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Bridging the Gap:
International Migration and the Role of Migrants and their Remittances in Development
19-20 November 2004
Noordwijk, The Netherlands

A Critical Synthesis

by

Dr. Peter B. Payoyo
Philippine Seafarers Assistance Programme

Participants

The ‘Experts Meeting’ organized by Novib gathered around 40 participants, with the vast majority from the NGO sector. Academic and policy research institutions were also represented, as well as the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, inter-governmental organizations (the IOM and ILO), and a couple of small financial services-providers.

A large segment of the NGO attendance consisted of foundation-type advocacy organizations based in Western Europe, principally in the Netherlands, with a few NGOs operating in East Asia and Latin America. These NGOs carry out specific advocacy programmes for migrant workers originating from the developing countries in Asia (chiefly from the Philippines), Africa, and Latin America, although two NGO outfits represented the concerns of refugees and seafarers. The Meeting uniquely featured South American hometown associations based in the USA, whose “best practices” on remittances have recently caught the attention of the international development community.

Experts’ Meeting Group Photo

Objectives

The objectives of the two-day meeting, set out in a Background Paper, were:

1. To discuss the most recent findings about the link between migration and development;
2. To understand the global dynamics of migrant remittances specially in the context of development financing;
3. To gather issues and concerns related to migrant remittances and its role as a tool in development.
4. To learn from examples of best practices for possible replication and learn to avoid repetition of failures.
5. In view of the earlier objectives, to discuss how the migrant Diaspora in the Netherlands and those from other countries could contribute to a world without injustice and poverty;
6. To formulate recommendations to improve polices and practices around remittances, including workable mechanisms to ensure inclusion of migrants Diaspora in policy-making processes;
7. To recommend concrete strategies as well as strategic alliances.

The ‘awareness and learning’ objectives (nos. 1-5) were sufficiently covered in the plenary and workshop proceedings, even if sharing and substantial exchange among the participants had been often truncated because of time constraints imposed by the Meeting schedule. The plenary sessions very usefully canvassed the most recent discussions and initiatives in the international arena on the subject of remittances and development. Research issues surrounding the migration-development problematic, like gender, transnationalism, and ‘diaspora’ participation, as well as practical ‘money machine’ issues, were likewise considered in both plenary (morning) and workshop (afternoon) deliberations. Participants left the Meeting with about half-a-foot high of papers and reading materials which were contributed by the participants themselves and others who were not in the meeting. An amiable social atmosphere facilitated further informal exchanges among the participants, the continuing friendly interaction no doubt assisted by the two-day storm which kept the participants from wandering around in the beachside resort.

The meeting fell short of delivering the outputs indicated in objectives no. 6 & 7. There was no consensus document adopted that would have summarized the trends in the discussions that took place nor the formulated conclusions and recommendations of the gathering. Unfortunately, the time allotted for the consideration of such output was a mere 1 ¬Ω hours scheduled at the end of a tightly-packed second day. There was also no ‘drafting committee’ assigned to the task. Instead, towards the end of the Meeting, each of the participants was asked to fill-in a one-page grid questionnaire indicating what a participant thinks are the two most critical problems or issues regarding migrants’ remittances, and further indicating what should be done by a range of identified actors/stakeholders about this problem or issue. For lack of time, only one problem was explored during plenary: how to increase migrants’ savings.

The Meeting went so far though as to agree on “points of departure”, or sketchy preambular elements to be reflected in the Report of the Meeting. These “points of departure” are:

1. Remittances have an impact on individuals and households.
2. Remittances are not the answer to the development challenge.
3. Migrants are the principal stakeholder in remittances and other actors can and should play a role.
4. Cooperation among all actors involved is indispensable.
5. The human rights of migrants are part of the agenda.

Two days after the Meeting, the event organizer, Leila Rispens Noel of Novib, launched an e-discussion group ‘diasporalink’ moderated by two of the participants. This perhaps serves the un-stated ‘linking’ objective in the follow-up to the meeting.

