“Migrations, remittances and local development in Southern countries: Dutch disease or residential economy?â€Â

In developing countries, the contribution of the growing amount of migrant remittances to development remains an unsettled issue. At the macroeconomic level remittances do represent an external flow way above official aid and often in line with FDI. Hence the widely shared optimistic view about this until now “hidden source of development financeâ€Â. At the microeconomic level remittances raise incomes and have an impact on consumption expenses and therefore on welfare. They can also finance investment in productive assets, such as physical capital and more conspicuously, human capital through education and health expenses. They can therefore improve the resilience of concerned household livelihoods, although it is not granted that remittances necessarily accrue to the poorest households. Remittances on the whole have an impact on poverty abatement but this impact can vary widely. At the meso-economic level relevant data show that migration and remittances concentrate in specific place, raising the issue of their contribution to local development of concerned areas. Concerning the impact of productive investments financed by remittances, picture is rather contrasted with contradictory results from various case-studies. Staying at the meso level, we will compare in this paper two models which have been used, albeit tentatively, to assess the contribution of remittances to local development. • Dutch disease approach, in its sub-national version which features the impact of remittances on real exchange rate. • Residential economy approach which rest on the use of a Keynesian export multiplier applied at an area level to an “economic base†which can be productive but also residential, remittances being considered as a component of this residential basis. These two approaches predict changes in the system of activities due to remittances. However their vision of the consequences of these changes diverge. Their comparative analysis can allow for the identification of key factors of remittance capability to shape a local development path. To achieve that, we shall draw from the huge literature on remittances relating to various countries as well as public statistical data bases.

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION FROM SOUTHERN COUNTRIES RURAL AREAS : WHICH IMPACT ON AGRICULTURAL AND RURAL SUSTAINABILITY ?

N° ISBN - 978-2-7380-1284-5International audienceRelationship between migration, development and agriculture is an old issue which dates back to Lewis and his analysis of rural-urban migration in developing countries. The economic analysis of migration (especially the so-called new economics of labour migration – NELM) has strong connections with the microeconomics of peasant or rural households. NELM particularly focuses on contracts between migrants and their remaining family or community, which leads to remittances. These migrant networks have also been analysed, using the tools of economic sociology or social capital theory, applied to Southern rural societies. If rural migrants in southern countries keep going to the burgeoning cities of most of these countries, Southern rural migration is nowadays very often an international migration, either southsouth or south-north as international migrants coming from the south are mostly rural. Consequently remittances constitutes now a rapidly growing macroeconomic component of the balance of payments of these countries, but also of the non-farm income of rural areas, raising the issue of their contribution to development and poverty alleviation either at a national or local level. In its 2008 WDR on agriculture and development , the World Bank states that migration is one of three possible exits from poverty for rural households, along with the rise of smallholder agriculture productivity and wage opportunities in rural areas. On the other side, in some places, rural livelihoods tend to be more and more disconnected from farm income and agriculture, international migration reinforcing this trend. This paper would like to address the issue of relationship between the development of international migration and its impact on rural and agricultural sustainability. First it will present the main quantitative data on international migration and remittances in Southern countries rural areas. Second it will make a state-of-the-art survey of the debate on relationship between international migration and development. Third, on this basis, it will assess its impact on agricultural and rural sustainability, either social, economic or environmental. It will conclude that, although the impact of migration and remittances on agricultural development is contrasted, international migration and corresponding remittances can broaden the array of opportunities for the population of some rural areas and thus contribute to local sustainabilit

