Chris Arnot
Immigration has long generated more heat than light; prejudice and rumour are rife. But Richard Black, professor of human geography at Sussex University, has made it his business to accumulate factual data to inform policy decisions in this country and further afield.
Black is the director of the development research centre on migration, globalisation and poverty, funded by the Department for International Development, which draws together research partners in Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana and Albania.
"We're setting up a global database of migrant origin," he says. "It's a piece of detective work, bringing together all the statistical data in a comparable format. We've trawled through censuses in well over 100 countries, looking for stocks of foreign-born population. Now we're trying to establish a 226x226 matrix - that's the number of countries and dependent territories in the world, as recognised by the UN - to build up a complete picture of population flows."
The ultimate aim is to assess the impact of migration on global welfare. "We're still refining it," he says, "but the World Bank has already used our interim data to assess the consequences of a 3% rise in mobility from the developing to the developed world between now and 2025. I think their figures are plausible, and they show a net benefit to the global economy of $365bn (£196bn)."
Not much doubt, then, about the economic benefits of migration on a macro level. "But we're also interested in the micro level," Black says. "We're tracking individual migrants, with the help of our research partners. They're all in countries with significant external and internal migration. Albania, for instance, has lost a million people since 1989 - a third of the population."
As might be expected, some migrants thrive, while others become victim to ruthless employers. "Our Bangladeshi partners are developing a code of conduct for recruitment agencies, particularly those bringing Bangladeshi workers into the Gulf," says Black. "One route towards solving the problem of abuse is to work with responsible operators as a way of trying to drive up standards."
Black hesitates to say that he is out to put the positive side of immigration into the UK. "We're giving the facts," he says. "But we are trying to get the immigration debate broadened, so that we look at the implications for developing countries as well as for our own."
By not plundering doctors and nurses for the benefit of our National Health Service, for instance? "Yes. Except even that debate isn't as simple as people assume. The proposed solution would be to recruit only from certain countries. That means that if you happen to be a doctor from Malawi, you're discriminated against, unlike a doctor from India or America.
"Research we've done through our partners in Ghana suggests that medical staff want to migrate for career and training advancement, rather than money. They don't want to be cut off from advances in medicine. We're now looking at ways of maintaining the health systems of poor countries while taking in global migration trends."
Not every problem has an easy solution, Black stresses. "Doubling the pay of Ghanaian doctors did nothing to stop them emigrating," he says. "All it did was to increase discontent among nurses. What's needed is a significant increase in training programmes. As it is, a country of 30 million people is training about as many doctors as we do at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. Our centre is not just about academic research. We want to make a difference to policy elsewhere as well as in the UK." Shedding some light while reducing the heat.