Unnoticed Ways in which Migration Reinforces Underdevelopment

This paper analyses how migration from low income economies to high income economies can actually have negative rather than positive consequences on development and low income economies. There are noticed ways - such as brain drain, separation from family, etc – in which migration negatively affects sending-countries. But this paper argues that there are unnoticed ways in which migration negatively affects development and low income economies. For this paper, the relationship between migration and underdevelopment is a complex rather than a simple one. It is simple to see how underdevelopment causes migration. But to see that migration in turn reinforces underdevelopment, one needs to engage in some complex analysis. Alarmingly, the end-result of the complex analysis is that migration and remittances, while alleviating poverty, can actually make: citizens neglect their duty to hold their governments responsible for underdevelopment; and governments neglect their duty to find long term solutions to the problem of underdevelopment. In terms of methodological approach, admittedly this sort of work often requires empirical methods. Nevertheless, the aim of this paper is to do a theoretical analysis which will serve as the foundation on which future empirical works can be based.

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