ROOM DOCUMENT N°1
JOINT OAS/OECD TECHNICAL SEMINAR ON: OAS CONTINUOUS REPORTING SYSTEM ON LABOUR MIGRATION FOR THE AMERICAS (SICREMI) Tuesday 17 March 2009 Venue: 1889 “F” Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006 Padhila Vidal Room THE PROJECT ON CONDUCTED BY THE LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN DEMOGRAPHIC CENTRE (CELADE) – POPULATION DIVISION OF THE ECONOMIC COMMISSION FOR LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN (ECLAC) Jorge Martínez Pizarro
This room document has been prepared by Jorge Martínez Pizarro (CELADE – Population Division of ECLAC). The views expressed are those of the author and do not commit either the OECD, the OAS or the national authorities concerned.
1
THE PROJECT ON CONDUCTED BY THE LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN DEMOGRAPHIC CENTRE (CELADE) – POPULATION DIVISION OF THE ECONOMIC COMMISSION FOR LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN (ECLAC)
Jorge Martínez Pizarro CELADE – Population Division of ECLAC Jorge.martinez@cepal.org
Introduction 1. The topic of international migration generally arouses interest in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. The issues involved, however, are not easily addressed. On the one hand, there is the possibility of benefiting from emigration; on the other, there are the difficulties that migrant workers encounter during their journey to their destinations and the problems they face in becoming integrated in the host country. Losses of human capital may seem to be offset by gains in financial capital, but what is needed is a clear picture of the trends, magnitude and characteristics of international migration flows in the region. How many nationals of one country are resident in another? And which countries are they living in? Where exactly are immigrants located in each country? What kind of work are they finding? How intensive and segmented is participation of immigrant workers, and immigrant women in particular, in the labour market? What is their educational background? In Latin America and the Caribbean, population censuses, the traditional source of information on the situation in a given country, provide answers to many questions, and although they do not make it possible to measure all aspects, they do constitute an indispensable tool for gaining insight into international migration today. 2. In its ongoing analysis of the relationship between migration and development, the Latin American and Caribbean Demographic Centre (CELADE)-Population Division of ECLAC has accumulated, since the 1970s, a broad experience in the systemization, diffusion, explanation and analysis of information on international migration that it has obtained from national censuses taken in the region. Censuses offer the advantage of being the most diverse source of information in terms of geographic scale (they cover issues from the household to the national level) for identifying what are usually minority groups and are widely used in the region and other parts of the world. 3. Other information sources, such as entry and exit records and work permit or residency permit figures have either been hardly developed as statistical tools and rarely used for analytical purposes in the region (except in a few subregional initiatives to set up information systems in which CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC has participated) or they have not been properly exploited for the compilation and analysis of data on international migration in the same way as national household and multi-purpose surveys, which, moreover, are conducted in all the countries of the region. These limitations underscore the advantages of using population censuses as sources of information. Specific surveys on migration are rare, but they can complement the data obtained from population censuses and form part of migration information systems. 4. At this point in time, the lack of statistical information on international migration makes national household and population censuses the source of the most reliable data for systemizing empirical background information and performing studies to identify trends, predict changes and make policy recommendations for the handling of international migration in Latin America and the Caribbean.
2
5. The information obtained from censuses does, of course, suffer from constraints that need to be taken into account and which result in diagnoses being limited to the variables incorporated in the censuses themselves. As new questions on specific topics are included, the range of aspects open to investigation will increase. One of the more promising initiatives in this respect has been the progressive inclusion of questions on remittances and on former household members now living abroad. The criteria used in the setting of census variables need to be harmonized, however, and the questions need to be simplified for the 2010 round of censuses. The IMILA project of CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC 6. The Project on Investigation of International Migration in Latin America (IMILA) was conceived in the early 1970s by CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC and is a concrete example of intraregional cooperation, since it implies that countries hand over responsibility for collecting their data to an international organization in the interest of a common cause: that of determining the extent and characteristics of migration of the region’s population. The project began by processing data from the 1960 round of censuses for three countries and, following its success, was used as a basis for systematizing the records of most of the countries that carried out population and housing censuses in the 1970s; this coverage has been maintained up to the present. 7. The underlying principles of the IMILA project and its more notable features have been acclaimed on numerous occasions for their originality. These include: a.
