While migration numbers typically fell during the Covid pandemic, the numbers have remained considerable globally. This has provided a continued target for populist politicians and commentators, who regularly complain that numbers are too high, yet migrants have consistently represented around 3% of the global population.

Research from the Vienna University of Economics and Business shows that while migration numbers aren’t changing, the nature of migration is.

“We don’t see this as a growing problem. We think it’s a misunderstanding that has been propagated in the media, in our public discourse, and in academia, too, because the absolute number is growing so much. But since World War II, the relative numbers are pretty stable, compared with the growing global population,” the researchers explain. “That’s what we want to put on the table. To start seeing migration as a normal process of society and social development, rather than something that’s scary and should be controlled.”

Changing nature of migration

The authors explain that there has been a change in the geographic spread and directionality of migration around the world. For instance, the share of migrants that were European shrunk from 76% in 1960 to just 22% in 2017.

“Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans increasingly account for intercontinental migration, with Europe, the Gulf, and parts of East Asia emerging as their new most popular destinations,” the authors explain.

Large cities remain the most popular destination for migrants, with many cities now taking on a distinctly “global” form due to the high number of foreign-born people living in them.

“Dubai’s foreign-born population exceeds 80%, Toronto’s is nearly 50%, while Auckland, Sydney, London, and New York are all nearing 40%,” the authors say. “Demographers predict that the largest inflow of migration to cities around the world is yet to come. Recent decades have already witnessed dramatic increases in internal rural-urban migration in countries such as China, India, and Indonesia.”

High-income shift

Much of the movement has been towards high-income countries, with 67% of migrants living in high-income nations, compared to 29% in middle-income countries, and just 4% in low-income countries. Even this pattern is changing, however.

“However, from 2013 to 2019, high-income countries experienced a 7.3% drop in migrant workers, whereas middle-income countries experienced a 7.8% increase,” the researchers explain. “Labor shortages caused by internal EU migration (from the former Eastern Bloc countries to the West) after the last two waves of EU expansion now pose serious staffing challenges for corporations with factories in Poland, Hungary, and other Eastern European states.”

They also note that refugees represent a very small percentage of overall migrants, with around 26 million refugees before the invasion of Ukraine, 80% of whom were in developing countries. This compares to the 700 million or so internal migrants. One positive aspect of the Ukraine war, they explain, is that it has encouraged policymakers to change the rules around working so that refugees can start working immediately.

The authors conclude by urging managers, researchers, and policymakers to focus on three key areas that deserve more attention:

• Changing migration patterns. “How does this changing pattern of migrant diversity impact intolerance and xenophobia? And how does the migrant makeup of an organization affect not only organizational functioning, but also how members make sense of diversity issues in the broader society?”

• Migrants’ human rights. “Even if not subjected to forced migration, lower-skill, and low-status migrant workers in global value chains across the world face disturbingly common patterns of recruitment abuse, workplace discrimination, and retaliation for asserting their legal rights. In most migrant receiving countries, visa programs require companies to hire workers while they are still in their places of origin. For high-skilled migrants, this is an administrative burden, but for lower-skilled migrant workers, the recruitment processes and employment abroad can easily devolve into a human rights issue. Because few companies have the skillset or experience to dispatch recruiters directly to migrants’ countries of origin, employers rely on recruitment intermediaries. These agencies are infamous for unethical business practices, corrupt ties to local governments, for making false promises to potential migrants and for charging migrant workers excessively high and opaque fees, leading to instances of forced labor.”

• Working from anywhere. “Some scholars have suggested that work-from-anywhere may reverse the ‘brain drain’ in lower income countries … Will we see a decrease in high-skilled migration (which until now has been rapidly increasing) and an uptake of ‘global domestics,’ defined as employees who remain in their home country while using technology to perform their job responsibilities in other countries?”