What is the relationship between chronic poverty and processes of migration? While livelihoods strategies are diverse and multiple, for many poor people migration represents a central component of these. How can research examine the characteristics of those who move and stay and what compels them? This paper addresses the implications of current migration-related policies for chronic poverty and identifies possible future research priorities for the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC). It does not look at ‘forced’ migration (including refugees) but focuses on ‘free’ population movements.
Chronic poverty is not limited to economic deprivation and is sustained over many years. Migration is both a cause and consequence of chronic poverty for people who move and others who stay behind. Not all amongst the poor have the option to migrate. Not everyone is similarly mobile, for a range of reasons, but those who stay behind are just as enmeshed in migratory processes.
Key to understanding the role of migration in chronic poverty is an analysis of social exclusion, poverty-related capitals and social relations. A range of motivational factors interact with wider processes of economic, political and social change. Both structure and agency are influential.
- Decisions are affected by the stock of capitals, assets and resources available to individuals and groups. Discrimination, injustice, marginalisation, labour demand and government policies also shape who migrates.
- Poverty-related capitals can be social (networks, contacts), cultural (including gender and identity), human (education, skills, illness, children), geographical, economic and political.
- Some potential migrants cannot move for domestic or familial obligations, disability, illness, age, education and skills or lack of access to networks. Migration entails expenditures and costs.
- Migration can lead to impoverishment. Some move with little knowledge and few social contacts and become increasingly vulnerable. Migration myths are perpetuated by those who migrate. However, subsequent generations could reap the benefits.
- Out-migration may have negative effects on those who stay behind, as migrants neglect family responsibilities, and threats such as AIDS return. Female-headed households and the elderly are vulnerable. Staying put can also be a positive decision, for example if local development occurs.
- Migration is influenced by a ‘power-geometry’ of flows and networks. This includes ethnic, financial and technological relations and the power of the media and ideology.
Whether governments or donors discourage or support migration depends on whether it is perceived as a social and economic opportunity or a constraint to development activities and threat to stability.
- Western development models are often contradictory through their introduction of policies such as liberalisation which compel population movement while at the same time advocating stability through non-movement.
- Research is needed at the macro-, meso- and micro-level. This will respectively highlight: How policies shape migration and its costs and benefits; patterns, forms and effects of migration nationally and locally; factors, motives and circumstances of migration or non-migration and its effects.
- A comprehensive framework is needed, extending beyond economic analysis to reveal complex and multiple exclusion processes and vulnerabilities.
- Where chronic poverty is intergenerational there is a need to explore both the experiences of twice and thrice migrants and the impact on subsequent generations.
- CPRC partner countries will need to supply secondary data. Primary research can focus on case studies of those who stay put and become increasingly vulnerable, those whose poverty worsens through migration, and those who move out of poverty.