Caveat from an African participant

It is significant to note that in one of the workshop presentations, the UK-based AFFORD (The African Foundation for Development represented by Onyekachi Wambu) raised certain quite remarkable questions about Novib and the role that Novib is taking in relation to the world-wide euphoria about migrants’ remittances. Wambu’s paper presentation was titled “Remittances – One of the Diaspora’s Tools of Development: Who takes the lead?”, and the questions addressed to Novib were:

* First, why did NOVIB take the lead and place itself at the center of a conference like this, aimed at bringing together diasporas, and other policy makers?
* Second, and to be more specific about the support for and empowerment of southern initiatives, how has NOVIB sought to build upon a similar initiative last December from AfroNeth, a Dutch based African organization, seeking to mobilize and connect the African diaspora for development purposes in Africa?
* Third, Novib will take forward some of the outcomes of this meeting to the corridors of power in the EU and elsewhere, why? Does this not disempower migrant groups further?

These questions surely caused a stir during the workshop, more so because no Novib rep was around to respond to such provocative questions directed at the methodology of the Expert Meeting. Wambu sincerely apologized for the appearance of rudeness which his questions may have created, but his queries were indeed inseparably linked to his substantive argument that the Meeting should be cautious in accepting the assumption that remittances represent a new paradigm of development.

These questions posed by a Meeting participant are both courageous and fundamental, and one can only sense the awkward position of other participants who discreetly shared the discomfort so pointedly expressed by AFFORD.

The mention of an AfroNeth initiative brought to my mind the Bohol Conference which took place in the Philippines in October 2003 (co-organized by two NOVIB partners, the AMC and PSAP, together with other NGOs and the Philippine Ministry of Labour). Would the Experts Meeting build on the accomplishments of this initiative?

Novib’s Position

The general interest of Novib in convening the meeting was given by the Director of the Popular Campaigns Department (Jan Bouke Wijbrandi / Marina van Dixhoorn) who explained the “rights-based approach” adopted by Novib in its mission to pursue global equity and poverty alleviation. Novib called the Meeting, it was mentioned, because it was interested in bringing about the enabling environment that will maximize the development impact of remittances.

During the opening, the facilitator/moderator (Lau Schulpen of CIDIN) elaborated further the purpose of the Meeting. He said that given the overwhelming fact that huge amounts of money are implicated in migrants’ remittances, the task at hand was to obtain the views of the ‘diaspora’ bearing on the main challenge of increasing the added value of their remittances to development.

The immediate position of Novib is furthermore to be seen in Novib’s involvement in certain key policy processes that the Meeting was also appraised. Novib was notably a member of the Inter-Agency Remittances Task Force, an international steering group which was set up in the aftermath of the International Conference on Migrant Remittances held in London in October 2003. The other members of the Remittances Task Force, led by the World Bank and the UK’s DFID, include the ADB, ILO, IOM, UK ONS, WSBI, CGAP, and the EU. Novib is the only agency that may be considered as “non-governmental” in the context of the composition of this Task Force. Allusion was also made to Novib’s involvement in the formulation of an EU-wide ‘Directive on Migration and Development’ to be released in early 2005.

These background facts and considerations, however, can only shed light on the official motivations of Novib as a project undertaker, and do not suffice for an answer to the discerned political effect of the project undertaking, which was bothering AFFORD: Has Novib taken upon itself the role of presenting the civil society standpoint in the ‘corridors of power in the EU and elsewhere’?

AFFORD’s workshop paper was reproduced and distributed on the first day, and it can be safely assumed that the Meeting convenors read and took note of the contents of paper.

In a polite gathering, there is no need to insist on something that the host chooses to avoid. So it was that AFFORD’s questions, chewed or eschewed by participants who smiled through the proceedings, remained unanswered.

There was unease. It was uneasiness about a probable self-anointed mission on the part of Novib to directly represent civil society views and positions in the EU and in the World Bank-led Task Force, as well as in the other fast-multiplying global fora on migrant remittances. This unease was not assuaged by the closing remarks of the Meeting organizer (Leila Rispens), who called on migrant organizations to unite and get their act together, and flatly denied that Novib was out to grab a space that was reserved for civil society actors, in this case, the diaspora organizations from the developing world.

Strategic Issues

So why did Novib call a Meeting of ‘diaspora’ organizations?

Given the plethora of conferences, meetings and convocations on migrants’ remittances taking place all over the world, it is certainly fair to investigate in one more gathering the status of the diasporas, or the migrant communities, in the new-found ‘model of development’ that takes fever-pitch interest in remittances.

