I head to Serbia in about 10 days time, and as I begin to pack etc I wanted to write down some of the issues that I'm most excited to start researching, and some of the background to why I've decided to spend this summer working on the issues that I'll be addressing:
It is often dubbed paradoxical that we live in the era in which moving between states is both technically quickest and easiest, and - for many - logistically most difficult. I am reliably informed (by google...) that from London I can fly to any country in the world within 27 hours. (The most remote country, for those trivia inclined, is Kiribati, which requires a whopping 4 changes of plane!)
For many of the hundreds of thousands - or even millions - fleeing political persecution, economic hardship or environmental disaster, however, it has never been harder to gain legal acceptance overseas.
Over my first year at the Kennedy School it is migration issues that have caused me the most sleepless nights. Lant Pritchett argues convincingly that more open borders might do more than any other single policy reform to raise living standards across the world.* As a European who has lived and work in Africa and the Middle East it is migration between these two broad areas that interests me most.
This issue has, of course, been in the news a lot recently after the spate of recent tragedies in the Mediterranean. The response has been inadequate from both the African and European sides in a number of ways, but two (related) aspects of this have forcibly struck me as I read the ongoing commentary.
Firstly, 'migrants' are treated as a homogenous mass, without any differentiation made between the disparate groups. In particular, many commentaries implicitly contain the assumption that the vast majority of migrants are young men. It's staggeringly hard to get good migration statistics, but by some estimates over a third of those who died in high profile tragedy off Italy in April were female and, around the world, most of the world's migrants are female.** Leaving family and friends, and moving hundreds or thousands of miles, is hard for anyone, but the challenges for women can be particularly severe. Sexual exploitation, or even trafficking into sex slavery or domestic servitude, are regrettably common. Concerted and constructive policy action is unlikely to be forthcoming unless there is a greater recognition of the heterogeneity of migrant populations, and the particular trials and tribulations facing different groups. (I have been involve in the issues around sex trafficking from Eastern Europe for a number of years now, and plan to look at these issues in greater depth in a future post. In particular, I've identified a number of fantastic-looking organisations in Belgrade that I hope to visit and then perhaps use this blog as a platform to give them greater exposure.)
The second thing that has struck me is that the discourse around migration and public policy is dominated by politicians and lawyers. Much is said of the legal rights or migrants, and of the political impossibility of finding them permanent homes in increasingly insular European countries such as France and the UK. Analysis of the migration decision itself is notable only by its absence. Considerably more work is required by economists to get a clearer sense of the factors that encourage and discourage migration. Each death is clearly a tragedy, and each successful immigrant has a chance to transform both their lives and that of their family. But as a starting point in beginning to analyse these issues I have found it helpful to abstract from personal stories, and to think of a very simple, general model of the decision to migrate. In broad terms individuals will migrate if:
Utility of Migrating > Utility of Staying
In the context of the difficult and dangerous decision to cross the Mediterranean this can be further broken down into:
(Probability of Dying * Utility of Dying) + (Probability of Reaching Europe * Utility of Reaching Europe) > Utility of Staying
Clearly there is moral duty to reduce the risk of death in the Mediterranean, and according to this model this will increase migration at the margins unless it is possible to simultaneously either:
(1) Decrease the utility of reaching Europe, perhaps by either increasing the chance that individuals are returned to their native country or by decreasing the expected returns from staying in Europe.
(2) Increase the utility of staying, which, of course, has been an aim of internatinoal development assistance for over 70 years.
Another option might be to simply make migration more difficult. Europe is exploring various ways in which this can be done, including targeting the big smuggling rings and looking into the practicalities of bombing smuggling boats off the coast of Libya before they load their desperate 'cargo'. These options, however, simply ignore the root causes of migration, and besides seem thus far to be impractical and ineffective.
Particularly problematic are cases in which the utility of staying put can be judged to be so low that almost any alternative is preferable. Sadly at the present time both Syria and Somalia may fall into this category. What can be done in these countries? These are issues which the forthcoming issues of Horizons (which I shall be helping to edit as of the middle of this month!) shall be helping to address. The next issue is entitled "Middle East: The Great Unravelling", and will explore how Syria has got into the current situation, and what might be done to reach a better place. I'm extremely excited to start looking into these issues in depth once I reach Belgrade, as well as getting a better understanding of sex trafficking across the Balkans, and of the unique set of problems facing both post-conflict states, and states on the periphery of Europe.
I can't wait to get started!
