Climate Instability,Urbanisation and International Migration

This paper focuses on climate-induced migration. We construct a simple theoretical model where, in a first step, climate shocks accelerate the transition from the traditional to the modern sector, leading rural workers to move to urban centres within national borders, while in a second step, downward pressures on wages due to the greater labour supply in cities push people to engage in international migration. To test this hypothesis, we exploit a rich panel dataset, displaying a representative picture of bilateral migration flows and climatic data across 222 countries for the period 1960–2000. Findings suggest that in the next few years the climate-induced growth rate of migrant stocks might be in a range between 8.6 per cent and 12.8 per cent, especially from developing countries, where the level of rural employment is more likely to be affected by climatic shocks.     

The political economy of Indian planning

Peruvian statistics were examined to see if construction remained labour‐intensive during 1955–67. Data on output, employment, capital, and materials consumption were either lacking or had defects that made a direct comparison of trends impossible. But conclusions could be drawn from relative price and wage trends. If materials and capital had not been substituted for labour, average construction costs would have risen substantially more than they did. Our estimate was that by 1967 they would have been 25 per cent higher.

Evidence from a sample of firms, however, suggested that adoption of labour‐saving techniques cannot be tied simply to changes in wages compared with other costs. All eleven innovations studied, it is true, were markedly labour‐saving; but the rate of adoption did not closely follow wage changes. Adoption came most often during those less tense years when builders were neither overstrained with orders nor lacking credit and clients. One must conclude that both rising wages and innovations can limit employment expansion in relatively poor countries.

Since both agriculture and manufacturing have been unable to absorb the growing labour force of poor countries, economists have turned their attention to other sectors for supplementary employment expansion. One of these is construction. The construction sector creates not only jobs but builds capital goods with a desirable low import content. In association with carefully structured financial institutions, it may even generate savings. How much employment a given expansion of construction will provide depends on the production functions of the sector: their slopes and their potential shifts. One must find the changes in labour productivity that go with likely changes in volume, capital accumulation, trends in material supplies, and alternate technologies.

All these questions will get imprecise answers without good statistics on output, labour, capital, and materials, both unit prices and volume. If output varies in composition and in the relative quality of components, problems of weighting and aggregating arise. Because of the sector's ? instability and footloose nature, data on construction remain inferior compared with other sectors even in the most advanced and statistics‐rich countries. Can one make anything of the sorts of data available in poor countries where the sector must play its most crucial role?

In this article, using rather limited data, we note with considerable alarm that steady labour intensity and corresponding employment expansion cannot be taken for granted. Where daily wages are but a fraction of hourly American wages, and where interest rates are a multiple of American rates, the more lavish use of materials and machinery compared with labour can nevertheless begin early.

Peru is the country selected for our study. During 1955–67 Peru had a relatively high national output growth rate of 5.6 per cent together with a moderate rate of inflation of about 9 per cent. Except for the devaluation years of 1958 and 1967, flourishing exports of fishmeal, copper, cotton, and sugar helped carry this rate of growth. Lima was one of the continent's fastest‐growing cities in population and building, particularly in squatter barriadas. But in the 1960s commercial conduction also grew at more than a 15 per cent compound rate, measured in square metres built, according to some estimates.1 During 1964–68, construction had high priority under President Fernando Belaunde, a professional architect. More U.S. foreign aid for housing (direct and guaranteed private loans) went to Peru in absolute terms during this period than to any other country. We shall analyse the consequences by examining (1) trends in relative costs, (2) relative output and import trends, and (3) data about receptivity to innovations in a sample of firms.     

Decomposing the Labour Productivity Gap between Migrant-Owned and Native-Owned Firms in Sub-Saharan Africa

Migration studies have been primarily based on the movement of individuals from developing to developed economies, with a focus on the impact of migrants on host country wages. In this study we take a different angle by exploring the labour productivity of migrant-owned firms versus native-owned firms in 20 African economies using firm-level data. We find that labour productivity is 78 per cent higher in migrant-owned firms than native-owned firms. Using the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method we find that structural effects account for 80 per cent of the labour productivity gap. Returns to manager education largely explain the productivity advantage of migrant-owned firms over native-owned firms. Interactions with the government, access to finance, informality, and power outages are also considerable contributors to the labour productivity gap.     

