1 Introduction
How does cross-border mobility facilitate development for countries of origin across the global South? This question has been a critical component of a number of research agendas across a variety of disciplines and sub-disciplines, which have produced a diverse array of frequently contradictory viewpoints on how migration affects different types of development. The question has become even more prescient in the context of the United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes an ambitious range of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (sdgs) that states are invited to meet. This chapter takes a slightly different perspective on the debate, aiming to ‘unpack’ the phenomenon of migration itself: all too often, researchers’ attention has focused on development, and this has led to the adopting of a rather mono-dimensional approach to the complexity of migration, which, in the context
Building on previous work that aimed to nuance existing understandings of state-diaspora relations in the Middle East (Tsourapas, 2020), this chapter deconstructs the phenomenon of migration into three distinct, albeit interconnected, stages: exit, overseas, and return. Exit refers to the phenomenon of emigrating from the sending state; overseas refers to life beyond the territorial boundaries of the home country; and, finally, return refers to migrants’ readmission into the country of origin. This chapter puts forth the argument that each of these stages holds distinct developmental importance. If well-managed, processes of exit will enable the sending state to benefit from lower domestic rates of unemployment and overpopulation, while granting unique opportunities for human development to those emigrating abroad. Once overseas, citizens abroad are able to contribute to the economy of the home country via the dispatch of migrant remittances. Finally, migrants’ return can result in processes of ‘brain gain’ via an infusion of new talents and skills into the sending state’s economy.
In order to demonstrate the workings of such a holistic view, this chapter examines the single-case study of Egypt over the last fifty years. The Arab Republic of Egypt, as it is officially known, formally liberalised its migration policy in 1971 and has, since then, become a key country of origin for migrant labour across the Middle East. At the same time, Egypt enjoys a central role within Middle East and African politics as well as being, historically, a major power outside the global North. The country’s long engagement with managing cross-border mobility, as well as Egypt’s key position within the Middle East and the broader global South, make it ideal for testing the chapter’s argument in detail: that evaluating the impact of Egyptian exit, overseas, and return allows for a multi-dimensional approach to the interplay between migration and development for countries of origin across the global South.
The chapter proceeds as follows: a brief overview of the interplay between migration and development—particularly in non-Western contexts—paves the way for the chapter’s main contribution, which takes a more holistic view. This is followed by a brief note on methodology and the strengths of the case-study method as an analytical mode of inquiry, before the chapter begins its main discussion on Egypt: three separate sections detail the developmental importance of the exit, overseas, and return dimensions of citizens’ emigration, paying particular attention to the rationale behind Egyptian state policies.
2 Understanding Migration and Development—Towards a Holistic View
A significant body of research examines how states’ migration policymaking, and, in particular, the regulation of emigration, are influenced by domestic developmental necessities (Carling, 2019). A number of distinct phases may be identified: in the decades following the end of World War ii, scholars adopted the expectations of modernisation theory, which argued for migration as one of the ways out of poverty (Todaro, 1969). Building on neoclassical approaches to migration, this group of scholars expected cross-border mobility to facilitate the shift of resources between capital-poor/labour-rich countries in Europe and North America and capital-rich/labour-poor ones across the non-West (Rostow, 1960). The hope was that international migration would facilitate ‘win-win’ outcomes that would culminate in wage convergence within a global equilibrium. Once this occurred, it was thought, the incentives to emigrate would decrease.
Critical theorists challenged this view, highlighting a number of issues that implied a need to problematise political scientists’ linear expectations of development in the non-West. A range of novel frameworks were introduced—world systems theory, dependency theory, globalisation theory—in order to identify the structural factors that impeded international migration. At the same time, scholars highlighted the phenomenon of brain drain; a main factor in cross-border mobility exacerbating, rather than ameliorating, the global rich-poor country divide (Bhagwati, 1976). Critical scholars identified how migration was in fact contributing to uneven trade relations that were widening the gap between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries—with some even going so far as to argue that migration was contributing to the ‘development of underdevelopment’ (Frank, 1966).
