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Chapter 8
Migration Policies for Development
Given the substantial evidence on migration’s positive development impacts, what are the implications for policy? What policies and interventions can leverage these benefits to improve welfare while reducing potential costs? This section examines evidence on policies designed to enhance the development impacts of migration.
Facilitating Migration
Given the enormous wage gains resulting from international migration, and the existing evidence on positive impacts on origin households and communities, policies that reduce barriers to migration have substantial potential for poverty reduction and economic development.
Temporary ‘guest worker’ programmes represent one of the most politically feasible approaches to expanding migration opportunities. Countries across South Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and other developing regions have developed extensive temporary migration systems that send millions of workers abroad annually under bilateral agreements (International Labour Organisation 2022). These programmes can generate substantial development benefits while addressing destination countries’ concerns about permanent settlement. There is an important role for policy efforts in both origin and destination countries, and aid agencies, when setting up such programmes and enabling them to succeed. For example, Gibson and McKenzie (2014c) discuss a seasonal migration programme in New Zealand for workers from the Pacific Islands. They note how in addition to regulations, there were ‘kick-start’ efforts to facilitate initial recruitment and help employers learn about workers from countries they had not recruited from before, as well as policy design efforts to reduce both the risks of worker abuse and workers overstaying.
Another way to facilitate migration in some contexts would be to alleviate financial or credit constraints. There is now evidence from several contexts that when households receive a windfall, they use the funds to finance migration. Angelucci (2015) demonstrates that households randomly assigned to receive cash transfers in Mexico become substantially more likely to send migrants to the US. The effect appears to operate by raising household access to loans for migration, likely because with the ongoing cash transfer they are seen as safer borrowers by creditors. Gazeaud et al. (2023) similarly find in Comoros that households randomly assigned to a cash for public work programme were able to increase migration to Mayotte, with effects concentrated on more risk-averse households with lower savings. Diop (2025) shows that many agricultural households in rural Zambia re-sell the subsidised fertiliser they receive from a government programme to finance migration trips. This suggests that policies reducing financial barriers to migration – such as improved access to credit markets or migration financing programmes – could help expand migration opportunities even without changes in destination country policies.
Much of the randomised controlled trial-based research on migration facilitation comes from studies of internal (as opposed to international) migration, because it’s more feasible to design and implement interventions that permit movements within countries than across international borders. Bryan et al. (2014) conducted a randomised experiment providing cash or loans to rural Bangladeshi households to pay for the travel cost of moving to cities during ‘lean’ periods in the agricultural season. The transport subsidies encourage seasonal migration, and many of those induced to move choose to repeat the same trip on their own volition during subsequent lean seasons. The experimentation allows for some learning, and a scaled-up version of the experiment that offers many subsidies simultaneously increases the propensity of each household to take up the offer to migrate (Akram et al. 2025). In an international setting, Magaloni and Morten (2025) show experimental evidence of strong remigration intentions by Mexican agricultural workers who benefited from the H-2A visa programme for temporary migration.
Dramatic expansions of legal migration opportunities do face significant political obstacles in destination countries. Despite the economic evidence of the gains from increased labour mobility, public opinion in developed countries often opposes expanded immigration (Hanson 2009). Mayda (2006) demonstrates that individual attitudes towards immigration are systematically related to economic factors, reflecting labour market competition concerns. Facchini and Mayda (2008) show how these individual attitudes translate into policy outcomes: restrictive immigration policies align with the preferences of voters who generally oppose expanded immigration. Anti-immigration attitudes may be difficult to change, since many are emotionally based, as found by Manzoni et al. (2024) in a survey experiment in Italy.
Given these political constraints, policymakers have explored innovative approaches that can expand migration opportunities while addressing destination country concerns. One promising model includes “Global Skill Partnerships” (GSPs) (Clemens 2015). GSPs reframe immigration from creating competition for jobs to filling documented skill shortages in destination countries. GSPs involve bilateral agreements in which destination countries help finance technical training programmes in origin countries specifically targeting occupations where domestic labour supply is insufficient, such as healthcare, construction, information technology, and hospitality. This approach directly addresses public concerns about job displacement by ensuring migrants arrive with precisely the skills that destination-country employers cannot find domestically, while simultaneously strengthening origin countries’ training capacity and retaining many skilled workers at home.[1]
Another innovative approach involves market-based mechanisms for coordinating migration policies. Fernández-Huertas Moraga and Rapoport (2014) propose tradable immigration quotas that would allow countries to reveal their comparative advantages in hosting immigrants while internalising the positive externality that migration creates for global poverty reduction. Such mechanisms could potentially expand migration opportunities while addressing destination countries’ concerns about the costs of immigration.