Exchange. The number of persons enumerated in countries other than their country of birth is calculated by processing information on the population born abroad as provided to CELADEPopulation Division of ECLAC by the respective national statistical offices in census databases (or special tabulations); immigrant and emigrant stocks are quantified and characterized for each country at dates corresponding to each census round. Such exchanges are best illustrated through matrix tables showing the origin and destination of migrants between countries.
b.
Migrant specification. The identification of persons according to their migrant status depends on the questions contained in the national censuses. Such specification usually refers to the place (country) of birth, but, in some cases, the year of arrival in the country can also be determined as well as the country of residence on a date prior to that of the census. This makes it possible to have various estimates on immigration and emigration which can be very valuable as inputs in the preparation of population projections.
c.
Migrant profile. The census data provided by each country on persons born abroad is processed to generate a set of 14 basic tables relating to socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics (age, fertility, infant mortality, marital status, education and employment); in most of these tables, the gender of the persons is identified. In addition, the relevant data bases, if available, can be used to study certain basic issues for different geographic levels (from the household to the national level), with specifications on the socio-economic condition.
d.
Return migration. An additional tabulation of return migration for people born in one country who at a certain point in time (five years prior to the census) were living in a different country than the one of their birth was included in the more recent data-processing exercises. This information makes it possible to determine the characteristics of return migration by contrasting the socio-demographic and economic characteristics of this population with those of the nonmigrant population. This analysis of course requires the in-depth examination of circumstances during the preceding five years, both in the countries of origin and the countries of destination,
3
and involves gross estimates that should not be confused with the figures for the repatriation of undocumented persons.
e.
Dissemination of data. The data systematized under the IMILA project was published periodically by CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC in its Demographic Bulletin and webcast on its subsite on international migration accessible through the ECLAC webpage (www.eclac.cl/celade). The Demographic Bulletin No. 65, published in 2000, contains data on the 1980 and 1990 census rounds. The data corresponding to the 2000 census round was disseminated and analysed in the first issue of a new publication, Demographic Observatory, in 2006. An online databank for the two latest census rounds has just been designed. This
databank allows for tabulations to be obtained on the basis of two search criteria: (i) the emigrants from a country, in other words, the country of birth of people identified by their country of residence; and (ii) immigrants in a country, in other words, the country in which the census was performed or people live, for people identified by a specific country of birth.1 The IMILA tabulations are available on the webpage of CELADEPopulation Division of ECLAC and contain information on the 2000 and 1990 census rounds. Users can draw up tables according to the variables used in the IMILA project. The stock of migrants by country of birth and by country of residence 5 years earlier is calculated (12 tables and 1 table, respectively). f.
Geographic coverage. The IMILA project was originally designed to collect information on the 20 Latin American countries, but now also includes statistics on the countries of the Englishspeaking Caribbean. The coverage has been gradually extended to include Latin American and Caribbean emigrants enumerated in census exercises outside of the region, especially in the United States and Canada, and, to a lesser extent, in other destination countries, including some European countries (specially Spain), Australia, Japan and Israel.