In recent years, there has been a re-evaluation of both positions, with scholars and practitioners broadly recognising the positive effects of migration on states’ development. This has, in particular, been driven by the literature on economic remittances (De Luna-Martinez, 2005), as well as broader debates within the migration-development nexus (Piper, 2009). A range of countries have come to constitute ‘developmental migration states’, characterised by a specific ‘relationship between cross-border mobility and economic
In terms of the former, social scientists have long identified how labour emigration affects states’ domestic political economy, particularly in the global South, arguing that it constitutes a safety valve that enables countries to tackle issues such as unemployment or overpopulation by encouraging citizens’ emigration (Castles and Wise, 2008). At the same time, research has identified the importance of return migration as a form of ‘brain gain’ that allows sending states to benefit from the skills, networks, capital, and expertise that returnees acquire while abroad (Cassarino, 2004). Thus, a more careful look at migrants’ trajectories identifies how both the exit and return components of cross-border mobility—separate from their time overseas—may have distinct socio-political and economic importance (Tsourapas, 2020).
In order to pinpoint the developmental value of this three-stage process of migration, this chapter draws on the single-case study of Egypt (for a detailed discussion of the case, see Tsourapas, 2019). The case-study method is well-suited for theory development purposes (George and Bennett, 2005), particularly given that ‘inferring and testing explanations that define how the independent causes the dependent variable are often easier with case-study than large-n methods’ (Van Evera, 1997, 54). The chapter draws on data collected during fieldwork in Cairo that includes archival research across different depositories as well as extensive, semi-structured interviews with experts and elites conducted during 2013–14 for the purposes of a research project on the politics of Egyptian migration, which became a monograph with Cambridge University Press (Tsourapas, 2019). Drawing on these sources, the chapter aims to accurately provide an ambitious overview of the interplay between migration and development in Egypt. But first, a brief introduction to the Egyptian migration state will provide the necessary contextualisation for the reader.
3 The Egyptian Migration State
The study of Egypt allows for a wealth of insights into the importance of migration for development for the broader Middle East and North Africa (Fargues,
Egyptian migrants in the Middle East and North Africa (mena), 2016
Country |
Number of Egyptians |
|---|---|
Saudi Arabia |
2,925,000 |
Jordan |
1,150,000 |
United Arab Emirates |
765,000 |
Kuwait |
500,000 |
Sudan |
500,000 |
Qatar |
230,000 |
Oman |
56,000 |
Lebanon |
40,000 |
Iraq |
22,000 |
Bahrain |
21,000 |
Palestine |
14,500 |
Algeria |
6,600 |
Morocco |
3,000 |
Syria |
2,000 |
Tunisia |
800 |
Mauritania |
150 |
Total |
6,236,050 |
Egyptian citizens and descendants living outside the mena region, 2016
Country |
Number of Egyptians |
|---|---|
United States |
981,000 |
Canada |
600,000 |
Italy |
560,000 |
France |
365,000 |
Australia |
340,000 |
Germany |
77,000 |
United Kingdom |
62,500 |
The Netherlands |
45,000 |
Austria |
33,000 |
Turkey |
25,800 |
Greece |
25,000 |
Sweden |
8,000 |
Switzerland |
7,500 |
Belgium |
5,000 |
Ukraine |
5,000 |
Ireland |
4,500 |
Spain |
4,000 |
China |
3,500 |
Cyprus |
3,500 |
Malaysia |
3,500 |
Other countries |
76,800 |
Total |
3,234,600 |
3.1 Egyptians’ Exit and State Development Exigencies
The liberalisation of Egypt’s emigration policy took place in 1971 when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat established the country’s new ‘Permanent’ constitution. Article 52 stated that ‘Egyptian citizens shall now have the right
The liberalisation of Egypt’s emigration policy was dictated partly by developmental exigencies: for one, combatting unemployment had become one of the most pressing issues of post-1970 Egypt. ‘Even according to official projections based on inflated estimates by various agencies in the mid-sixties’, Ayubi once argued, ‘the country was, by the early seventies, graduating more than four times the number of engineers it was expected to need until 1980’ (Ayubi, 1983, 434). According to Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, ‘unemployment is a bomb that will explode […] sooner or later if we are not prepared to confront it now’ (quoted in Tsourapas, 2019, 168; see also Table 4.3). ‘Egypt with 20 million people could have been a Mediterranean country, a Greece or Portugal’, Former Minister Boutros Boutros-Ghali once drily remarked. ‘Egypt with 70 million people will be Bangladesh’ (Lippman, 1989, 164).
