GCRF Inclusive Societies - Migration for Inclusive African Growth

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

After decades of pessimism some African economies have recently experienced the fastest growth rates in the world, though this growth has not yet trickled down to the poorest. The proposed research aims to address one aspect of the challenge of transforming national economic growth into more inclusive growth; namely migration. An outcome of the optimism around Africa is new and more diverse flows of migrants within and to the faster growing African economies. Yet we know very little about these migration flows and whether they offer discernable benefits for African development and redistributive potential. The overarching aim of the project is to understand whether and to what extent recent migration within and to Africa is contributing to more sustainable and inclusive growth on the continent and to enable policy-makers and practitioners to harness this knowledge for more inclusive growth.The theoretical and policy agenda to which this research speaks is the recognition that migration is a key channel for promoting (inter)national trade, investment and other kinds of financial resources, and transferring technology, skills and knowledge. Our hypothesis is that these contemporary migrant communities have the potential to make important contributions to sustainable and inclusive growth, not only in their countries of origin but also in the African countries where they settle. To assess whether and how such benefits may be occurring we will undertake research in 4 African countries - Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Mozambique - that are on the OECD DAC list. This will examine a range of contemporary migrant groups (including European, emerging power, African diaspora, intra-African, and internal) and examine those channels through which they may contribute to inclusive growth in Africa. The sectoral focus will be manufacturing, IT and services since these are sectors where African participation has a higher potential for more inclusive growth. The outcomes will be a more robust sense of the value of inclusive growth as an analytical concept alongside the first multi-country comparative study of contemporary migrant communities on the continent.The project is also fundamentally concerned with re-shaping policy and practice to support more inclusive growth. It arises out of an ESRC GCRF Network grant that has cemented a strong network of migration researchers with national, continental and international expertise and policy reach. They are the African Migration and Development Policy Centre (Kenya), Network for Migration Research on Africa (Nigeria), The Centre for Migration Studies, Univ. of Ghana and The Centre for Policy Analysis, Eduardo Mondlane Univ. (Mozambique). The current network has engaged, through national workshops, with policy-makers, researchers and migrant businesses to identify learning needs and knowledge gaps. This co-design process informs the current bid and its impact activities. Policy-makers will benefit from improved information about the nature of these new migrant business communities, as well as through capacity building to help officials understand the issues and data sources better. We will also deliver training to African journalists so they can report on migration issues more effectively. Our African co-Is have delivered similar training to officials and journalists on a small scale but this project offers the opportunity to scale this up. Business people from the four African and the migrants' source countries will benefit through networking events organised by local business associations. The general public will benefit from better-informed debate about the costs and benefits of migration. Academics across a range of disciplines will benefit from new knowledge of the nature of these flows and impacts, as well as a wider venture of rethinking debates on the role of 'Southern' actors in international development.