Dr Ishrat calls for linking research with implications for poverty alleviation

LAHORE: Former Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan Dr Ishrat Hussain said on Wednesday that as a developing country Pakistan based research in any field should be linked with the implications for poverty alleviation and human development.

He was addressing the first of its kind two day international conference on “Social Remittances and Social Change: Links between Home and Host Countries” organised by The Centre on Migration, Remittances and Diaspora (CIMRAD), Lahore School of Economics. Dr Shahid Amjad Chaudhry, Rector, Lahore School of Economics gave the welcome address.

Expressing his views on the recently re-emerged brain drain debate from Pakistan, Dr Ishrat asserted that it was an opportunity for Pakistani migrants to acquire new skills from host markets. Besides technical skills, social remittances in form of efficiency enhancing practices, principles and values can also contribute to increasing productivity of our local market and can even be exported to other migration destinations.

Talking about the structure of Pakistani society Dr Ishrat said there seemed to be a reverse pattern, where instead of bringing in change, there had been a trend in re-adoption of local ineffective practices, signalling negative social remittances.

Dr Peggy Levitt, Chair of Sociology Department, Wellesley College, US, in her keynote address talked about cultural globalization and the role of technological advancements. Once the exchange of ideas was limited to occasional home visits by migrants, family members are now able to be a part of each other’s lives virtually on a daily basis. Having studied migrant communities in Boston from Brazil, Ireland, Pakistan, and India, she reflected that for migrants over time, there is a growing disjuncture between how they perceive their home country and how it may have actually evolved. She termed it the “ossification effect”, where the home country is “frozen in time” in the migrants’ minds, while actually it has changed rapidly.

She elaborated that age plays a role in the extent of compatibility and adaptability as migrants move. People who are able to spend more time in their home country and build strong social networks prior to migrating, are better able to implement their new ideas and practices in the home country. In comparison, those who go at an early age, not only found it more challenging to put through their ideas, but in some cases even struggled to understand the social rules necessary to get their ideas across.

Dr Philippe Fargues, Founding Director of the Migration Policy Centre at the European University Institute, Italy, argued that international migration and reduction in fertility are inseparable parts of social change and human development. Where country-level socio economic indicators fail to establish this relationship, the non-tangible remittances in forms of ideas with family and friends in the home country can explain the phenomenon better. Pakistan’s population is growing at a worrisome rate of 2.4 percent annually and it has a current total fertility rate of 3.6, putting a strain on our limited economic resources. Implications of social remittances to bring down fertility rate are worth exploring from a policy point of view.

Dr Anne White, Professor at University College London School, UK, discussed how social remittances impact the migration process itself. When migrants interact with other migrants in the host country, the exchange ideas have the potential to transform the ways migration takes places, such as an inclination towards personal networking instead of through employment agencies. This could make the process even less formal in developing countries.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023