*Pritchett, Lant (2006). Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock on Global Labour Mobility. Accessible at: http://www.cgdev.org/publication/9781933286105-let-their-people-come-breaking-gridlock-global-labor-mobility
**Lutz, Helma (2007). Migration is Female. Accessible at: http://www.goethe.de/lhr/prj/daz/mag/mig/en2499278.htm
It is often dubbed paradoxical that we live in the era in which moving between states is both technically quickest and easiest, and - for many - logistically most difficult. I am reliably informed (by google...) that from London I can fly to any country in the world within 27 hours. (The most remote country, for those trivia inclined, is Kiribati, which requires a whopping 4 changes of plane!)
For many of the hundreds of thousands - or even millions - fleeing political persecution, economic hardship or environmental disaster, however, it has never been harder to gain legal acceptance overseas.
Over my first year at the Kennedy School it is migration issues that have caused me the most sleepless nights. Lant Pritchett argues convincingly that more open borders might do more than any other single policy reform to raise living standards across the world.* As a European who has lived and work in Africa and the Middle East it is migration between these two broad areas that interests me most.
This issue has, of course, been in the news a lot recently after the spate of recent tragedies in the Mediterranean. The response has been inadequate from both the African and European sides in a number of ways, but two (related) aspects of this have forcibly struck me as I read the ongoing commentary.
Firstly, 'migrants' are treated as a homogenous mass, without any differentiation made between the disparate groups. In particular, many commentaries implicitly contain the assumption that the vast majority of migrants are young men. It's staggeringly hard to get good migration statistics, but by some estimates over a third of those who died in high profile tragedy off Italy in April were female and, around the world, most of the world's migrants are female.** Leaving family and friends, and moving hundreds or thousands of miles, is hard for anyone, but the challenges for women can be particularly severe. Sexual exploitation, or even trafficking into sex slavery or domestic servitude, are regrettably common. Concerted and constructive policy action is unlikely to be forthcoming unless there is a greater recognition of the heterogeneity of migrant populations, and the particular trials and tribulations facing different groups. (I have been involve in the issues around sex trafficking from Eastern Europe for a number of years now, and plan to look at these issues in greater depth in a future post. In particular, I've identified a number of fantastic-looking organisations in Belgrade that I hope to visit and then perhaps use this blog as a platform to give them greater exposure.)
The second thing that has struck me is that the discourse around migration and public policy is dominated by politicians and lawyers. Much is said of the legal rights or migrants, and of the political impossibility of finding them permanent homes in increasingly insular European countries such as France and the UK. Analysis of the migration decision itself is notable only by its absence. Considerably more work is required by economists to get a clearer sense of the factors that encourage and discourage migration. Each death is clearly a tragedy, and each successful immigrant has a chance to transform both their lives and that of their family. But as a starting point in beginning to analyse these issues I have found it helpful to abstract from personal stories, and to think of a very simple, general model of the decision to migrate. In broad terms individuals will migrate if:
Utility of Migrating > Utility of Staying
In the context of the difficult and dangerous decision to cross the Mediterranean this can be further broken down into:
(Probability of Dying * Utility of Dying) + (Probability of Reaching Europe * Utility of Reaching Europe) > Utility of Staying
Clearly there is moral duty to reduce the risk of death in the Mediterranean, and according to this model this will increase migration at the margins unless it is possible to simultaneously either:
(1) Decrease the utility of reaching Europe, perhaps by either increasing the chance that individuals are returned to their native country or by decreasing the expected returns from staying in Europe.
(2) Increase the utility of staying, which, of course, has been an aim of internatinoal development assistance for over 70 years.
Another option might be to simply make migration more difficult. Europe is exploring various ways in which this can be done, including targeting the big smuggling rings and looking into the practicalities of bombing smuggling boats off the coast of Libya before they load their desperate 'cargo'. These options, however, simply ignore the root causes of migration, and besides seem thus far to be impractical and ineffective.
Particularly problematic are cases in which the utility of staying put can be judged to be so low that almost any alternative is preferable. Sadly at the present time both Syria and Somalia may fall into this category. What can be done in these countries? These are issues which the forthcoming issues of Horizons (which I shall be helping to edit as of the middle of this month!) shall be helping to address. The next issue is entitled "Middle East: The Great Unravelling", and will explore how Syria has got into the current situation, and what might be done to reach a better place. I'm extremely excited to start looking into these issues in depth once I reach Belgrade, as well as getting a better understanding of sex trafficking across the Balkans, and of the unique set of problems facing both post-conflict states, and states on the periphery of Europe.
I can't wait to get started!
*Pritchett, Lant (2006). Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock on Global Labour Mobility. Accessible at: http://www.cgdev.org/publication/9781933286105-let-their-people-come-breaking-gridlock-global-labor-mobility
**Lutz, Helma (2007). Migration is Female. Accessible at: http://www.goethe.de/lhr/prj/daz/mag/mig/en2499278.htm
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