Cross-Country Disparity in Agricultural Productivity: Quantifying the Role of Modern Seed Adoption

Inequality of agricultural labour productivity across the developing world has increased substantially over the past 40 years. This article asks: to what extent did the diffusion of Green Revolution seed varieties contribute to increasing agricultural labour productivity disparity across the developing countries? We find that 22 per cent of cross-country variation in agricultural labour productivity can be attributed to the diffusion of high-yielding seed varieties across countries, and that the impact of such diffusion differed significantly across regions. We discuss the implications of these findings for policy directed at increasing agricultural labour productivity in the developing world.     

On the Relationship between Violent Conflict and Wages in Colombia

We analyse how forced displacements caused by violent conflict are related to the wages of workers in Colombia. Using data from the Quality of Life Survey (2011–2014), we analyse the differences in wages between those forced by violence to move to other regions, and those who moved for other reasons. We apply Propensity Score Matching techniques to compare workers from the two groups, finding that forced displacement is related to decreases of between 10 and 29 per cent in the wages of males, and between 18 and 37 per cent in the wages of females, relative to their counterparts. Thus, forced displacements are related to poorer labour market outcomes in terms of wages.     

The Elasticity of the Migrant Labour Supply: Evidence from Temporary Filipino Migrants

The effect of immigration on host and origin countries is mediated by the way migrants take their labour supply decisions. We propose a simple way of integrating the traditional random utility maximisation model used to analyse location decisions with a classical labour demand function at destination. Our setup allows us to estimate a general upper bound on the elasticity of the migrant labour supply that we take to the data using the evolution of the numbers and wages of temporary overseas Filipino workers between 1992 and 2009 to different destinations. We find that the migrant labour supply elasticity can be very large. Temporary migrants are very reactive to economic conditions in their potential destinations.     

Enforcing labour rights of irregular migrants in Indonesia

The multi-directional nature of labour migration flows has resulted in an increasing number of countries having become both senders and receivers of regular and irregular migrants. However, some countries continue to see themselves primarily as senders and so ignore their role as a receiving country, which can have negative implications for the rights of migrants in their territory. Using the example of Indonesia, which is State Party to the 1990 UN Convention on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Their Families, this article demonstrates that irregular migrant workers in this country have the legal right to protection against labour exploitation even when they work despite the government’s prohibition on employment. The article discusses the ‘right to work’ and how international human rights law has translated it into the ‘right to protection from labour exploitation’ for irregular migrants in Indonesia. By way of two case studies about the Indonesian government’s handling of irregular migrants, it shows how it prioritises enforcement of the employment immigration law over labour and employment laws much like countries that have not ratified the ICRMW. It also draws attention to legal protection gaps that emerge for asylum seekers when they are recognised to be genuine refugees.     

Illegal Economic and Transit Migration in the Czech Republic: A Study of Individual Migrants' Behaviour

This article examines the essential features of international migration and the illegal working activities of migrants in the Czech Republic, with a closer insight into the processes of trafficking and smuggling. The research is based on semi-structured interviews with 63 illegal migrants, both from countries of the former Soviet Union (mainly Ukraine) and developing countries in 2005 and 2006. The main conclusion of the analysis is that, in many ways, the situation of illegal labour and transit migration in the Czech Republic is similar to that in countries with a longer experience as target countries for immigration.     

How Resilient are Labour Markets to Natural Disasters? The Case of the 1998 Bangladesh Flood

Natural disasters devastate economies as they impede capital accumulation. The resilience of labour markets is crucial for the poor who rely on labour to reduce risk. We evaluate how the 1998 ‘flood of the century’ affected wages in Bangladesh. We find short-term declines in agricultural and non-agricultural wages. Agricultural workers who moved towards non-agricultural employment to cope benefitted through a lower percentage reduction in short-term wages. Endowed with human capital, salaried workers were unable to mitigate income risk. Extending the eligibility of credit access or relief programmes may preserve local businesses and their employees in the years following a flood.     

