International labour migrants: unsung heroes of globalisation

This report provides an overview of the effects of emigration on home countries to understand the dynamics of emigration with respect to the labour-source countries. It provides general information on immigration trends and specifically addresses three main issues: brain drain, remittances and the labour markets in the source countries.

Conclusions of the study include:

• while brain drain does not always have a noticeable impact on unemployment, there are a few countries that have suffered significant damage to their human resource stocks due to brain drain
• the issue of remittances is central to discussions on the costs and benefits of emigration to the source country. There is an increase in the share of developing countries as sources of remittances. The importance of remittances to individual countries is more noticeable when looked at as a percentage of national or merchandise exports
• there has not been any general, proven relationship between emigration, unemployment and wage increases. The reasons boil down to the economic characteristics of the migrants: they are usually skilled and do not belong to the poorest sections of the society. The elasticity of supply in the labour markets does not make their departure very noticeable. A more significant impact would be of finding jobs for mass return migrants