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Evidence on Policies to Increase the Development Impacts of International MigrationInternational migration offers individuals and their families the potential to experience immediate and large gains in their incomes, and offers a large number of other positive benefits to the sending communities and countries. However, there are also concerns about potential costs of migration, including concerns about trafficking and human rights, a desire for remittances to be used more effectively, and concerns about externalities from skilled workers being lost. As a result there is increasing interest in policies which can enhance the development benefits of international migration and mitigate these potential costs. This paper provides a critical review of recent research on the effectiveness of these policies at three stages of the migration process: pre-departure, during migration, and directed toward possible return. The existing evidence base suggests some areas of policy success: bilateral migration agreements for countries whose workers have few other migration options, developing new savings and remittance products that allow migrants more control over how their money is used, and some efforts to provide financial education to migrants and their families. Suggestive evidence together with theory offers support for a number of other policies, such as lowering the cost of remittances, reducing passport costs, offering dual citizenship, and removing exit barriers to migration. Research offers reasons to be cautious about some policies, such as enforcing strong rights for migrants like high minimum wages. Nevertheless, the paper finds the evidence base to be weak for many policies, with no reliable research on the impact of most return migration programs, nor for whether countries should be trying to induce communal remitting through matching funds.
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Leveraging Migration for Africa :
 Remittances, Skills, and InvestmentsInternational migration has profound
 implications for human welfare, and African governments have
 had only a limited influence on welfare outcomes, for good
 or ill. Improved efforts to manage migration will require
 information on the nature and impact of migratory patterns.
 This book seeks to contribute toward this goal, by reviewing
 previous research and providing new analyses (including
 surveys and case studies) as well as by formulating policy
 recommendations that can improve the migration experience
 for migrants, origin countries, and destination countries.
 The book comprises this introduction and summary and four
 chapters. Chapter one reviews the data on African migration
 and considers the challenges African governments face in
 managing migration. Chapter two discusses the importance of
 remittances, the most tangible link between migration and
 development; it also identifies policies that can facilitate
 remittance flows to Africa and increase their development
 impact. Chapter three analyzes high-skilled emigration and
 analyzes policies that can limit adverse implications and
 maximize positive implications for development. Chapter four
 considers ways in which Africa can leverage its diaspora
 resources to increase trade, investment, and access to technology.
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International Migration, Economic Development and PolicyThis volume reflects the expansion of the World Bank Research Program on International Migration and Development into new substantive and geographic areas. It presents a new global migration database and includes studies of the determinants and impact of return and circular migration, the impact of the flow of ideas on fertility, host country policies and their impact on immigrants, and the impact of international migration and remittances on poverty and other development indicators. The studies cover countries from Latin America, North Africa, South Asia, the South Pacific, and Western Europe, and show that the impact of migration on education and health tends to benefit girls more than boys, that its impact on labor force participation tends to be stronger for women than men, that return migrants tend to do better than non-migrants, and that fertility has tended to decline in countries whose migration has been to the West and has failed to do so in countries whose migration has been to the Gulf. The purpose of the case studies is to illustrate and clarify many theoretical mechanisms and to advance understanding of the impact of different migration policies, given that introducing policy variables in econometric regressions is generally difficult. Each study in this volume aims to answer a variety of development- and policy-related questions using the most appropriate of these three methodologies. These empirical studies and analyses include exploration of some novel hypotheses; they are also new in terms of the topics selected and the regions/ countries examined