These policy innovations are examples of creative institutional designs that may help expand legal pathways for migration in the face of political constraints. The challenge for development policy is to build on these promising approaches while also focusing on leveraging the substantial existing stock of international migrants more effectively for development of migrants’ origin communities.
Protecting Migrants and Improving Working Conditions
Improving migrants’ working conditions and reducing exploitation represents both a human rights imperative and a development opportunity. Better-treated migrants are likely to earn more, stay abroad longer, and send more remittances home. The evidence base is relatively scarce, but recent research demonstrates that simple, low-cost interventions can help improve migrant outcomes.
Barsbai et al. (forthcoming) conducted a randomised controlled trial among Filipino women working as domestic workers in Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia, testing an intervention that encouraged workers to show employers a family photo and providing a small gift when starting employment. The intervention caused domestic workers to experience less mistreatment, have higher satisfaction with the employer, and be more likely to stay with the employer. Follow-up experiments with potential employers suggest that the mechanism appears to be a reduction in employers’ perceived social distance from employees. The study reveals that simple humanising interventions can have meaningful impacts on migrant treatment.
Information interventions also show promise for protecting migrant workers. Shrestha and Yang (2019) conducted a randomised experiment among Filipino domestic workers in Singapore, providing information about legal rights related to changing employers. The treatment led to improvements in knowledge of legal rights related to changing jobs, as well as in job conditions (e.g. improved hours and other conditions of work). Treatment effects were concentrated among workers who initially had low knowledge of their legal rights and those with poor initial job conditions, who also became more likely to change employers in response to treatment. Batista et al. (2024) conducted another randomised experiment showing that providing Cape Verdean immigrants in Portugal with a mobile phone app containing information on their rights and how to find support for local integration improved their regularisation status and labour market outcomes (such as better working conditions, stronger alignment between jobs and qualifications, and greater overall satisfaction). This intervention also had empowering effects, fostering higher labour market aspirations and expectations.
Regularisation programmes providing legal status and work authorisation in destination countries represent another important policy tool for protecting vulnerable migrants. Ibáñez et al. (2025a) evaluate the impacts of a regularisation programme in Colombia on refugees from Venezuela, showing how legal status can improve access to formal employment and basic services. Even unpaid work can have substantial positive impacts on psychosocial well-being of vulnerable migrants, as found by Hussam et al. (2022) among Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.
One strategy used by the Philippine government is to enter into bilateral agreements with destination country governments or to regulate the wages of Filipino migrants, partially in an effort to ‘price out’ abusive employers. McKenzie et al. (2014) find that such minimum wage policies lead migrant flows to be much more responsive to fluctuations in GDP, since wages cannot adjust. Such labour market imperfections make migrants more sensitive to global business cycles. Future research should focus on whether such policies achieve the stated goal of reducing worker abuse.
Mobarak et al. (2023) shows positive effects of a direct government-to-government (G2G) intermediation programme that was designed to replace fraudulent middlemen who were taking advantage of Bangladeshi migrants to place them in jobs in Malaysia. The G2G programme managed to reduce intermediation fees from the US$4,000–5,000 charged by private sector intermediaries to around US$450 charged by the government. That permitted the programme to expand migration opportunities to a poorer population that was previously priced out of this sector. The evaluation data documents positive impacts on that segment of the population.
