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Social Science > Emigration and Immigration

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Cover IMF Working Papers
Immigration and Employment: Substitute Versus Complementary Labor in Selected African Countries
Arina Viseth
This paper uses census and household survey data on Cameroon, Ghana, and South Africa to examine immigration’s impact in the context of a segmented labor market in Sub-Saharan Africa. We find that immigration affects (i) employment (ii) employment allocation between informal and formal sectors, and (iii) the type of employment within each sector. The direction of the impact depends on the degree of complementarity between immigrants and native workers’ skills. Immigration is found to be productivity-enhancing in the short to near term in countries where, the degree of complementarity between immigrants and native workers’ skill sets is the highest.
Keywords:
WP; immigration share; wage employment; native worker; immigration's impact; impact immigration; Immigration; Formal and Informal Sector; Employment; Occupational Choice; Complementary Versus Substitute Skills; Cameroon; Ghana; South Africa; employment rate; supply shock; Migration; Labor markets; Informal employment; Self-employment; Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa; origin country
Cover Spillover Notes
Sub-Saharan African Migration: Patterns and Spillovers
Mr. Jesus R Gonzalez-Garcia
,
Mr. Ermal Hitaj
,
Mr. Montfort Mlachila
,
Arina Viseth
, and
Mustafa Yenice
Amid rapid population growth, migration in sub-Saharan Africa has been increasing briskly over the last 20 years. Up to the 1990s, the stock of migrants—citizens of one country living in another country—was dominated by intraregional migration, but over the last 15 years, migration outside the region has picked up sharply. In the coming decades, sub-Saharan African migration will be shaped by an ongoing demographic transition involving an enlargement of the working-age population, and migration outside the region, in particular to advanced economies, is set to continue expanding. This note explores the main drivers of sub-Saharan African migration, focusing on migration outside the region, as this has greater global spillovers. It finds that the economic impact of migration for the region occurs mainly through two channels. First, the migration of young and educated workers—brain drain—takes a toll as human capital is already scarce in the region, although some recent studies suggest that migration may have also a positive effect—brain gain. Second, remittances represent an important source of foreign exchange and income in a number of sub-Saharan African countries, contribute to the alleviation of poverty, and help smooth business cycles.
Keywords:
SN; Sub-Saharan Africa; country; SSA migration; remittance; migration rate; emigration prospect; refugee migration; migration trend; SSA migrant; migration pattern; Migration; Remittances; Population growth; Demographic change; Europe; Africa; Middle East
Cover IMF Working Papers
Impact of Remittances on Poverty and Financial Development in Sub-Saharan Africa
Mr. Sanjeev Gupta
,
Ms. Catherine A Pattillo
, and
Ms. Smita Wagh
This paper assesses the impact of the steadily growing remittance flows to sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Though the region receives only a small portion of the total recorded remittances to developing countries, and the volume of aid flows to SSA swamps remittances, this paper finds that remittances, which are a stable, private transfer, have a direct poverty mitigating effect, and promote financial development. These findings hold even after factoring in the reverse causality between remittances, poverty and financial development. The paper posits that formalizing such flows can serve as an effective access point for "unbanked" individuals and households, and that the effective use of such flows can mitigate the costs of skilled out-migration in SSA.
Keywords:
WP; remittance
Cover IMF Working Papers
How Big is the Brain Drain?
Mr. William Carrington
and
Ms. Enrica Detragiache
The brain drain from developing countries has been lamented for many years, but knowledge of the empirical magnitude of the phenomenon is scant owing to the lack of systematic data sources. This paper presents estimates of emigration rates from 61 developing countries to OECD countries for three educational categories constructed using 1990 U.S. Census data, Barro and Lee’s data set on educational attainment, and OECD migration data. Although still tentative in many respects, these estimates reveal a substantial brain drain from the Caribbean, Central America, and some African and Asian countries.
Keywords:
WP; OECD country; migration rate; Central American country; Gulf state; migrants to the United States; tertiary education; United States definition; International labor migration; brain drain; human capital; Migration; Aging; Africa; Central America; South America; North America; Asia and Pacific