Youth unemployment in Egypt, 1991–2010
Year |
Unemployment ratea |
|---|---|
1991 |
29.7 |
1995 |
32.6 |
2000 |
25.5 |
2005 |
33.7 |
2010 |
26.3 |
At the same time, the issue of overpopulation had also become prominent (see Table 4.4). ‘[W]hile the country’s population doubled from 9.7 million to 19 million in 50 years (between 1897 and 1947)’, writes Zohry, ‘the next doubling to 38 million people took less than 30 years (from 1947 to 1976). Since then, the population has almost doubled again, totalling 76 million in 2006’ (Zohry, 2014, 76). This was frequently, and openly, discussed by Egyptian elites: ‘We
Egyptian population growth, 1975–2010
1975 |
1980 |
1990 |
2000 |
2010 |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mid-year population (millions) |
38.6 |
44.95 |
56.83 |
67.64 |
81.11 |
Population growth rate (annual %) |
2.12 |
2.45 |
2.44 |
1.8 |
1.97 |
Fertility rate (live births per woman) |
5.59 |
5.37 |
4.35 |
3.31 |
2.88 |
Life expectancy at birth (years) |
54.69 |
58.32 |
64.55 |
68.59 |
70.45 |
Infant mortality rate |
154.70 |
114 |
67.8 |
22.3 |
15.5 |
The encouragement of citizens’ exit has been instrumental in the developmental goals of the Egyptian state since the 1970s (Sadiq and Tsourapas, 2021). ‘The high rates of Egyptian population growth at the time dictated a change in the state’s emigration laws’, former Minister Ali Dessouki argued (personal interview, 2014). Emigration as a ‘safety valve’ became a key component of the Egyptian state’s solution to its domestic political economy issues. Boutros-Ghali argued that the ‘complicated’ problem of overpopulation, in particular, ‘should be tackled through a comprehensive strategy based on family control, the regulation of internal migration, and migration on both the Arab regional and international levels’ (quoted in Tsourapas, 2019, 168). ‘We should not fear surplus in manpower’, Prime Minister Hegazy declared in 1974, given that ‘Arab, African, and even European countries [seek] Egyptian manpower’ (quoted in Tsourapas, 2019, 168). In 1975, Prime Minister Mamduh Salem announced that the promotion of citizens’ exit was an official target for the Egyptian state, as a way to provide a durable solution to a number of issues (Tsourapas, 2019, xvii).
3.2 Egyptians Overseas and State Development Exigencies
Beyond the developmental importance of citizens’ exit, the Egyptian government placed particular emphasis on how those who had already emigrated
The effort targeting members of the Egyptian community abroad in order to aid in the country’s socioeconomic development occurred in the aftermath of the 1971 liberalisation of emigration. From the early 1970s until the beginning of the 1990s, Egypt considered economic remittances to be a key source of income. Despite a short period in which remittance inflows fell in the aftermath of the Iraq-Kuwait War, they now constitute—once again—a significant share of the country’s gross domestic product (gdp, see Table 4.5 and Figure 4.1 below). Given that money transfers are also conducted via unofficial, untraceable channels, the economic importance of migration for Egypt is even higher. In fact, Egyptian policy and media circles have, since the 1970s, often ascribed a great developmental role to those in the diaspora (Müller-Funk, 2017).
