I. MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT: GROWING INTEREST AND POLARIZED PERCEPTIONS

Migration has been attracting growing interest in the last two decades. Internal movement (especially rural-to-urban migration) largely mirrors urbanization patterns and transformations in the national economic base, which in some countries have been remarkably fast. At the same time, the number of international migrants has increased (although not its proportion of the world’s population) and the global volume of international remittances now outpaces both foreign direct investment and official develop-ment aid to low- and middle-income countries. It is a reflection of such interest that the 2009 annual reports by two of the most influential international agencies, the World Bank and th