8. Information is available on all population stocks of 500 people or more. For population stocks of less than 500 people, the people born in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean are presented by sex and age in a table, inasmuch as this information was available. 9. The International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) and several other international organizations have recognized the IMILA project as a virtually unique example of systematization of census information on international migration and have recommended that other countries in the world undertake this type of information exchange. Limitations and potential uses of the IMILA data 10. The IMILA databank has always had both limitations and potential. Often the census data are not sufficiently disseminated or used; sometimes they suffer from obvious errors, in addition to underlying flaws. Some of these conceptual and technical limitations are presented below. 11. IMILA makes use of the unquestionable advantages offered by censuses –in particular their universality and the vast range of sociodemographic and socio-economic data that they collect– but it does so subject to the quality of each census operation. Indeed, CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC has repeatedly cautioned users –researchers, academics, government officials and international organizations and professional associations– that the census information processed by this project has limitations. 1
The webpage has been recently redesigned and, together with the online databank, provides information and links to other initiatives in the information system (www.eclac.cl/celade).
4
12. Conceptually, the first limitation of the census information is the differential undercount rates for total population and international migrants, which concerns, above all, persons who do not belong to any household and undocumented immigrants (who, even if enumerated, will not identify themselves as such). A second type of limitation concerns the comparability of data at the international level, owing to the irregular periodicity of national census operations, the different interpretations of the notion of residence used, depending on whether authorities have opted for a de facto or a de jure census, and the variations in working definitions of the features of the population. A third restriction, relating to methodology, stems from the fact that as every census enumerates the existing population at a given point in time, the data refer only to accumulated migrant stocks up to that time (that is, to the total number of immigrants who have survived and who, up to the date of the census, had not returned to their country of origin) and not to the migration movements that took place over the period; in other words, it fails to look at migration as a continuum. A fourth limitation, not unrelated to the foregoing, is the inability to reflect the diversity of the spatial mobility of individuals; nevertheless, efforts are being made to overcome this limitation, as shown in the case of Argentina, where, since the last census (2001), plans have been underway for conducting sample surveys on immigrant households. 13. From a strictly technical point of view, two points should be stressed. On the one hand, starting with the 1980 census round, most of the IMILA data have been based on census data that each country has made available to CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC, and the procedure is expected to be the same for the 2010 round. While this is affected by budgetary rigidities, since the 1990 round, the data have been processed using the REDATAM program (Retrieval of data for small areas by microcomputer) developed by CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC.2 This is considered the surest and most useful way of preserving, updating and refining the IMILA database. With respect to data processing, countries are not sufficiently rigorous in their use of standardized international codes for identifying the country of origin (country of birth or of prior residence) of persons and this makes processing of census data more complicated. Thus, CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC recommends that national statistical offices should use the relevant international list (Standard Country or Area Codes and Geographic Regions for Statistical Use). 14. IMILA is currently an online database. This enables users to operate with greater autonomy and according to their own interests. The information presented is that contained in the IMILA tabulations, not the census microdata, which are not made available and are only processed in new tabulations within the research conducted by CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC in its programme of work. 15. The potential for using census information contained in the IMILA project is illustrated by the numerous research studies which have generated an approximate knowledge of international migration in the region. Since its inception, the project has provided an empirical framework for producing direct estimates of migration and studying regional migration trends and patterns, immigrant and emigrant profiles, in contrast with those of native-born populations, migration in subregions and border regions, migration of skilled labour and the operation of labour markets, living conditions of migrants, migration of young people, return migration and gender issues, among others. IMILA and its impact on migration in the region 16. The potential for using census information contained in the IMILA project is illustrated by the numerous research studies which have generated an approximate knowledge of international migration in the region. Since its inception, the project has provided an empirical framework for producing direct 2
This software, which may be downloaded free of charge (www.eclac.cl/celade), enables researchers to operate directly with the census databases and to process the information –including that relating to small geographic areas- and to adapt it to their research objectives.