With lighting speed, ‘remittances’ had admittedly moved to center stage in development policy thinking, and the subject has given rise to unprecedented initiatives that all converge into what may be referred to as a global policy dialogue on remittances. With the dense and pervasive attention given to the phenomenon of remittances, there is now some measure of consensus within the development community that all stakeholders, including migrants themselves, must be involved in the remittance dialogue.

How are ‘diasporas’ participating in this dialogue? What are the terms of involvement of the diasporas in this dialogue?

Because a lot of time was devoted to ‘learning’ modules during the Meeting, there was insufficient opportunity to go deep into the fundamental issue of how diasporas can indeed meaningfully participate in the on-going explosion of global policy initiatives relating to migrant remittances. An extended consideration of this issue would have been very useful, especially in view of a rift, an interesting rift, that had apparently emerged among the Meeting participants concerning the overall framework of diaspora participation in the global agenda-setting on migrant remittances.

On the one hand, the resource persons in the Meeting who were invited to tackle global process issues relating to remittances preferred to cast diaspora participation in terms of the overriding policy objective of increasing remittance flows. The vision of ‘economic citizenship’ offered by Manuel Orosco, who has written prolifically on the topic of remittances, builds on the participation of diasporas along several layers of engagement (what he calls 5 Ts: tourism, telecommunication, transportation, nostalgic trade and transfer of remittances). Ding Bagasao, who was representing an NGO and co-author of a recent study funded by the ADB, more concretely recommended that the real challenge for diaspora groups would be to assist in the process of “banking the unbanked”, i.e, having as many migrants as possible have access to formal financial sector products and use regulated channels for remittance transfer. The contribution of civil society actors in general would then be via technocratic interventions made at any point on the route literally travelled by the remittances, from “the first mile” to the “last mile”, in order to maximize flows.

This position is wholly consistent with the Conclusions reached by the WB/DFID Conference of October 2003, which speak of “policies to resource migrant diasporas and leverage remittances” and that remittances “constitute a point of entry for migrant communities to a variety of banking services and products”. This position is also in keeping with the perspective of the DFID, sceptically cited by AFFORD in its workshop paper: “NGOs and private sector organizations have a role to play too, employing their expertise so that migrants can remit more productively, at the same time getting in at the ground floor of a good business opportunity”.

On the other hand, there were those in the Meeting (and those who contributed papers but were not in the Meeting) who would rather see the role of the ‘diasporas’ cast in more traditional terms. This alternative position states that migrant communities have certainly an important role to play in maximizing the impact of their remittances in the development of their home countries, but this role must be subordinated to their more primordial mission of politically and economically empowering them as ‘diasporas’. This position would thus take as a starting point the dignity and human rights of migrants in any dialogue concerning their remittances for development. The focus must be on both ‘migrants as people and their remittances’, and not simply on remittances per se. Under this view, the ‘expertise’ of diaspora NGOs could and should be lent to the familiar task of finding fresh avenues to uplift the human condition of remittance-sending migrants, especially the condition of migrant workers in receiving countries whose policies are increasingly turning xenophobic.

There was an obvious discomfiture expressed by those participants who noted that human rights/human dignity/rights-based approaches/human values have been effectively sidelined in the Meeting discussions, on account of the repeatedly emphasized message that the ‘added value’ of the diaspora is to ‘add value’ (and not valueS) to their remittance stocks and flows.

Was this rift resolved during the Meeting? The impression that one gathers is that the organizers will prepare a Meeting Report which bolsters and further elaborates the position of the ‘experts’ who would rather refrain from the migrant/human rights agenda of the remittances dialogue. The reference to “human rights” in the agreed ‘Points of Departure’ was put there because this was insisted upon by participants who believed that the Meeting, which was afterall a civil society gathering, should reflect the human rights orientation of many diaspora advocacy groups.

This observed rift may not even have been recognized by many participants in the Meeting. But it is a rift nonetheless that goes to the heart of the main business of the Meeting. It is rift about the expectations on the appropriate role of ‘diasporas’ in the remittances dialogue, mirroring an emerging fundamental disagreement at the global policy level on what constitutes the relevant topics for inclusion in the dialogue on remittances and development.