L'homme et l'animal dans le bassin du lac Tchad

La mobilité des hommes et de leur bétail est une caractéristique ancienne et toujours vivace dans certaines régions d'Afrique semi-aride : des recherches en géographie et en anthropologie ont montré comment la mobilité des troupeaux et des hommes se développe dans des milieux naturels et sociaux aux ressources incertaines. Dans le cas de la plaine du Logone à l'Extrème-Nord du Cameroun, des politiques économiques et des projets de développement ont bouleversé l'environnement pastoral : les terres communes pâturables, éléments importants dans la mobilité des troupeaux et des hommes, ont vu leur surface décroître au cours des vingt dernières années. L'accès à ces pâturages communs semblait réglé par des accords entre les éleveurs mobiles, les autorités coutumières, les agriculteurs et le pouvoir central. Mais d'autres règles émergent, le poids relatif de ces divers partenaires ayant évolué. L'analyse des coûts d'accès aux pâturages et à l'eau pour les pasteurs mobiles nous porte à nous interroger sur l'efficacité relative de ce mode d'élevage. Dans une approche historique et dans le contexte de développement de la zone étudiée, on tente d'identifier les modes de coordination entre les différents acteurs. (Résumé d'auteur

Chapitre 5 - Innovation et insertion sociale, réduire la vulnérabilité des populations rurales

L’innovation est aujourd’hui au centre de la réflexion sur les trajectoires de développement et de croissance au Nord comme au Sud. Cette importance se manifeste notamment par la référence constante au développement de « l’économie de la connaissance », portée par un faisceau de technologies de l’information et de la communication et qui conduit à un bouleversement des « paradigmes technologiques » au moins aussi majeur que..

Territoires – Identités – Patrimoine : une approche économique ?

Le territoire n’est pas au départ un concept économique, l’économie spatiale néo-classique étant largement a-territoriale. L’économie s’y est intéressée depuis environ deux décennies. Cet article s’interroge sur la place du territoire dans l’analyse économique, et sur son lien avec les concepts de patrimoine et d’identité. Développé par des courants hétérodoxes et institutionnalistes, il est parfois remis en cause par ces mêmes courants. Nous avançons que seul le passage par la qualification des biens et des actifs dans les processus de production et de consommation permet de lui donner un statut endogène, comme élément de définition d’une caractéristique de qualité. En effet le processus de qualification implique des références au patrimoine et à l’identité des acteurs, concepts également pris en compte par des économistes. La construction d’une identité territoriale est indissociable de l’action de groupes localisés qui construisent la patrimonialisation de certaines ressources exclusives. Ceci amène à relativiser largement la vision d’un patrimoine et d’une identité donnés a priori.Place is not at first sight an economic concept; mainstream spatial economics remains largely unconcerned by Place. Economics has taken an interest in it in the last twenty years. This paper deals with the role of place in economic analysis, and its relationship with the concepts of heritage and identity. Elaborated by heterodoxy and institutionalism in economics, it has been sometimes criticised by economists belonging to these very persuasions. We sustain that only qualifications processes of goods and assets in production and consumption give it an endogenous status as a marker of a quality characteristic. Actually qualification processes implies references to heritage and identity. The building of a territorial identity requires the collective action of place-specific groups who set up the heritage character of some exclusive resources. This largely questions the approach of a given heritage and identity

SYAL : UN NOUVEL OUTIL POUR LE DEVELOPPEMENT DE TERRITOIRES MARGINAUX. LES LEÇONS DE L'ALLIANCE DES AGRO-INDUSTRIES RURALES DE LA SELVA LACANDONA, CHIAPAS.

N° ISBN - 978-2-7380-1284-5International audienceSince its beginnings in the eighties, Rural Agro-Industry (RAI) has emerged as an effective way to fight against poverty in marginalized rural areas, because of its ability to contribute to the overall improvement of small producers' living conditions. This development tool has been completed in the nineties by the Localized Agri-food Systems concept (SYAL in French) and the process of their activation. From the experience of a RAI development project promoted in the Selva Lacandona (Chiapas, Mexico), we present some lessons learned from this development project. One of the principal results was to identify and define the conditions of RAI sustainability in the Selva Lacandona. If economics profitability of the micro-enterprises proved to be essential to ensure their viability, it does not seem central as it doesn't represent a real problem. On the other hand, two aspects appeared to be fundamental to guarantee the RAI sustainable development in such marginalized region: the necessity of a prior favorable environment, in particular trough the presence of functional local public goods, and the resolution of organization and leadership problems