The School-to-Work Transition in Developing Countries

Youth bulges in developing countries may carry both a potential for growth via demographic dividends, and ticking political time bombs, depending on the success of authorities in providing youth with adequate opportunities as they transit into the labour markets of the twenty-first century. In this article I examine the theoretical and empirical research on school-to-work transitions (SWT) in developing countries. After a discussion of the attempts at operationalising the concept of school-to-work transitions from a statistical point of view, I review the theoretical settings suitable for analysing the SWT. Despite an extensive search and matching literature, few models seem adapted to developing countries’ labour markets, and even fewer are empirically tested. I then examine the determinants of transition lengths at the individual and macro level. Findings indicate that education is not always associated with shorter durations to first employment, and that the reasons may be higher expectations, reservation wages, or queuing. Women generally experience longer transitions in the labour market, and evidence from labour market interventions is mixed. Many factors likely to influence the school-to-work transition have not been studied from the point of view of school-to-work transitions, however, and potential directions for future research are presented.     

How Accurate is Food-for-Work Self-Targeting in the Presence of Imperfect Factor Markets? Evidence from Ethiopia

Effective targeting of transfers is a key issue in public policy to combat poverty. Much faith is presently placed in self-targeting mechanisms such as public employment schemes supported by food-for-work transfers. Where targeting errors have been observed, these are usually attributed to mismanagement of key operational details, such as the project's wage rate. Using a unique data set from rural Ethiopia, we demonstrate that targeting errors may also have structural causes in some low-income countries. We hypothesise that imperfect factor markets generate a predictable dispersion across households in reservation wage rates that breaks down the unconditionally positive relation between income and shadow wages on which the theory of self-targeting public employment programmes rests. Our results confirm that the inaccuracy of FFW targeting stems from the fact that, in rural Ethiopia, higher income households are endowed with more labour per unit of land or animal. Due to poor factor markets in land and livestock these labour-abundant households have lower marginal labour productivity on farm, thereby depressing the reservation wage rates they find acceptable for FFW participation.     

The Effect of Food Price Changes on Child Labour: Evidence from Uganda

Most people in developing countries spend up to 60 per cent of their income on food, even though the majority of them are farmers. Hence, a change in food prices affects both their revenue as well as expenditure, and it may thereby affect their labour market decisions. Using the Uganda National Panel Survey and monthly regional food prices, this paper examines the effect of changes in food prices on child labour. The empirical evidence shows that an increase in food prices is linked to an increase in the probability and the intensity of child labour. We find the effect of food price increases to be smaller among landowning households, which is consistent with the view that landowning households can better compensate for price shocks. The empirical results suggest that periodic shocks in food prices may have longer lasting effects on economic development in developing countries through the channel of child labour.     

Economic Effects of Migration on the Left-Behind in Cambodia

Using propensity score matching, this study examines the effects of migration on various indicators of household wellbeing in Cambodia. The results indicate that migration would reduce poverty headcount rate by 3–7 percentage points and decrease the depth of poverty. Migration is also found to reduce by 5–10 per cent the hours worked by members left-behind. The impact of migration on labour participation may be, however, vulnerable to unobservable factors. Nevertheless, the study suggests that important heterogeneous effects which differ from the average impact exist. The analysis is conducted separately by internal and international migration.     

Computer Usage and Labour Regulation in India's Retail Sector

Abstract

A recent survey of 1,948 retail stores in India conducted by the World Bank's Enterprise surveys shows that 19 per cent of all stores use computers. In the state of Kerala, the figure is as high as 40 per cent. Using this survey, we estimate the effect of computer usage on labour employment. Our findings show that this effect depends on the stringency of the underlying labour laws. Stricter labour laws magnify the labour displacing effect of computers significantly.     

Consent behind the counter: aspiring citizens and labour control under precarious (im)migration schemes

‘Managed migration’ schemes promote mobility of labour across international borders, diversifying worksites and introducing new systems of enacting labour consent. This article examines how Canadian franchisees are recruiting Filipino migrants to staff their restaurants, facilitating employers’ access to new, flexible subjects. These workers covet their employment as pathways to Canadian citizenship. Some are unaware, however, that they are recruited under a precarious immigration scheme, one that neither directly denies nor facilitates access to legal incorporation. Instead, migrants are (transnationally) encouraged to compete in the worksite for employer-nominated citizenship, a highly productive system for engendering consent. This draws attention to new challenges ‘managed migration’ schemes pose for resisting downward pressures on work and employment conditions.     

