I wrote a book in 2006 Let Their People Come that suggested that development friendly, rights respecting, rotational, occupational (e.g. low/medium skill) labor mobility was an under-used tool in the field of development.
Needless to say, one of the many things that the financial crisis of 2008 did was eliminate any discussion of the need for labor mobility in tight and tightening labor markets in the OECD countries.
However, I think labor mobility is back on the agenda. Bryan Caplan’s new book is a graphic non-fiction book (in which I have a small cameo) that stakes out, self-consciously, the far edge of the Overton window by arguing for open borders. The Economist had a recent Special Report on immigration issues by Robert Guest. Jason De Parle has a recent great book A Good Provider is One Who Leaves which is an excellent account of one Philippine family’s experience with taking jobs abroad (and afloat).
A theme of my book was that there is gridlock in labor mobility as irresistible forces meet immovable ideas. One of the irresistible forces for greater labor mobility in the OECD is the inversion of the demographic pyramid which implies that there just will not be enough workers in the future, particularly for labor taxes to sustain the social security and other social protection schemes. This force, of increased absolute numbers of elderly and yet absolutely fewer workers, is now 13 years closer than it was in 2006 and shows no sign of abating. Even Japan, a country that has traditionally been very resistant to any migration, has recently been signing agreements with countries to allow more labor to enter.
Since the 2006, because of the research of Michael Clemens and others, we have better evidence about the magnitude of the Place Premium (the wages gains to movement from a low productivity place to a high productivity place) and about the impact in the US of labor schemes.
The big question in my mind is how to create the political conditions, both globally and nationally, for “more and better” rotational labor mobility. My conjecture is that in order for this type of mobility, which is full of risks of exploitation of workers, work well one needs to create a “good industry” to be an “industry for good.” That is, the facilitation of rotational labor mobility from identification and recruitment in country to protection while abroad to planned return is itself a potentially large industry. Just as airlines and airports have made international air travel safe, an association that looked to make the “people who move people” a safe and law abiding and non-exploitative industry by bringing together in a pluri-lateral (not “global”) fashion governments, sending country industry, and using sectors to promote an upward pressure for more and better mobility might just work. I am currently working on a very small project (LaMP–Labor Mobility Partnerships) to explore the feasibility of this idea.
Here is a presentation I gave in Nepal at the invitation of my ex-students on this topic.