These studies highlight the potential for simple interventions to expand migration opportunities and improve migrant well-being and labour mobility. At the same time, there is a great need for further research on effective approaches that protect migrant workers and allow them to exercise their legal rights.[2]
Information Provision
Information provision to migrants represents another widely considered policy tool. Studies of the effects of information interventions for migrants reveal that better information can often have unexpected effects on financial behaviours, migrant integration, social network formation, and migration decisions themselves. Financial education is a common intervention with complex effects that depend on programme design and targeting. Doi et al. (2014) conducted a randomised controlled trial among Indonesian migrant households, assigning female migrants and their families to four groups: control, migrant-only training, family member-only training, and combined training. The results revealed striking complementarities: training both the migrant and family member together increased formal savings by approximately 40% and substantially improved financial planning and budgeting. Training only the family member produced smaller positive effects, while training only the migrant had virtually no impact on family members’ financial behaviours. These findings demonstrate that the effectiveness of financial education in migrant households requires coordinated training of both sides of the transnational household to align financial knowledge and decision-making. Seshan and Yang (2014) provide additional evidence, finding that a brief motivational workshop for Indian migrant workers in Qatar increased joint financial decision-making with spouses back home and raised savings among migrants who had initially low savings levels. The study demonstrates that even minimal interventions can have measurable effects when properly targeted.
Information interventions can have unexpected effects on social network formation. Barsbai et al. (2024) conducted a randomised controlled trial among new Filipino immigrants to the US, providing improved information about settling in the US. Contrary to expectations, the treatment led immigrants to acquire fewer new social network connections. Treated immigrants made 16–28% fewer new friends and acquaintances and were 65% less likely to receive support from organisations of fellow immigrants. The treatment had no effect on employment, wellbeing, or other outcomes. These findings suggest that information and social network links can serve as substitutes in the immigrant integration process: better-informed immigrants may invest less in expanding their social networks upon arrival because they have less need for the information and support that networks provide.
Evidence from origin countries reveals similarly complex effects of information provision on migration decisions. Beam et al. (2016) conducted a large-scale randomised experiment in the Philippines testing the impact of facilitating international labour migration through information provision, job search assistance, and documentation support. Despite providing comprehensive information about overseas work opportunities, application processes, and financing options, the interventions had no identifiable effect on international labour migration rates. Even their most intensive treatment, which doubled the rate of job offers, failed to increase actual migration. The study found that substantial fractions of those induced to search for overseas jobs were screened out by recruitment agencies and overseas employers, while others who received job offers ultimately rejected them.
These findings suggest that lack of information is not a primary barrier to migration in some contexts. In high-migration contexts like the Philippines, demand-side factors – and potential migrants’ aversion to migration due to risk – may be more binding constraints than information gaps. Unilateral migration facilitation efforts in migrant-origin areas may have limited impacts without complementary bilateral agreements or demand-side interventions. On the other hand, providing information about relative wages in Nairobi versus other internal migration destinations in Kenya leads to significant changes in destination choice (Baseler 2023). Rural residents appear to underestimate the potential wage gains from moving to the capital city, possibly because their migrant family members have an incentive to hide income when they feel obliged to share via remittances.
The role of information provision in contexts of risky irregular migration is particularly relevant. The most recent randomised experimental evidence suggests that information provision about the risks of irregular migration has limited effectiveness in deterring actual irregular migration flows. For example, Bah et al. (2023) in the Gambia and Battiston et al. (2025) in Guinea find no significant deterrent impacts on actual irregular migration flows from the provision of information about the severe risks of irregular migration from West Africa to Europe. This evidence contrasts with recent studies on the impact of information on irregular migration intentions, which seem to be affected by experimental interventions testing peer-to-peer information interventions about the risks of irregular migration to Europe – as shown by Bah and Batista (2020) and Bah et al. (2023) in The Gambia, Tjaden and Dunsch (2021) in Senegal , and Battiston et al. (2025) in Guinea. This discrepancy between effects on intentions and actual behaviour may reflect the rarity of irregular migration events, making them difficult to influence through information campaigns.
An important mechanism underlying the impact of information campaigns on risky migration behaviour relates to potential migrants’ (mis)beliefs about migration risks and returns abroad. Early evidence from McKenzie et al. (2013) shows that male migrants from Tonga to New Zealand tend to underestimate both employment opportunities and expected earnings, while women hold relatively accurate expectations. More recently, Shrestha (2020) finds that prospective migrants in Nepal are misinformed about foreign earnings and the likelihood of death abroad, and that correcting these misperceptions changes their migration decisions. Bah and Batista (2020) similarly show that providing potential irregular migrants in The Gambia with official information on mortality migration rates and asylum probabilities can increase migration willingness. This happens because individuals overestimated mortality risks, which would not be fully offset by correcting their overestimation of asylum probabilities in Europe. Together, these studies highlight the importance of distorted beliefs about both economic returns and risks of migration in shaping migration decisions. An additional consideration relates to the fact that in a context of extreme migration risks, providing information may inadvertently encourage extremely risky behaviour, raising important ethical concerns. Bah and Batista (2020), for example, show that disclosing official mortality rates could increase the willingness to migrate irregularly among potential migrants, who overestimated these death risks prior to the information provision.