Official remittances by Egyptians working abroad (egp millions)
Year |
Financial transfers |
Declared imports financed by own-exchange system |
Total remittances |
|---|---|---|---|
1974 |
124 |
16 |
140 |
1975 |
164 |
93 |
257 |
1976 |
364 |
167 |
531 |
1977 |
384 |
265 |
649 |
1978 |
654 |
587 |
1241 |
1979 |
666 |
883 |
1549 |
1980 |
818 |
1070 |
1888 |
1981 |
591 |
936 |
1527 |
1982 |
931 |
1396 |
2327 |
Friends of Egypt conference titles
Year |
Conference title |
|---|---|
1974 |
Organising Modes of Communication with Egyptian Scholars Abroad |
1974 |
Development of the Desert |
1978 |
Development of the Countryside as a Source of Complete Development |
1980 |
Development under the Umbrella of Peace |
1982 |
The Role of Science and Technology in Egyptian Development |
1984 |
Environmental Problems of Development |
1986 |
Economic Development in Egypt |
1988 |
Education in Egypt |
1990 |
Egypt’s Human Resources |
1992 |
Water Resources and Development in Egypt |
1994 |
Energy and Continuous Development in Egypt |
1996 |
Unemployment in Egypt |
1998 |
Development of the Desert in the Third Millennium |
2001 |
Modernizing Egypt |
2003 |
Human Development in the Third Millennium |
2005 |
Information Technology and its Role in Development |
2009 |
Care, Communication and Development |
The state’s attempts to court their citizens abroad was extensive: many would receive formal invitations to fly back to Cairo and Alexandria on all-expenses-paid trips, where they would meet with President Sadat and his wife, as well as select members of the administration. The Egyptian government showed particular interest in various unions of Egyptians abroad—especially students: in 1976, the Egyptian President granted usd 50,000 (or over usd 200,000 today) to the Union of Egyptian students in North America—only a
3.3 The Developmental Value of Egyptians’ Return
Finally, a key dimension of Egypt’s migration-development nexus was the attempt to ensure that citizens abroad return to the homeland. In many ways, encouraging migrants’ return to Egypt is linked to the state’s initial encouragement of emigration—given that the initial rationale, at least partly, aimed to allow younger Egyptians to pursue employment and improve their skillsets abroad. For a country that has historically placed a high value on education,
[I]t is possible to argue that temporary emigration does not represent a kind of brain drain in the proper sense: first, because it is by definition temporary; second, because its output is still made use of within the same region; and third, because such people disburse a significant proportion of their incomes back to their home country […]. In addition, although temporary migrants feature a reasonably high percentage of personnel who were employed in Egypt in scientific, professional and technical occupations [around 38 per cent], this percentage is not as high as it is with permanent migrants, and its internal composition is also quite different.
ayubi, 1983, 438
I came back with hopes that with the degree and experience I got, I could help Egypt, but I was shocked. My efforts in England didn’t help Egypt […]. There is a shortage of [professorial positions] that I could fill, but I am not taken […]. Even my salary, that they cut for two years in England, was not given back to me. I am treated as a ‘colored’ where I work (army), for I have a doctor’s degree […]. I feel that colleagues have envy and hatred for me and my degree.
saleh, 1979, 55
I was shocked by many things in Egypt as soon as I arrived. I stayed in a state of unbalance for a long time […]. During that time, I met the worst difficulties that a returning scientist meets […] at the customs, bribery of government employees and all that […] just to get my car out […]. Difficulties came one after the other […]. At present I am trying to acclimatise to life in the framework of the actual reality around me.
saleh, 1979, 64
Ultimately, it is widely acknowledged that this extensive return policy did not yield the expected results,—which is not surprising: firstly, despite a different perception across Egyptian policymaking circles, it has historically been regional emigrants that have procured the vast majority of economic
4 Conclusion
This chapter has presented an overview of the interplay between migration and development in a key state of the global South—Egypt. Egypt boasts one of the largest emigrant populations in the world, estimated at 6.5 million in 2012, not including emigrants’ descendants. It constitutes the main provider of migrant labour within the Middle East, and the Egyptian diaspora is one of the largest internationally. This chapter has aimed to nuance existing understandings of the migration-development nexus by unpacking the process of migration into exit, overseas, and return components that highlight citizens’ emigration, time abroad, and return to the home country, respectively. In so doing, the chapter highlights the keen interest that Egyptian policymakers demonstrated toward capturing the full developmental potential of cross-border mobility in the post-1971 era.