5
estimates of migration and studying regional migration trends and patterns, immigrant and emigrant profiles, in contrast with those of native-born populations, migration in subregions and border regions, migration of skilled labour and the operation of labour markets, living conditions of migrants, migration of young people, return migration and gender issues, among others. 17. The study of international migration is a central component of the programme of work of CELADE and the information is used repeatedly either for the preparation of diagnostic analyses or to corroborate theories on international migration. A research study was recently completed on international migration, development and human rights, which was presented at the thirty-first session of ECLAC, in Montevideo (March, 2006) and then incorporated into a book published by ECLAC. The Population Division of ECLAC has consistently studied the links between globalization processes and migration and the analysis of changes in the migration map of the Americas. 18. Migration is treated as a priority issue in the Commission’s proposals for the construction of a regional agenda for addressing globalization. Thus, CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC was called upon to contribute to the elaboration of substantive material for the Thirty-First Session of the Commission, which was held in Montevideo in 2006, and much of the information was taken from the IMILA project. 19. In addition to working on a permanent basis with the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLAC today is carrying out activities with several international organizations. Through an agreement with the Ibero-American Secretariat (SEGIB), for example, it is providing support, together with the International Organization for Migration, for a series of activities on international migration, including research into the social welfare of migrants and other studies, within the framework of the IberoAmerican Forum on Migration and Development. A strategic association has also been forged with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), within the ECLAC/UNFPA regional programme, to conduct studies on health and migration in selected border areas in the region using a rights- and vulnerabilitybased approach. 20. The experience accumulated so far in joint activities with other organizations and IMILA will be put to good use in the project scheduled to commence in April 2009 entitled ―Strengthening national capacities to deal with international migration: Maximizing development benefits and minimizing negative impact‖. The regional commissions (ECLAC, the Economic Commission for Africa, the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, the Economic Commission for Europe and the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) and the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs will be the executing agencies, and the project will be headed by ECLAC and carried out by CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC in 2009-2010 with funds from the United Nations Development Account. 21. The overarching objective of the project is to strengthen national capacities to integrate international migration issues into national development strategies, in order to leverage their benefits and minimize any negative effects. 22. The project’s specific objectives include improving the quality and availability of data on international migration, affording particular attention to female migration, building up institutional and human resources capacities to design and implement policies and programmes and promoting cooperation by means of an intra- and interregional network to exchange information, studies, policies, experiences and best practices among countries and regions. 23. With these objectives in mind, three achievements have been identified for the project: (i) create an interregional network of institutions, experts and regional and national centres, in order to increase
6
knowledge and exchange best practices on migration policies in relation to development issues in the five regions involved; (ii) increase availability of information on international migration and its effects on development; and (iii) improve national skills and capacities to design and implement policies and programmes, taking into account the particular challenges raised by international migration. 24. Coordinated action on the part of the five regional commissions and the Department of Economic and Social Affairs DESA, as well as the collaboration of other stakeholders, such as intergovernmental organizations, regional development agencies and research centres, will help to create a critical mass of know-how and information on the links between international migration and development. The project beneficiaries will be governments, institutional and intergovernmental agencies, research centres, nongovernmental organizations and civil society stakeholders involved in migration issues. IMILA and initiatives on migration information systems in the region 25. Based on its experience of running IMILA, CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC has been working on joint inquiries with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to support statistical offices and migration departments in the countries of Latin America, with a view to creating subregional information systems in the Central American and Andean countries. Although these ideas are not new, since initiatives on regional information systems have existed for decades, they did not fully materialize until the 1990s, so are too recent to be evaluated in detail.3 26. These projects systemize data from two main sources: entry and exit registers (and other administrative or ongoing records), on the one hand, and census information, for which CELADEPopulation Division of ECLAC is responsible, on the other. One such project, known as the Information System on International Migration in Countries of the Andean Community (SIMICA), was carried out in 1996-1997 in the Andean countries (Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru). SIMICA encompassed national training in data handling for the staff of departments involved in migration issues and it generated a number of studies. The system is no longer in operation, however, which is indicative of the fragility of projects whose sustainability is not assured. 27. Another project now under way is the Statistical Information System on Migration in Mesoamerica (SIEMMES), which IOM and CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC developed in response to a request from the Regional Conference on Migration. This project, which was originally called Statistical Information System on Migration in Central America (SIEMCA), includes Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama and began in January 2001 (http://163.178.140.43/index.shtml). 28. SIEMMES is a system of migration information designed to capture and monitor the magnitude and characteristics of migratory movements from, to and between the Central American countries and Mexico, by coordinating and compatibilizing the data generated by different agencies in all those countries. 29. SIEMMES has drawn heavily on all the available sources of data (censuses, household surveys and administrative records) to develop migration indicators that are comparable between countries. This has helped to strengthen the human resource capacities in national agencies responsible for migration 3
It must be added that systems and sources of information are being developed around emerging issues and in multiple ways: for example, there are observatories on migration (such as that of IOM in South America) and on human rights (run by civil society organizations). Many academic groupings are organized in Internet news groups and portals. Remittances are being studies in relation to national accounts and global initiatives are under way to improve remittance statistics.
