Research conducted by the Migrating Out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium, has shown that 70% of migrants from the Northern part of Ghana believe migration has enhanced their lives.
Speaking at a media training workshop at the Centre for Migration Studies in Accra on Thursday, Director of the consortium, Professor Mariama Awumbila, explained that “often we see migration as something negative, but the research has pointed out that in some circumstances migration can have a positive impact.”
“With these positive impacts in mind, what we all have to do is to focus on how we can enhance the benefits of migration, while reducing the risk and cost of migration. We know that migration has negative parts, but how do we enhance the more positive parts as a country”.
According to her, the research also pointed to the fact that, remittance is one of the positive associations between migration and the improvement of the socio-economic well-being of migrants and their families. In this area, the research showed that women migrants were remitting more than men.
The research, which started in 2015, focused on migrants from Volta, Central, Brong-Ahafo and the three Northern Regions. The main aim of the research was to find the relationship between migration and poverty, and how migration can be used as a strategy for poverty reduction in Ghana.
Placing much emphasis on migrants from the three Northern Regions, Professor Awumbila said migration has enhanced the lives of their households back in the North.
“This was one of the key findings which proved that migration can bring about some economic and social benefit even though it also has some sort of negative benefits”.
In an interview with citifmonline.com, Professor Awumbila noted that, after the research, her outfit found out that, when people move from the rural areas to the urban areas, they mostly get involved in low paid vicarious sectors such as domestic and construction work.
Another key area the research highlighted on was the services some recruitment agencies offered for migrants. Surprisingly, the research showed that a lot of these recruitment agencies do in fact help the domestic workers when they move to Accra.
“Often, the literature sees recruitment agencies as very bad people, but our research proved otherwise. I think that as a country the best we can do is to regulate these industries so that they can perform a more positive role” she added.
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
