The economics of migration

In chapter six of his book Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen recounts the peril of honey collectors in Sundarban ‘beautiful forest’, Bangladesh. The forest, home to the Royal Bengal tiger, is also famous for its honey. Honey from the clusters of natural beehives can be sold at a good price: 50 cents a bottle; a considerable amount for the “desperately poor” of the region.

Every year 50 or more people, in their quest to gather honey, are killed by the tigers. “While the tigers are protected, nothing protects the miserable human beings who try to make a living by working in those woods, which are deep and lovely – and quite perilous.”

Internal and international migrants are motivated by the same “force of economic needs” that makes the poor in Sundarban to risk collecting honey. The desire to make ends meet, to quell poverty, drives people to take incredible risks which often lead to their death. The force to earn some income, however small, puts some poor people in a dilemma. A force so strong it outweighs the natural instinct to preserve life.

This contradiction is illustrated both by the rising number of unemployed and underemployed youth in Nigerian cities and by a similar growth in migrants that risk crossing through the Sahara Desert to North Africa, and to the Canary Islands, south Spain or Italy. Nigerians were almost one-third (29 percent) of West African irregular migrants detected in Spain, Italy, Malta and Greece between 2008 and 2011.

Though rural-urban migration contributed immensely to the economic growth of developed countries, Nigeria is yet to benefit from urbanisation. Instead migrants from the rural areas arrive in the city to find there are no jobs. Majority of migrants in Nigeria are young, male and between the ages of 15 and 24; most choose to move to Lagos or Kano.

A secondary school leaver must decide between staying in the village to work as a subsistence farmer or as an employee of a farmer, or migrating to the city to hustle for a job as a vendor, hawker, mechanic, causal labourer, etc. Or work as a “circular migrant”. In the dry season, farmers from northern Nigeria grow vegetables, cucumbers, etc in Lagos and return home, when rainy season starts there, to grow staple crops.

For the international migrant in pursuit of the proverbial Golden Fleece, the cost, circuitous route and dangers weigh less than the benefits. They choose to smuggle themselves either by air or overland from Nigeria to Europe. The easiest way to migrate illegally is to obtain a fixed-period visa (the UK granted 101,000 Nigerians six-month visas in 2012).

A 2009 survey by United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in six Nigerian states found that most migrants were not poor, had relatives abroad and chose to pay for being smuggled to Europe based on “a conscious choice…to enhance their livelihoods”. The survey showed that most were male, 20 or 30 years old, 63 percent had been to secondary school, 66 percent were farmers, taxi drivers or petty-traders, 13 percent were graduates. Economic hardship, insecurity and political strife in Nigeria are depriving it of its true asset: human capital.