Overall, the evidence points to the nuanced role of information in risky migration contexts. While interventions consistently affect migration intentions, they rarely translate into changes in actual flows. The persistence of misperceptions, which sometimes go in opposite directions across settings and subgroups, helps explain both the potential and the limitations of information provision. Designing effective and ethical interventions requires not only credible messengers, but also prior measurement of baseline beliefs, since correcting misperceptions can either reduce or inadvertently increase the appeal of extremely risky migration choices.
Information is also an important determinant of international study migration decisions. Batista et al. (2025b) use a lab-in-the-field experiment to show that prospective college migrants in Cape Verde responded strongly to information on college graduation rates and the availability of financial support. Improved probabilities of graduation and financial support increased lab migration decisions, which correlate well with migration intentions and steps taken towards migration. Additional ongoing randomised experiments by Batista et al. (2025c) on college migration from Cape Verde to Portugal, as well as on the Malengo college migration programme from Uganda to Germany by Barsbai et al. (forthcoming) should provide further evidence on the tailoring of information as a determinant of this type of migration decisions, as well as about its impacts.
Information about intermediaries that facilitate migration may have meaningful impacts on migrant decisions. Bazzi et al. (2022) conduct a randomised controlled trial in Indonesia to examine how disclosing the quality of intermediaries affects migration decisions and outcomes. They find that sharing information about intermediary quality significantly reduces migration rates – particularly deterring the use of low-quality providers – while those who do migrate experience better preparation and improved overseas experiences, even though their job type and destination remain unchanged. These benefits are not explained by shifts in beliefs about average provider quality or selection effects. Similarly, Fernando and Singh (forthcoming) examine a policy of the Sri Lankan government to rank labour market intermediaries. They find that lower-quality agencies become more likely to place migrants with employers with higher wages and lower rates of complaints when they are subjected to the government’s agency rating system.
In addition, the relationship between information access and migration may depend on the type and source of information. Adema et al. (2022) show that mobile internet access increases both the desire and plans to emigrate, using global data from 112 countries. They find that 3G rollout causally increases emigration intentions, particularly among higher-income individuals, primarily by reducing the costs of acquiring information about potential destinations. This suggests that while targeted information interventions may have varied effects, broader improvements in information access through technology can significantly influence migration aspirations.
The contrast between these studies illustrates that the effectiveness of information interventions depends critically on the specific information provided, delivery mechanism, and decision context. Information about opportunities is less effective than anticipated, while emotionally salient risk information delivered through trusted peer networks can influence migration intentions. The Senegal study’s success may reflect the particular salience of safety information for dangerous irregular migration routes, where the gap between perceived and actual risks is substantial.
These findings collectively suggest that information interventions should be designed with careful attention to how information interacts with existing knowledge sources, social networks, and decision-making processes. Policymakers should consider whether information provision might crowd out other valuable forms of support or learning, and whether the specific type of information addresses genuine knowledge gaps.
Facilitating Migrant Control
Experimental evidence points to promising interventions that increase migrants’ control over how remittances are used by households in origin countries. These interventions address a key challenge in transnational households: migrants and recipients may have different preferences regarding savings, investment, and consumption decisions. Recent research reveals that these preference differences reflect both strategic behaviour and inadvertent information asymmetries that can shape household financial decision-making.
Research has demonstrated the existence of information asymmetries in transnational households. Ambler (2015) conducted experiments among Salvadoran migrants in Washington, DC and their families in El Salvador. The study found that migrants strategically send less home out of windfall income when the windfall is not revealed to recipients, while remittance recipients make spending choices closer to migrants’ preferences when those preferences are shared. The study demonstrates that information problems run in both directions, affecting both migrant remittances as well as spending decisions of remittance-receiving households.
In related research, Batista et al. (2015) use a lab-in-the-field experiment in Mozambique to show that allowing remittances to be sent in kind, rather than in cash, substantially increased both the probability and the size of transfers. This result highlights the importance of directed giving motives, as well as the value of control over the use of remittances, as important determinants of remittance behaviour in contexts of asymmetric information between givers and recipients.
