Migration Revisited: the 2009 Human Development Report [ENG]

Since the 1970s, the link between migration and development has been identified as a major topic of political and scientific debate. As a sign of a renewed interest in the issue, in 2009 the United Nations Development Programme published its Human Development Report (HDR) with the title "Overcoming Barriers: mobility and human development". Some of the data in the HDR are reviewed in this paper in order to question certain clichés regarding the relationships between international migration flows and development processes. Our main conclusion is that the link between the two is not one-directional, nor does it follow generalisable patterns beyond the confirmation that the countries with medium human development are the most affected by migration, but also benefit the most from it