What Explains the Job Creating Potential of Industrialisation in the Developing World?

This paper examines why job creation in the manufacturing sector has differed widely across developing countries, using a modified Lewis model that captures the scale, composition and labour intensity effects of industrialisation on job creation. We show that while the scale effect has been mostly positive, labour intensity and composition effects have been mostly negative. Trade integration has a positive impact on manufacturing employment via the scale and composition effects, but a negative impact via the labour intensity effect. Human capital has a positive effect via the labour intensity effect. Labour regulations have no impact through any of the effects.     

International migration,remittances and development: myths and facts

The debate on international South – North labour migration tends to focus on the receiving end of migration. This bias obscures a proper understanding of the developmental causes and consequences of migration at the sending end. The reciprocal migration – development relationship is examined through the discussion of seven migration ‘myths’. Because of its profound developmental roots, it is useless to think that migration can be halted or that aid and trade are short-cut ‘solutions’ to immigration. Migrant remittances contribute significantly to development and living conditions in sending countries. Nevertheless, the recent ‘remittance euphoria’ is not justified, because unattractive investment environments and restrictive immigration policies which interrupt circular migration patterns prevent the high development potential of migration from being fully realised. Although specific policies can enhance this potential through facilitating remittance transfers and investments, the key lies in encouraging circular migration. Instead of uselessly and harmfully trying to stop inevitable migration, immigration policies allowing for freer circulation can, besides increasing migration control, enhance the vital contribution of migrants to the development of their home countries.     

Manpower planning and labour markets in developing countries: A case study of west Malaysia

In the past, aggregative studies and forecasts have dominated manpower planning in developing countries. Such exercises, however, tend to assume away or ignore a host of institutional factors that have far‐reaching influences on the determination of wages and employment and on the efficiency of labour markets. Consequently, this paper argues that disaggregated manpower research, focussed on current problems and conditions in employment markets, would be far more useful to economic development policies than the sort of abstract macro‐planning aimed at forecasts of long‐term manpower requirements which has been highly fashionable during the last decade.

The theme of the paper is substantiated with reference to the organization and workings of labour markets in West Malaysia. It is found that institutional and economic factors peculiar to that country have resulted in three ‘insulated’ labour markets, one each for Malays, Chinese and Indians, with practically no mobility of labour across insulated markets, even in widely divergent supply‐demand conditions. The final sections of the paper briefly examine the implications of insulated markets for manpower and economic policies.     

Living and working as a domestic worker in the Middle East: the experience of migrant returnees in Girana town,North Wollo,Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

This article explores the migration experiences of Ethiopian migrant returnees from domestic work in the Gulf countries and Lebanon. The returnees reside in the town of Girana located in Habru sub-district, North Wollo zone of Amhara region. There is much female work migration to the Arab Middle East from the town, particularly to Saudi Arabia through Muslim pilgrimage. Employing a qualitative method, the study examines how the returnee women perceived and experienced labour migration and analyzes the impacts of labour migration on childcare, family survival back home, and debt payment. The returnees made voluntary regular and irregular labour migration to the region and engaged in domestic work, which is not preferred by the host society. However, domestic work is unregulated by the labour policy of the destination countries. This made the returnees’ employment situation rather exploitative, exacerbating their vulnerability to abuses, ethnic denigration, and undermining of cultural identity.     

Oligarchic rule and best practice migration management: the political economy origins of labour migration regime of the Philippines

The Philippine labour migration regime has been praised as one of the best examples of government-led migration management in the developing world, with some of the most extensive policies and bureaucratic organisations to manage and protect its citizens working abroad. However, not much knowledge has been accumulated that explains its origins or why it emerged in the Philippines and not in other large-scale migrant-sending countries. Contrary to current explanations that emphasise the economic benefits of labour migration and civil society mobilisation, this paper highlights the migration regime's compatibility with the political economy interests of the country's ruling elites. Bringing together the country's two important political and economic features, oligarchic rule and labour export, this paper suggests that the unique genesis of the Philippines’ migration regime casts doubts on the replicability of the Philippine model in other labour-sending countries as currently pursued by the international development community.