7
statistics —migration departments and statistical institutions— through cooperation agreements and technical link-ups. 30. CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC has played a decisive role in both schemes, by designing, coordinating and implementing different project stages and conducting training in the analysis of census data on international migration, using the IMILA database as a reference framework. Conclusion 31. CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC has been working on estimates, data and analysis relating to migration patterns and trends in the countries of the region for more than three decades. As researchers in the region generally acknowledge, IMILA and census data play a key role in these activities. 32. Broadly speaking, one positive lesson worth sharing is the need to complement the compilation and production of information with research work, in which CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC has become prominent in the region, contributing to the generation of knowledge and proposing agreements and policies on international migration. Some activities are pursued in conjunction with IOM and receive financial support from such organizations as the United Nations Population Fund and the Ibero-American Secretariat. All this has made it possible for experts from CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC to take part regularly in seminars, workshops and conferences on migration in the countries of the region and even beyond. This is why international-migration-related activities constitute one of the main areas of endeavour within the regular programme of work (see also www.cepal.cl/celade). 33. More specifically in relation to IMILA, there are limitations that are very difficult to surmount. Apart from gaps in census information on migration, the time lag involved in updating the database is a serious obstacle to making useful information available opportunely. Although in the future this will depend partly on when the countries make their databases from the 2010 census round available to CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC, it is no less true that budget rigidities preclude precise planning of the processing of this data using the REDATAM software. Another limitation arising from financial constraints is the impossibility of creating new tabulates expressly requested by users. Such requests cannot be dealt with because of the costs involved in processing them within CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC. In this regard, it will be recalled that the census databases provided by the countries can be used only in the Division. 34. A major challenge for the immediate future is the creation of new tabulates to support emerging research issues, including the analysis of responses to questions on emigration of household members and reception of remittances. A number of countries addressed these issues in the 2000 census round and many more are expected to do so in the 2010 round.
8
REFERENCES
CELADE (2000), Migración Internacional en América Latina IMILA, Santiago de Chile, enero de 2000. Boletín Demográfico No. 65. Martínez, Jorge (2008), Medición e información sobre la migración internacional a partir de los censos: lecciones, desafíos y oportunidades, CELADE, Santiago de Chile (inédito).
