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The UN Millennium Development Goals were never designed to address the movement of peoples, and not especially as a basic element of human freedom. The long awaited release of a comprehensive admission on the inseparability of mobility and development has finally made center stage in development policy circles with the release of this year’s Human Development Report 2009 Overcoming barriers: Human mobility and development

Helen Clarke’s forward to the report sets the tone of the analysis:

Migration not infrequently gets a bad press. Negative stereotypes portraying migrants as ‘stealing our jobs’ or ‘scrounging off the taxpayer’ abound in sections of the media and public opinion, especially in times of recession. For others, the word ‘migrant’ may evoke images of people at their most vulnerable. This year’s Human Development Report, Overcoming Barriers: Human Mobility and Development, challenges such stereotypes. It seeks to broaden and rebalance perceptions of migration to reflect a more complex and highly variable reality.

The report does not, however, name the European Directive on irregular migration and asylum seeking directly (the Common European Asylum System) at any stage in the report - instead lightly touching on it’s human rights dimensions in what appears to be a light jab with a blunt stick (on p.99):

The recent European Union directive on the procedures for return appears to be a step towards transparency and harmonization of regulations, with an emphasis on standard procedures either to expel people with irregular status or to grant them definite legal status. The directive has, however, been criticized as inadequate in guaranteeing respect for human rights.

From a wider glance rights language is a consistent component to firmly engage the discussion on mobility - with one crude statistical sweep of the report rendering no less than 105 uses of the word “rights” throughout.

Lastly, the battle between perception and fact is duly meted out and careful study of the report makes for quite useful reading on the policies and institutions (political, cultural, social etc.) in flux that affect and are influenced by regular and irregular mobility. Agenda setting is afoot - and human rights approaches are comfortably at the center of it.

Source: Human Development Report 2009 Overcoming barriers: Human mobility and development

Report Contents:

CHAPTER 1 Freedom and movement: how mobility can foster human development 9
1.1 Mobility matters 9
1.2 Choice and context: understanding why people move 11
1.3 Development, freedom and human mobility 14
1.4 What we bring to the table 16

CHAPTER 2 People in motion: who moves where, when and why 21
2.1 Human movement today 21
2.2 Looking back 28
2.2.1 The long-term view 28
2.2.2 The 20th century 30
2.3 Policies and movement 33
2.4 Looking ahead: the crisis and beyond 40
2.4.1 The economic crisis and the prospects for recovery 41
2.4.2 Demographic trends 43
2.4.3 Environmental factors 45
2.5 Conclusions 46

CHAPTER 3 How movers fare 49
3.1 Incomes and livelihoods 49
3.1.1 Impacts on gross income 50
3.1.2 Financial costs of moving 53
3.2 Health 55
3.3 Education 57
3.4 Empowerment, civic rights and participation 60
3.5 Understanding outcomes from negative drivers 62
3.5.1 When insecurity drives movement 62
3.5.2 Development-induced displacement 64
3.5.3 Human trafficking 65
3.6 Overall impacts 67
3.7 Conclusions 68

CHAPTER 4 Impacts at origin and destination 71
4.1 Impacts at places of origin 71
4.1.1 Household level effects 71
4.1.2 Community and national level economic effects 76
4.1.3 Social and cultural effects 79
4.1.4 Mobility and national development strategies 82
4.2 Destination place effects 83
4.2.1 Aggregate economic impacts 84
4.2.2 Labour market impacts 85
4.2.3 Rapid urbanization 86
4.2.4 Fiscal impacts 87
4.2.5 Perceptions and concerns about migration 89
4.3 Conclusions 92

CHAPTER 5 Policies to enhance human development outcomes 95
5.1 The core package 96
5.1.1 Liberalizing and simplifying regular channels 96
5.1.2 Ensuring basic rights for migrants 99
5.1.3 Reducing transaction costs associated with movement 102
5.1.4 Improving outcomes for migrants and destination communities 104
5.1.5 Enabling benefits from internal mobility 106
5.1.6 Making mobility an integral part of national development strategies 108
5.2 The political feasibility of reform 108
5.3 Conclusions 112
Notes 113
Bibliography 119

STATISTICAL ANNEX Tables 143