Migration in the Caribbean

A closer look at the Caribbean’s migratory systems

Similar to patterns of migration worldwide, migrants within the Caribbean tend to originate in countries with lower standards of living and fewer opportunities, moving to more advanced economies with more employment opportunities

Challenges and opportunities of migration in the Caribbean

By Valerie Lacarte - Ana María Saiz - Jordi Amaral - Diego Chaves-González - Jeremy Harris

Migration has long been part of the fabric of Caribbean nations’ experience.  But while Caribbean migration is often discussed in the context of out-migration to the United States, Canada, and European countries, movement to and within the Caribbean is an equally important part of this story.  In recent decades, due in great part to climate change, natural disasters, and shifts in global mobility patterns, the migration landscape in the Caribbean has also changed significantly.

To provide governments, stakeholders, and external partners interested in strengthening the region’s capacity to accommodate changing migration patterns, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Migration Policy Institute have partnered to provide a policy review on migration in the Caribbean.

The report Migration, Integration, and Diaspora Engagement in the Caribbean: A Policy Review provides those interested in human mobility across Latin America and the Caribbean with a general overview of the Caribbean region’s extra- and intraregional migration trends, institutional frameworks, and the challenges and opportunities that new migration flows present for its development and regional integration.

Recent changes in the migratory flows in the Caribbean

In 2020, there were an estimated 859,400 intraregional and 745,700 extraregional immigrants living in Caribbean countries.  The intraregional share of migrants grew from 46% in 2000 to 56% in 2020.

The intraregional share and origins of immigrants vary across countries.  In the nine primary countries studied in the report—The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago—immigrants from other Caribbean nations made up 63 percent of all immigrants in 2020.  Intraregional migration was most common in countries such as the Dominican Republic, Barbados, and The Bahamas, and Haitians were by far the largest group of immigrants across these countries, followed by Guyanese.

Extraregional migration in the Caribbean

In some countries, there are notable populations of immigrants from outside the region.  Venezuelans represent the second largest immigrant population (after Haitians) across the nine countries analyzed and are present in particularly large numbers in the Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana.  Immigrants from the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and Canada were also present in many of these nine countries.

Intraregional migration in the Caribbean

Similar to patterns of migration worldwide, migrants within the Caribbean tend to originate in countries with lower standards of living and fewer opportunities, moving to more advanced economies with more employment opportunities.  As such, countries and territories with thriving tourism industries and higher incomes, such as The Bahamas, the British and U.S. Virgin Islands, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, tend to attract nationals from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, and Jamaica.  Moreover, a smaller number of high-skilled workers from countries such as Jamaica, Cuba, and Trinidad and Tobago tend to migrate to countries where they will have greater employment opportunities and receive higher incomes.

The impact of climate change and natural disasters on migration in the Caribbean

Climate change and natural disasters have been important drivers of internal, intraregional, and extraregional displacement in the Caribbean, and experts have expressed concerns that the frequency and impact of climate-related events are only likely to grow in the years to come.  In recent decades, the region has experienced several devastating hurricanes, which are likely the most impactful type of natural disaster in the region, in addition to earthquakes, tropical storms, floods, and drought, all of which have forced people to leave their homes.  These disasters are among the contributing factors to the increased migration of Caribbean nationals, particularly Haitians, to both South and North America.

Regional frameworks and institutions that facilitate mobility

Regional agreements and other forms of cooperation have also emerged as prominent features of mobility in the region.  As an example, under CARICOM’s Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME), nationals of CSME Member States benefit from six-month stays without a visa in other Community countries.  While these six-month stays do not come with work authorization, the CSME also includes a Skills Certificates regime that provides free mobility and works authorization for specific categories of workers.

Additionally, the region’s public university system, the University of the West Indies, has facilitated migration for educational purposes, mainly within the anglophone Caribbean.

Challenges for a stronger regional integration

The region’s unique free mobility regimes have, to some extent, helped facilitate the movement of displaced people and response workers during times of environmental crisis.  Yet a closer look at the Caribbean’s migratory systems indicates that, in most of the countries included in the study, these regimes are out of date, and this limits societies’ capacity to manage migration and successfully integrate new immigrants.

Diaspora engagement: An opportunity for the development of the Caribbean

A final, crucial dimension of migration policy in the Caribbean is diaspora engagement in efforts to further the region’s economic development.  Emigrants and their descendants are well-recognized for their role in channeling much-needed financial support to their families in the Caribbean through remittances, but their engagement with their countries of origin or ancestry can also take the form of business development and job creation, direct investment, and the strengthening of social and professional networks.  Moreover, the Caribbean diaspora has contributed to the region via the transfer of knowledge and skills, including through targeted initiatives that seek to counter the decades-old problem of brain drain.

Conclusion

As Caribbean nations continue to face important migration and development challenges, dialogue through the region’s established institutions provides a path towards adapting Caribbean migratory systems, while ensuring that migration policies account for the concerns of sending and receiving countries.

