Assessing the Impact of Migration Policies on Economic and Social Development

Abstract

A recurrent motif of recent Global Forum on Migration and Development meetings has been the need for more empirical data and analysis of the impacts of migration policies on development. This is important for good governance, coherent public policy making, correcting misperceptions about migration, and building confidence in governments’ ability to manage migration, also for positive development outcomes. Monitoring and evaluation need to be factored into migration policies and programs from the outset, and data collection and planning tools such as Migration Profiles can help contextualize the outcomes as well as facilitate comparative analyses and development planning across countries and regions. This chapter reflects on current practices in assessing the impact of migration policies on development, in both origin and destination countries. It identifies institutional gaps and challenges and reflects on how to improve impact assessment in this field. It makes a case for expanded application of Migration Profiles to strengthen the data and research basis for sounder, more linked-up policy making, impact assessment, and development planning (The chapter presents some of the findings of the GFMD ad hoc Working Group on Policy Coherence, Data, and Research which undertook an “Informal inquiry on policy impact assessments,” and organized a seminar on Assessing the impacts of migration and development policies in Vienna in June 2010, as well as some of the conclusions of the GFMD/IOM/World Bank workshop on Managing migration for development: Policymaking, assessment, and evaluation that took place in Marseille in June 2011).