----- (2005), Globalizados, pero restringidos.Una visión latinoamericana del mercado global de recursos humanos calificados, CEPAL, Santiago de Chile, CEPAL, serie Población y Desarrollo, 56, LC/L.2233-P. ----- (2003a), El mapa migratorio de América Latina y el Caribe, las mujeres y el género, CEPAL, Santiago de Chile, CEPAL, serie Población y Desarrollo, 44, LC/L.1974-P. ----- (2003b), El encanto de los datos. Sociodemografía de la inmigración en Chile según el censo de 2002, CEPAL, Santiago de Chile, serie Población y Desarrollo, 49, LC/L.2046-P. ----- (1999), ―La migración internacional en los censos de población‖, en Notas de Población, XXVII, 69, pp. 61-90. Moya, O. (1993), Proyecto IMILA, CELADE, Santiago de Chile, LC/DEM/R.201, serie A 284. Pellegrino, A. y J. Martínez (2001), Una aproximación al diseño de políticas sobre la migración internacional calificada en América Latina, Santiago de Chile, CELADE, serie Población y Desarrollo, 23. United Nations (1998), Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses, Dep. of Economic and Social Affairs, Statistics Division, New York, Revision 1, Statistical papers, ST/ESA/STAT/SER.M/67/rev.1. Villa, M. (1996), ―Una nota acerca del Proyecto de Investigación sobre Migración Internacional en Latinoamérica - IMILA‖, en N. Patarra (comp.), Migrações internacionais: herança XX, agenda XXI, Campinas, Programa Interinstitucional de Avaliação e Acompanhamento das Migrações Internacionais no Brasil, v. 2. Villa, M. y J. Martínez (2000), Tendencias y patrones de la migración internacional en América Latina y el Caribe, ponencia presentada al Simposio sobre migración internacional en las Américas, en CEPAL/CELADE/FNUAP/OIM/BID (2000). Vono, Daniela (2005), Los nicaragüenses en Costa Rica: derechos, vulnerabilidad y condiciones de vida, CELADE, Santiago de Chile, inédito.
9
AVAILABILITY OF INFORMATION FOR THE IMILA PROJECT FROM CENSUS ROUNDS
Country
Census rounds
Argentina
1960
1970
1980
1990
1960
1970
1980
1991
Bolivia
1976
1992
Brazil Chile
1980
1991
1970
1982
1992
1973
1984
Colombia
2000a/ 2001 2001 2000 2002
1993
Costa Rica
1963
2000
Cuba Ecuador
1982
El Salvador
1990
2001
1992
Guatemala
1973
Haiti
1971
1981
1994
Honduras
2002
2001
Mexico
1990
2000
1995
2005
Nicaragua
1971
Panama
1970
1980
1990
2000
Paraguay
1972
1982
1992
2002
1981
1993
Peru Dominican Republic
1970
Uruguay
1975
Venezuela Republic of)
(Bolivarian
Canada United States
2002 1985
1996
1971
1981
1990
2001
1971
1981/1986
1970
1980
1990
2000
1971
1981/1986
1970
1980
1990
2000
Source: IMILA project prepared by CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC. a/: Information available up to first half of 2009.
10
IMILA: standard tabulations(Census rounds of 1980, 1990 and 2000) Table 1: Population born abroad, by country of birth, sex and age group. Table 2: Population born abroad aged 10 years and over, by country of birth and marital status, by sex and age group. Table 3: Population born abroad aged 10 years and over, by country of birth and activity status, by sex and age group. Table 4: Economically active population born abroad aged 10 years and over, by country of birth and kind of economic activity, by sex and age group. Table 5: Non-economically active population born abroad aged 10 years and over, by country of birth, by sex and age group. Table 6: Population born abroad aged 10 years and over, by country of birth, years of schooling approved, sex and age group. Table 7: Women born abroad aged 15 years and over, by country of birth and number of live births, by marital status and age group. Table 8: Women born abroad aged 10 years and over, by country of birth and number of live births, surviving children and age group. Table 9: Economically active population born abroad aged 10 years and over, by country of birth, employment status and sector of economic activity, by sex and age group. Table 10: Economically active population born abroad aged 10 years and over, by country of birth, by employment category and branch of activity. Table 11: Holders of professional or technical qualifications and persons in related occupations born abroad aged 10 years and over, by country of birth and divisions and grouping of branches economic activity, by occupational subgroup. Table 12: Population born abroad by country of birth and period of arrival, by sex and age group. Table 13: Population born abroad aged five years and over, by country of birth and residence five years before the census, by sex and age group. Table 14: Population born abroad by country of birth and sex.
11