migrant from going abroad.
But this is often not the case, explains Hein de Haas, renowned migration researcher and Professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam.
For more from Hein on this topic, read Hein’s post Development Leads to More Migration on his popular blog.
A focus on migration could harm the effectiveness of humanitarian and development policy, argues this new report on the root causes and drivers of migration.
For more on the changing dynamics of migration in sub-Saharan Africa, this succinct report from the Migration Policy Institute.
A New Yorker exposé on Filipino care-workers in New York, their middle-income backgrounds, and the relationship between opportunity at home and opportunity abroad.
Michael Clemens of the Center for Global Development describes the lack of a correlation between development investment and reduced emigration in this working paper.
Hein de Haas
Hein is Professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. He was a founding member and director of the International Migration Institute at the University of Oxford. He is a co-author of The Age of Migration, a leading textbook in the field of migration. You can find more information and free downloads of his publications on his website. He also maintains a blog – we recommend this entry titled “Human migration: myths, hysteria and facts” and this one on migration and climate change.