+(,121/,1( Citation: 72 Foreign Aff. 22 1992-1993 Content downloaded/printed from HeinOnline (http://heinonline.org) Mon Sep 17 15:06 2012 -- Your...

I need the answer of highlight part "explain why (in his view) they distort our understanding of the relationship between migration and development." It is less than on page, maybe 150-200 words. 

Describe the seven migration myths that de Haas outlines and explain why (in his view) they distort our understanding of the relationship between migration and development.

Migration is distorted by a number of Migration myths:This is an unprecedented era of international migration. Though it is commonplace to think that globalization has led to increase in migration, this is false from a global perspective. The percentage of migrants in the total world population is at similar levels (2.5-3%) as it was in the last century. Rather, post WW 2, there has been a shift from predominantly North-north and north-south migration to south-north migration. This shift is due to decolonization and rapid economic growth in western societies.Poverty and misery are the root causes of migration. Rather than absolute poverty, a certain level of socio-economic development, combined with relative deprivation in the form of global inequality of development opportunities, seems to be the most important cause of migration. In fact, countries with largest number of emigrants tend to have rising incomes and educational levels but moderate levels of development overall. Also, further along the development path, countries tend to switch from emigrant sources to immigrant destinations.Development assistance and trade liberalization are effective ‘remedies’ for migration. Advocates of development assistance and trade liberalization use this argument to ignore the fact that development tends to, initially, stimulate migration. Socio-economic development enables more people to migrate. Migration leads to brain drain in developing countries. The departure or emigration of individuals with technical skills or knwoledge from organizations, industries, or geographical regions. First, not all migrants are highly skilled. Second, the brain drain seems to be only truly massive in a minority of countries. Third, a brain drain can be accompanied by a significant brain gain. In the medium to long run, in particular, the departure of the highly skilled may have beneficial effects in the form of a counter flow of remittances, investments, trade relations, new knowledge, innovations, attitudes and information. Moreover, there is some evidence that the prospect of moving abroad stimulates the incentive to study among stay-behinds. Fourth, labor tends to be much more productive in wealthy, industrialized countries. Besides their economic role, highly skilled migrants often play an important and positive role in the societal and political debate, the development of a civil society in countries of origin, and the emancipation of women and minority groups. Remittances are wasted on non-productive economic activities. According to Easterly’s Planners vs Searchers argument, it is patronizing and arrogant for people from more developed countries to claim to know better than people living in poorer countries, what money should be spent on. Also how effective these remittances are depends upon quality of governance in migration source country.Orientation of migrants toward countries of origin is indication of lack of social and economic integration in receiving countries. This reveals the strong bias towards the receiving countries. The potential contribution of migration to development in sending countries is ignored. On the other hand, it not only seems unnecessarily harsh, but also factually incorrect to automatically interpret migrants’ commitment towards their countries of origin as a manifestation of their inability or unwillingness to integrate. Migrants also tend to be increasingly involved in political life and civil society in their country of origin. Migrants increasingly live in a transnational world. Attempts to counteract this transnationalisation of migrants’ orientation appear to be not only ineffective, but also harmful, but also harmful to integration. Cost of remittances and attempts to attenuate source country connections.eg. training and exporting skilled laborers as a development strategy in the Phillipines. Remittances are a little more than 1% of total GDP of all developing countries.Migration is a selective process and benefits tend not to flow to poorest members of sending countryPoor governance, political instability and lack of legal security inhibit remittance- driven development in sending countriesRestrictive immigration policies of receiving countries actually undermine development potential of circular migration and remittances.States can effectively control or stop migration without resort to authoritarian measures. A higher than present level of migration control seems almost impossible without drastically curtailing civil and human rights