An attempt at a more holistic approach to the developmental value of migration for global South states would shed valuable light on a range of countries: for instance, Turkey, Libya, Jordan and Syria have also established similar processes (to a lesser or greater extent) in an effort to benefit from their citizens’ cross border mobility (Tsourapas, 2020). But going beyond the Middle East, it is evident that states across the global South view the process of migration as complex and multi-tiered, consequently developing separate sets of policy instruments to benefit as much as possible from migration flows. Such policies frequently become interlinked with foreign policy priorities within states’ migration diplomacy aims (Adamson and Tsourapas, 2019). India, for instance, places particular importance on processes of citizens’ exit, and has developed a range of domestic and foreign policy processes aiming to maximise emigration (Kapur, 2010). At the same time, most global South states have developed intricate diaspora policies that seek to profit from their diverse communities abroad (Gamlen, 2008). Finally, Mexico and others have implemented concrete return migration policies seeking to benefit from ‘brain gain’, given the large communities of migrant workers they have abroad (Cassarino, 2004).
Overall, this chapter aims to make a contribution to the growing field of research on the developmental importance of migration by pointing out the
Unless otherwise noted, all translations of quoted material are provided by the author.
An evaluation of whether Egyptian diaspora policies positively contributed to the return of Egyptians (and shifted their attitudes towards their home country) would not be possible within this study’s methodological framework and due to the unavailability of statistical data. That said, I encountered very few elites or experts willing to argue that Egyptian policy was a success in this aspect. The wider literature corroborates this.
References
Adamson, F.B. and G. Tsourapas (2020) ‘The Migration State in the Global South: Nationalizing, Developmental, and Neoliberal Models of Migration Management’, International Migration Review, 54(3), pp. 853–882, doi:10.1177/0197918319879057.
Adamson, F.B. and G. Tsourapas (2019) ‘Migration Diplomacy in World Politics’, International Studies Perspectives, 20(2), pp. 113–128, doi:10.1093/isp/eky015.
Ayubi, N.N.M. (1983) ‘The Egyptian “Brain Drain”: A Multidimensional Problem’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 15(4), pp. 431–450, https://www.jstor.org/stable/163555.
Bhagwati, J.N. (1976) ‘Taxing the Brain Drain’, Challenge, 19(3), pp. 34–38, doi:10.1080/05775132.1976.11470220.
capmas (Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics) (2017) Egyptians Abroad (Cairo: capmas), http://www.capmas.gov.eg/Admin/Pages%20Files/2017109144221Egy.pdf (accessed on 6 May 2021) [in Arabic].
Carling, J. (2019) Key Concepts in the Migration–Development Nexus, mignex Handbook Chapter 2 (Oslo: prio), www.mignex.org/d021 (accessed on 16 April 2021).
Cassarino, J.-P. (2004) Theorising Return Migration: A Revised Conceptual Approach to Return Migrants (Florence: European University Institute).
Castles, S. and R.D. Wise (2008) Migration and Development: Perspectives from the South (Geneva: iom).
De Luna-Martinez, J. (2005) Workers’ Remittances to Developing Countries: A Survey with Central Banks on Selected Public Policy Issues (Washington, D.C.: World Bank Publications).
Di Bartolomeo, A., T. Fakhoury and D. Perrin (2010) Egypt, The Demographic-Legal-Socio-Political Economic Framework of Migration (Florence: European University Institute).
Fargues, P. (2013) ‘International Migration and the Nation State in Arab Countries’, Middle East Law and Governance, 5(1–2), pp. 5–35, doi:10.1163/18763375-00501001.
Frank, A.G. (1966) ‘The Development of Underdevelopment’, Monthly Review, 18(4), pp. 17–31, doi:10.14452/MR-018-04-1966-08_3.