Hence, while the ILO and the IOM would like to keep their sights on the element of migrant rights and migrant workers rights in the on-going policy dialogue, the World Bank has proceeded to establish a “Task Force on General Principles for International Remittances”. This new Task Force consists of technical experts from the IFIs and the financial departments of governments and the international banking institutions. According to the World Bank, the “focus” of the General Principles to be formulated by this Task Force “will be placed on identifying the main characteristics of the function of sending remittances and the related infrastructure, with a view to improving them and achieve the ultimate objective of Fair and Certain Value for these services”.* From the perspective of these soon-to-be-adopted “General Principles on Remittances”, any reference to migrant rights, or the policy objective of enhancing the dignity, health and well-being of migrant workers, becomes irrelevant or simply out of place.

It is instructive in this regard to recall the information provided by the ILO representative (Gloria Moreno Fontes Chammartin) who admitted, in her reply to a question, that the ILO’s oxymoronic “non-binding multilateral framework for a rights-based approach” to labour migration betrays the serious disagreements in the ILO on making of the global policy regime on migration and development. Labour receiving countries, she said, are averse to the consideration of migrant workers rights as well as the enforcement of these rights through binding international mechanisms. Hence, this time around, the ILO will not be working towards a Recommendation nor a Convention, but a “non-binding multilateral framework” on labor migration. The ILO will, however, develop international guidelines so that migrant workers can get a “fair deal” in the global economy. Clearly, governments in the migrant receiving countries who profess interest in the economic development of the South, but would not wish to openly talk about migrants’ rights and their contribution to this economic development, would be sympathetic to the approach taken by the World Bank-led initiatives relating to remittances and development.

Trajectories of concern

Wittingly or unwittingly, Novib, by convening the Meeting, have somehow positioned itself on a policy platform which allows for a very narrow, if not stifling, definition of the role of ‘diasporas’ in a new-found development model driven by the motor of migrant remittances. From the standpoint of the World Bank, which is the principal architect of this platform, the dialogue on remittances and development is a very specialized dialogue that can only involve a few specialized participants – the ‘experts’ in the remittance field. This policy platform sees remittances as a specialized tool to achieve development goals. Diasporas cannot participate in this policy platform unless they pass the test of expertise in the remittance field drawn up by international financial circuits.

Novib has trumpeted its involvement in a policy platform on remittances that was designed by the World Bank. This policy platform gives priority to sharpening the newest tool for economic development in the South, namely, remittances. It doesn’t see people – the migrants and their rights – as the real agents of a remittance-driven economic development.

If it is Novib’s intention to represent and convey inputs from ‘diasporas’ in the global consultative process implicated in the Inter-Agency Remittances Task Force, there is a decision that has to be made by Novib in regard to the diaspora interests that Novib thereby seeks to represent. Either Novib becomes the qualified ‘expert’ which gives voice to diaspora groups sharing in this kind of expertise, or Novib assumes the generalist, activist posture of a human rights organization.

Either Novib dances the tune, as it were, of the World Bank and engages itself in an unprecedented dynamic of representing the new type of migrant organizations and diasporas who themselves claim ‘expertise’ in the facilitation of migrant remittances. Or, Novib takes a rights-based stance, consistent with its currently avowed mission, and espouse civil society positions that are already part of the established agendas of migrant organizations and movements. In this latter case Novib will most assuredly risk appearing irrelevant and non-constructive in World Bank Task Force fora.

To several participants in the Meeting, it was evident that Novib had already taken a stand in favour of the narrow, more manageable view for the involvement of the diasporas in the global remittance dialogue. “Diaspora” itself is a label that has no progeny in the settled nomenclature on human rights. And yet this was the preferred term invoked by the Meeting organizers to refer collectively to the NGO participants, instead of “migrant leaders” or “migrant communities” – agencies that certainly carry the controversial agenda of human rights. “Diaspora”, it must be said, is also the favoured terminology of the World Bank.

Even the characterization of the gathering as an “Experts Meeting” is most revealing, as it mimics the exclusive and exclusionary approach of the World Bank in the selection of participants to the dialogue, or the global consultative process that defines and consolidates in policy terms the fundamental relationship between remittances and development.