Easing the process of money transfers when there are financial frictions to sending and receiving remittances improves household welfare. This can be done either by giving migrants and their family members access to mobile banking (Lee et al. 2021), or a credit product that allows households to access their remittance earnings earlier, before the migrant returns home (Mobarak et al. forthcoming).
Recent work by Rehman (2023) provides evidence of strategic misreporting in migrant households using a field experiment among Filipino migrants in the UAE and their spouses in the Philippines. The study found that spouses staying behind systematically underreport their income by 31% when it is observable to migrants, with these reporting patterns consistent with strategic behaviour aimed at influencing migrant remittances. Both migrants and their spouses harbour biased beliefs about each other’s finances, highlighting the pervasive nature of information asymmetries in transnational relationships.[3]
Joseph et al. (2018) provide evidence using matched administrative data from the UAE that directly demonstrates how asymmetric information affects remittance patterns. Comparing administrative data on migrants’ actual earnings and remittance transactions, they show that the income elasticity of remittances depends critically on whether income changes are observable to families at home. The study finds that remittance responsiveness to income changes is greater when those changes are more easily verifiable by families in origin countries. This suggests that migrants strategically vary their remittance behaviour based on what income information families can observe or verify.
Given these information asymmetries and preference differences, migrants demand mechanisms to enhance their monitoring and control over remittance uses, and interventions that provide such mechanisms do affect how remittances are used. Ashraf et al. (2015) conducted a randomised controlled trial among US-based migrants from El Salvador, offering financial tools that improved migrants’ ability to ensure remittances were deposited and accumulated in savings accounts in their home country. The results revealed strong demand for monitoring and control: migrants assigned to treatments offering greater oversight were significantly more likely to open savings accounts and accumulated substantially more savings in El Salvador.[4]
Education is another area where increased migrant control can lead to increased investments. Ambler et al. (2015) implemented a randomised controlled trial offering Salvadoran migrants the ability to directly fund educational expenses for students of their choice in El Salvador, with additional treatments providing matching funds. While there was no demand for unmatched educational remittances, demand became positive when matched funds were offered. The intervention generated substantial ‘crowd-in’ effects: for each dollar received by beneficiaries in El Salvador, educational expenditures increased by US$3.72. The matching offer led to increased educational spending, higher private school attendance, and reduced youth labour supply in El Salvador.
Similar findings emerge from other contexts. DeArcangelis et al. (2015) found that Filipino migrants in Italy share more with home-country family members when they can channel funds towards education or signal that funds should be used for education. The demand for such directed giving was positively correlated with real-world uptake of an educational remittance service that allowed migrants to pay schools directly.
These studies collectively indicate that interventions that give migrants greater monitoring capability, enable directed giving towards specific purposes, or facilitate explicit communication about spending preferences can raise the extent to which remittances are saved and used for longer-term investments such as education and enterprise development.
Future Research
There are a wide range of other policies that can be used to enhance the development impacts of migration, but for which there is much more limited causal evidence on their effectiveness. McKenzie and Yang (2015) give examples of these policies. Some policies operate at the pre-migration stage, such as efforts to lower documentation costs, and training programmes. There will be many new migration opportunities to previously restrictive countries like Japan and Korea that have low and falling fertility rates, and policymakers in both public and private sectors will have a role to play to facilitate migration from labour-surplus countries in South and South-East Asia (Mobarak and Haque 2024). The language and cultural skills required to work in Japan, Germany, or Korea are ‘specific’ skills which add a dimension of risk to human capital investments, so there is a role for public policy to facilitate such pre-migration skill investments.
Other policies occur while the migrant is abroad. Programmes in this group include those seeking to lower remittance costs; helping channel remittances towards investment and community public goods (such as diaspora bonds and matching programmes for collective remittances); and providing language programmes to help migrants integrate better. Policies can also operate at the return migration stage, such as efforts to remove barriers to return migration and to make migrants more productive upon their return (e.g. pension portability and dual citizenship policies, job fairs, subsidised return visits, programmes to recognise skills abroad). There is broad scope for future research to enhance what we know about the effectiveness of these policies that are already in use, as well as for creative experimentation around new policies.
For full reference list see the end of the conclusion chapter.
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