Russia Second-Largest Migrant-Receiving Country In World, Says World Bank Report

Brussels, January 16, 2007—Russia is a net recipient of migrants from most countries of the former Soviet Union. However, Russia is also a major source of immigrants to Western Europe and North America, according to a new World Bank report.

Migration within and from the transition economies of Europe and Central Asia has been large and will likely continue to increase as declining birthrates across much of the region will lead to an increased demand for a young labor force, according to Migration and Remittances: Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union.

It has been well publicized that migration to Western Europe has increased significantly over the past 15 years, with Western Europe receiving 42 percent of migrants from Central and Eastern Europe, as well as growing numbers of migrants from the former Soviet Union. What is less known is that on a global level, Germany and France are the only Western European nations in the top-ten migrant-receiving countries. Russia is number two, and Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Poland are also in the top ten (see table).

Russia attracts migrants from the rest of the former Soviet Union, primarily from the Caucasus and Central Asia, and poorer Central Asian workers migrate to resource-rich Kazakhstan. Ukraine and Poland both serve as transit points for migrants on their way to Western Europe.

Remittances are one consequence of migration that benefit both the migrants’ families and their home countries. For many of the poorest countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia they are the largest source of outside income and have served as a cushion against the economic and political turbulence of the past 15 years. Remittances represent over 20 percent of GDP in Moldova and Bosnia and Herzegovina and over 10 percent in Albania, Armenia, and Tajikistan.

To ensure that migration benefits both sending and receiving countries and the migrants themselves, countries could more closely coordinate their policies so that the supply of migrant labor can meet demand through legal channels that respect the rights of migrants and are politically and socially acceptable to migrant-receiving countries.

“Existing bilateral agreements can be improved to facilitate migration in the region by matching the supply of migrant labor with the demand through economic incentives,” explains Bryce Quillin, World Bank Economist and co-author of the report.

There are no ready-made solutions for effective migration policy, yet one possible route might be to combine short-term migration with incentives for return or circular migration.  Circular migration could allow migrants to spend short periods of time abroad without creating new amounts of permanent migration.

“New approaches, such as circular migration, and the use of economic incentives could strengthen bilateral agreements,” says Willem van Eeghen, World Bank Lead Economist. “If these approaches work, they will yield a ‘Triple Win’ for migrants and sending and receiving countries.”

Potential benefits of circular migration include:

-          Receiving countries could fill labor shortages, increase revenue, and reduce social tensions related to undocumented and unmanaged migration;

-          Sending countries would accumulate human capital that might otherwise be lost; and

-          Migrants could increase their income, build human capital and financial savings, maintain links with their families, pay lower remittance costs, and create trade/investment linkages between countries.

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