Migration, Remittance and Livelihood - Essay Example

The high quantity of migrant remittance flows to rising countries has guided both pessimistic and optimistic views on the impacts of remittance.

A wide range of literature and research has been available discussing the issue of remittance and its implications on expansion and migration. On the other hand, research to date has primarily concentrated on the impact of remittance on financial development, the connection between migration and remittance, and so on. However, there remains an important gap examining the various processes of sending remittance and the wider problems remittance poses. The incomes that migrants send home to their relatives, mainly global migrants, have expanded in current years to levels, which exceed direct foreign investments and official growth assistance.

The World Bank estimated that worldwide remittances increased from about $85.6 billion in the year 2000 to about $167 billion in the year 2004 as contrasted to the direct foreign investment and development assistance. Presently, the bank estimates that global remittances reached about $318 billion in the year 2007, an amount of about $240 billion of that went to developing countries. Whereas potentially of similar importance, the number of internal remittances, sent mainly by urban migrants back to rural societies of their origin, as money or kind, are not commonly recorded and are hard to estimate.

Extra migrants move internally than worldwide, and their earnings are inclined to be lower. Despite troubles of amount, the clearly huge amounts of remittances sent by global and internal migrants have attracted a lot of researchers to observe their impact on different aspects of growth. Recently, a growing sense of awareness has arisen with regard to the size and impact of informal remittances. Whereas formal remittances denote those remittances that enter a country during official banking channels, informal remittances contain those money transfers that happen through private channels.

Such private transfers contain remittances brought home by relatives, friends, and even the migrant herself/himself. Whereas formal remittances to increasing countries have totaled more than $167 billion in the year 2005, the point of informal remittances is practically unknown for the reason that they are inclined to flow through private channels. Estimates of the range of informal remittances differ widely, ranging from about 35 to 250 percent of formal remittances.