Press Releases

Short term migration becoming the new norm, says ippr

Email this to a friend Print Delicious Digg Facebook Reddit

23 February 2009

Policymakers must pay greater attention to short-term migration according to a new report published today Monday 23 February 2009 by the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr).

The report shows that the traditional view of migration as a permanent move from one country to another is now outdated, with many migrants only living abroad for between three and 12 months at a time and those who stay for longer often choosing to retire back home.

Using new detailed data from household surveys in Jamaica, never conducted before, ippr found that more than half of its returned migrants were away for less than a year on their last trip. It also found a pattern of longer term migrants returning home to retire. 58 percent of those who returned home from abroad were aged 42 or older and 24 percent of migrants returning home were over 60 years old.

Lisa Harker, Co Director of ippr said:

"ippr's research shows just how common short term migration really is. We need to recognise that lots of people are on the move, for lots of reasons, all the time - whether for 3 months or 30 years. Migration is a natural part of the way we live today."

ippr's report shows that migration is an integral part of Jamaican society. Two per cent of Jamaican households contain immigrants, 15 per cent have migrants who are currently living abroad and 28 per cent have returned migrants.

The paper also shows that migration has some significant impacts on different aspects of development in Jamaica:

Living standards: When a household contains migrants living standards rise more quickly. This effect is strongest when households contain a returned migrant, which suggests migration has a positive impact upon a household’s living standards.
Healthcare: Households who receive remittances spend more on healthcare as their household budgets rise. Regardless of their household budget, households with migrants are more likely to allocate money towards healthcare than other households. This appears to be a result of migrant’s experiences abroad leading them to value health and healthcare more and pass this on to their families.
Crime: Jamaica is disproportionately holding onto, rather than exporting, its young and unemployed. Only 1% of the migrants abroad at the time of ippr’s survey had previously been unemployed youth. In contrast, unemployed youth make up 3% of the non-migrant Jamaican population.
Education: For the first time ippr data shows that although remittances boost the household’s spending on education, a parent going abroad and leaving their children behind, can have a significant, negative impact on their school attendance.
Remittances: As well as a high proportion of households receiving remittances from former members of the household, ippr also found large numbers of households receiving remittances from people who weren’t their household members. 28% of Jamaican households receive such remittances. Almost half of these ‘non-household member remitters’ were not related to the households they were sending money to. This new finding reveals the extent to which migration had penetrated households across Jamaica, regardless of whether there is a household member who is, or has been a migrant.

The USA was shown to be the most popular destination for Jamaican migrants with over 60 per cent choosing to move there followed by the UK with 14 percent.

The report is second in a series of studies for ippr’s Development on the Move project which looks into international migration and its impact on the development of migrants’ home countries. Forthcoming studies will include household surveys in Colombia, Fiji, Georgia, Ghana, Macedonia and Vietnam.

Notes to editors

ippr's research findings are based on interviews with 486 households from across Jamaica.

Development on the move working paper 2, Measuring Migration’s Development Impacts: Preliminary evidence from Jamaica, is the second working paper from ippr and the Global Development Network’s global research project, Development on the Move: Measuring and Optimising Migration’s Economic and Social Impacts. The final report will be published spring 2010.

The first report in this series, Mapping the Development Impacts of Migration by Laura Chappell and Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah is available to download.

Further fuller analysis on Jamaica conducted with the University of West India will be published late spring 2009.

Contact

Kelly O’Sullivan, Media Officer, on k.osullivan@ippr.org / 020 7470 6125 / 07753 719 289