Gamlen, A. (2008) ‘The Emigration State and the Modern Geopolitical Imagination’, Political Geography, 27(8), pp. 840–856, doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2008.10.004.
George, A.L. and A. Bennett (2005) Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: mit Press).
Kapur, D. (2010) Diaspora, Development, and Democracy: The Domestic Impact of International Migration from India (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Kapur, D. and J. McHale (2003) ‘Migration’s New Payoff’, Foreign Policy, 139, pp. 49–57, doi:10.2307/3183737.
Lippman, T.W. (1989) Egypt After Nasser: Sadat, Peace, and the Mirage of Prosperity (New York: Paragon House).
McDermott, A. (1988) Egypt from Nasser to Mubarak: A Flawed Revolution (London: Routledge).
Müller-Funk, L. (2017) ‘Managing Distance: Examining Policies Governing Egyptian Emigration’, egypte/Monde Arabe, 15, pp. 47–69, https://journals.openedition.org/ema/3656 (accessed on 11 May 2021).
Piper, N. (2009) ‘The Complex Interconnections of the Migration-Development Nexus: A Social Perspective’, Population, Space and Place, 15(2), pp. 93–101, doi:10.1002/psp.535.
Rostow, W.W. (1960) The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Sadiq, K. and G. Tsourapas (2021) ‘The Postcolonial Migration State’, European Journal of International Relations, doi:10.1177/13540661211000114.
Saleh, S.A.W. (1979) The Brain Drain in Egypt, Cairo Papers in Social Science, Volume 2, Monograph 5 (Cairo: The American University).
Siniver, A. and G. Tsourapas (forthcoming) ‘Middle Powers and Soft-Power Rivarly: Egyptian-Israeli Competition across Sub-Saharan Africa’.
Tadros, M. (2013) Copts at the Crossroads: The Challenges of Building Inclusive Democracy in Contemporary Egypt (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press).
Todaro, M.P. (1969) ‘A Model of Labor Migration and Urban Unemployment in Less Developed Countries’, The American Economic Review, 59(1), pp. 138–148, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1811100.
Tsourapas, G. (2020) ‘Theorizing State-Diaspora Relations in the Middle East: Authoritarian Emigration States in Comparative Perspective’, Mediterranean Politics, 25(2), pp. 135–159, doi:10.1080/13629395.2018.1511299.
Tsourapas, G. (2019) The Politics of Migration in Modern Egypt: Strategies for Regime Survival in Autocracies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Tsourapas, G. (2016) ‘Nasser’s Educators and Agitators Across al-Watan al-‘Arabi: Tracing the Foreign Policy Importance of Egyptian Regional Migration, 1952–1967’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 43(3), pp. 324–341, doi:10.1080/13530194.2015.1102708.
Tsourapas, G. (2015) ‘Why Do States Develop Multi-Tier Emigrant Policies? Evidence from Egypt’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41(13), pp. 2192–2214, doi:10.1080/1369183X.2015.1049940.
Van Evera, S. (1997) Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science (Ithaca: Cornell University Press).
World Bank (2021) World Development Indicators, https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators (accessed on 6 May 2021).
Zohry, A. (2014) ‘Migration and Development in Egypt’, in M. Bommes, H. Fassmann, and W. Sievers (eds.) Migration from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe: Past Developments, Current Status and Future Potentials (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press).
Zohry, A. and P. Debnath (2010) A Study on the Dynamics of the Egyptian Diaspora: Strengthening Development Linkages (Cairo: iom), http://www.migration4development.org/sites/default/files/a_study_on_the_dynamics_of_the_egyptian_diaspora_english.pdf (accessed on 6 May 2021).
Zohry, A. and B. Harrell-Bond (2003) Contemporary Egyptian Migration: An Overview of Voluntary and Forced Migration, Working Paper C 3 (Brighton: Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty), https://www.academia.edu/1300268/Contemporary_Egyptian_Migration_An_Overview_of_Voluntary_and_Forced_Migration_AYMAN_ZOHRY_and_BARBARA_HARRELL_BOND?auto=download (accessed on 16 April 2021).