Event description:

The global debate on international migration has, over the past five years, devoted a great deal of attention to the relationship between migration and the state of development of homeland economies. Whereas the dominant focus was once on under-development as a cause of migration outflows, today's discussion emphasizes how international migration can enhance the economic development of countries of origin. So pronounced has the discussion become that the United Nation’s post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals will include explicit goals related to migration, which was omitted entirely from the previous Millennium Development Goals.

Recent discussion of the migration-development relationship has given priority to the remittances that migrants send to their families and communities in the homeland, monies that now far exceed the value of foreign aid. Considerable progress has been made to understand and measure remittance flows, to study their uses, and to examine the effects that remittances have on family poverty and national economic development. But as the discussion continues and deepens, other issues have been brought to the table, among them the role that migration plays in human capital enhancement and the effects that this has on homeland development.