Source 

The arrival of Venezuelans seeking better lives has strained the economies—and societies—of Latin American host countries

Venezuela’s Migrants Bring Economic Opportunity to Latin America

By Marco Arena, Emilio Fernandez Corugedo, Jaime Guajardo, and Juan Francisco Yepez

By promptly integrating migrants, the economies of host countries stand to increase their GDP by as much as 4.5 percentage points by 2030

More than 7 million Venezuelans have fled the country since 2015, with 6 million settling in other Latin American countries.  The region’s largest migration episode in history is driven by the collapse of the country’s economy, which has left Venezuelans struggling to meet their basic needs.

Between 2013 and 2021, Venezuela’s gross domestic product is estimated to have declined by more than 75 percent, the most for a country not at war in the last 50 years.  The COVID-19 pandemic compounded the country’s economic and humanitarian crisis, and in 2020 more than 95 percent of Venezuelans were living below the poverty line.

The arrival of Venezuelans seeking better lives has strained the economies—and societies—of Latin American host countries that are already balancing tight budgets, especially since the pandemic.

Colombia, which has received the most Venezuelan migrants, estimated spending about $600 per migrant in 2019.  This covered humanitarian aid, healthcare, childcare, education, housing, and job-search support.  With more than 2 million arrivals, this translates into $1.3 billion in assistance.  In 2019, this cost peaked at 0.5 percent of Colombia’s GDP.

In the long term, however, this investment has the potential to increase GDP in host countries by up to 4.5 percentage points by 2030, as we find in our latest research on the spillovers from Venezuela’s migration.

To reap the benefits from migration, host countries need to integrate the new arrivals into the formal labor force—and society—by promptly offering them work permits and access to education and healthcare.

Migration flows

After a brief interruption during the pandemic, when many countries closed their borders, migration from Venezuela has resumed and is expected to continue in the coming years, although at a slower pace.

We estimate that Venezuelan migrants will number around 8.4 million by 2025—more than 25 percent of the country’s population in 2015.

 

The characteristics of migrants have evolved as the economic crisis intensified.  The first wave of migrants were mostly professionals with high levels of education.  The second consisted of middle-class young people with a university degree.  Since the economy collapsed in 2017-2018, migrants have tended to be from low-income households and with lower levels of education.

Overall, the demographic profile of Venezuela’s migrants is like that of the local population in host countries.  Almost two-thirds are of working age and almost half are female.

Most have settled in other Latin American countries, while some have migrated to North America and Europe, mainly the US and Spain.

While Colombia remains the main destination, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru have also received sizable flows, with their combined number of migrants exceeding 2 million, more than 3 percent of the local population on average.

Effect on labor markets

Our research finds that Venezuelan migrants—many of them more educated than the local populations—face higher unemployment, are more likely to initially work in the informal sector, and earn less than the local workers. 

We didn’t find evidence that migrants are displacing domestic workers, although we have seen downward pressure on wages in the informal sector.

The wage gap between domestic and migrant workers grows with the level of education, which suggests a misallocation of human capital—workers’ skills, knowledge, and expertise—as educated migrants tend to only find unskilled jobs.  On average, domestic workers earn about 30 percent more than migrants.

Cost and benefits

Our analysis finds that providing migrants with humanitarian assistance and access to public services carries a sizable fiscal cost and puts pressure on the budgets of host countries, as the Colombia example shows.

 

But the analysis also identifies large medium-term gains in productivity and growth resulting from an increase in the labor force and better alignment of migrants’ human capital with jobs.  These gains are greater for countries that receive larger and more educated migrant flows relative to the domestic population.

We estimate that, with the right support and integration policies, migration from Venezuela has the potential to increase real GDP in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Chile by 2.5 to 4.5 percentage points relative to a no-migration baseline by 2030.

 

We also project that the cost of integrating migrants would narrow over time as migrants join the labor force, increasing economic activity and expanding the tax base.

Continued support

Early in the migration crisis, countries in Latin America welcomed Venezuelan migrants and provided support in the form of visa waivers, mobility cards, and access to humanitarian assistance, healthcare, education, and childcare.  Migrants also received work permits and credentials to help them integrate into the labor market.

However, in 2018 and 2019, we saw a shift in policies as migration flows intensified.  While some countries introduced new programs to facilitate the integration of migrants, others made it harder for Venezuelans to enter by requiring additional documentation.

Countries should continue supporting migrants and helping them integrate into the formal sector so they can find jobs that are in line with their human capital and increase productivity in the economy.

This will require improving transitional arrangements and asylum systems, bringing in migrants into the health and education systems, and formalizing migrant workers by giving them work permits and accelerating the accreditation of skills and education.

To cover the costs of implementing these policies, countries should seek help from donors and international institutions.  The IMF is analyzing the impact of migration and coordinating with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other relevant agencies to help countries access funding sources.

Countries in the region should also agree on a coordinated response to the migration crisis, in which each one contributes its fair share to the support and integration of migrants.

Source