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THEME PAPER

and employment. Responses an appreciation of how Fourth, we learn from the
have moved beyond the fragmented governance portability and registration
framing of labour to examine structures currently are and solutions that policy initiatives
migration as a broader highlighted the role of multiple are embedded within a
developmental problem with stakeholders. Providing broader trend of digital
implications for multiple relief to returning migrants governance, but can only be
sectors including education, during Covid-19 required effective if last mile delivery
health and food security and bureaucrats to coordinate is optimised and feedback
various vulnerable groups with counterparts in other loops put in place. Lastly,
like women and children. state governments and work responses were largely built
in collaboration with other on existing policies, whether
This indicates a second shift departments within the state. articulated or in the pipeline.
from the migrant worker This highlighted the need To an extent, solutions were
towards seeing the migrant for horizontal convergence adapted and replicated
household as a focus of across departments quickly across jurisdictions,
intervention. The large and multiple levels of through formal and informal
influx of returning migrants government to effectively sharing mechanisms. This
during the pandemic helped include migrants. Many of demonstrates that migration
policy actors to broaden the successful solutions, as a policy domain requires
their perspectives to include for instance, the exercise to be seen as a contiguous
migrating households as of organising transport for process in which policy actors
well as split households returning migrants, were learn from and improve on
with migrant and left-behind possible through complex previous experiences of their
members and garnered collaborative arrangements own and others.
support for portability in the with contributions from While this is a good starting
delivery of social welfare. multiple stakeholders point, it is important to
including state actors, NGOs,
Third, the experiences of citizen volunteers and private measure the progress of
policy actors engendered corporations. migrant-inclusive policy in
empirical ways. One way to
do so is through migration
3 DEMIG POLICY tracks more than 6,500 migration policy changes enacted by 45 indices like DEMIG, Global
3
countries around the world mostly in the 1945-2013 period. 4
4 Western Union commissioned the Economist Intelligence Unit to compile a Migration Barometer,
migration index that ranks 61 countries by how attractive and accessible they are Migrant Integration Policy
for migrants (the Global Migration Barometer), with a separate assessment of Index (MIPEX) and MGI
6
5
their need for migrants. that were developed for
5 The Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) is a unique tool which measures
policies to integrate migrants in countries across six continents, including all EU international migration and
Member States (including the UK), other European countries (Albania, Iceland, used as strategic tools by
North Macedonia, Moldova, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland, Russia, Turkey and countries to measure and
Ukraine), Asian countries (China, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Saudi
Arabia, South Korea, United Arab Emirates), North American countries (Canada, evaluate policies and practices
Mexico and the US), South American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile), South (Aggarwal et al, 2020).
Africa, and Australia and New Zealand in Oceania. Building on the Migration
6 The Migration Governance Indicators (MGI) is a tool based on policy inputs, which Policy Integration Index
offers insights on policy levers that countries can use to develop their migration
governance. (Huddleston et al., 2015),

October, 2022, Volume 23. No.2 - SHELTER 41