Hello there! Those of you who are new around here may have missed my incessant jabbering about migration and development. The World Bank has a new report which gives me a good excuse to jump back in the saddle.
This chart neatly shows the date at which recorded remittances from migrants exceed official aid as a resource flow to Africa – round about 2007.
Which is exactly the same year that we saw that great blossoming of attention to migration as a development issue, spearheaded by the fantastic MigrationWatch and MigrationThoughts blogs, celebrity advocates for immigration to the West, Western leaders sitting down with African leaders to discuss how they could increase levels of migration, and a spike in books written about migration and development.
Oh, nothing huh. Well what about the world’s premier development advocacy organisation (which I mean with actual sincerity), I bet they pay attention…. oh I guess not. But ONE, you even have an empty space there in the bottom corner for another issue!
I was about to make another snarky comment about academic research, but it turns out there are almost as many Google Scholar hits for “migration and development” (2.45 million) as “aid and development” (2.67 million). OK academia, my very scientific surveys says that you get a pass.
The rest of you have homework to turn in tomorrow, starting with Lant Pritchett, Michael Clemens, and YouNotSneaky!
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