No wonder the Meeting did not seek to build on the success of recently-formed advocacy programmes relating to migrant remittances which other NGOs, including Novib partners, have already operationalized. For example, the Bohol Conference that PSAP co-organized in later 2003, which gathered numerous transnational actors and long-established networks in civil society, was surely not expert enough in the sense that the outputs of that Conference cannot be deemed suitable for submission to the World Bank-led dialogue on remittances.

Novib-civil society partnership

Novib’s NGO partners, who have established records in dealing with migrants and migrant workers in the grass roots, and who would generally consider themselves as human rights workers, will most likely regard with serious misgivings, if not alarm, the involvement of Novib in a policy process that potentially denigrates the agenda of human rights for migrants. It is doubtful whether Novib can meaningfully involve these partners in the global-level dialogue on remittances whose technical terms of reference have already been fixed by the World Bank.

Will Novib play the role of Don Quixote in the Inter-Agency Remittances Task Force and lobby for the inclusion of “migrants rights” as an essential point of departure in the formulation of General Policy Principles on remittances? This will be most certainly the litmus test of Novib’s commitment to a rights-based approach to the participation of the diaspora in the global dialogue on remittances and development. There is every reason to believe that the incorporation of rights-based approaches to the empowerment of migrants in the on-going policy formulations on international remittances is a long shot to make, and that international financial institutions, unfamiliar with the terrain of human rights, will most likely quash any attempt to introduce the amorphous and complicating factor of migrants’ rights in their deliberations on international remittances.

In this light, AFFORD’s keenly observation that Novib’s forays into the arena of international remittances could lead to the further disempowerment of migrant groups must be seriously considered and reflected upon. The conceptualization of the “Expert Meeting” as well as the process of selection and exclusion involved in the invitations to Meeting have already revealed a glaring bias against migrant groups and migrant advocates who can claim no expertise in the “new” field of remittance flows, an esoteric field in international development policy that is presently defined not by Novib, and certainly not by the ‘diasporas’ themselves.

Migrant empowerment first

Apart from the question of how diasporas or migrant communities can contribute to the on-going policy dialogue on remittances, the Meeting’s immediate preoccupation was with the question of how migrants themselves, the diasporas, as well as all other actors or stakeholders can create added value to the remittances in the context of development. Perhaps unknown to the Meeting organizers, the arithmetical notion of “added value” that was sought to be expounded during the Meeting was already being overtaken by developments in the Inter-Agency Remittances Task Force, which has introduced the new concept of “Fair and Certain Value” (see earlier footnote reference) as the applicable standard in appreciating the effectiveness of international remittance systems.

Useful as it is, the focus on “added value” considerations has the effect of minimizing the political contexts of the settings where remittances have been successfully leveraged for development objectives. There is only so much political context that can be introduced and deduced in the “SWOT” and “stakeholder” analyses or the superficial planning tables that the Meeting participants were asked to complete in the Workshops. Articulating political context surrounding the “best practices” discussed during the Meeting should have been key.

This is the underlying lesson behind the success story of the Mexican hometown associations (HTAs) in leveraging their remittances for development: in countries where the migrants have reached a sufficient level of political and economic empowerment as a diaspora group, like certain Mexicans communities in the US, they were better able to push for sustained development impacts in their origin-countries, remittances-generated impacts that now draw the awe of the international financial community. In the case of the Mexican diaspora in the US, it is clear that substantial ‘added value’ was created because the migrants themselves, through their HTAs, were in a secure and confident position, in both their countries of origin and destination, to assert their dignity and their rights as immigrants and citizens.

When looked at in this way, the “added value” of remittances can only be authentically assessed in relation to the continuing political empowerment of migrants as human beings, in their rich and full diversity. As a result, migrants’ human rights and human values become the core element in the expanding remittances-for-development equation.

The empowerment of migrants and migrant workers as global citizens must remain their own trust. Experts, including Novib, may not claim to take this trust away from them. #

24 November 2004

* From “General Principles for International Remittance Systems” World Bank Discussion Document (September 2004). The document was circulated in the Experts Meeting. This document also states that the Task Force on General Principles for International Remittances will be a ‘Tier 1′ group and the Inter-Agency Remittances Task Force, including academics and private sector entities with specific expertise on the issue, becomes a ‘Tier 2′ consultative group. Novib will thus fall in Tier 2 basket.

Noordwijk 2004 Experts’ Meeting: Bridging the Gap – in PDF Format (31 KB)

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