The World Bank Migration and Remittances in Europe and Central Asia

Session 3 *** Thursday, April 2, 2009

Migration and Remittance Management in Crisis Times:

How can ‘sending’ and ‘hosting’ countries collaborate

for the benefit of migrant workers?

This third session in this series will provide a forum for its participants for a cross-country discussion on what “hosting” and “sending” countries could do to support migrant workers and promote migration with better outcomes, particularly in times of economic crisis.

For sending countries, such as the Philippines, the discussion will focus in particular on the policies that would slow outward migration; training workers for improved skills at home and abroad; improving payment systems; and mobilizing a country's diaspora. For “hosting” counties, efforts to provide social protection and ensure employment are complicated by the increased demands on social transfers and employment generation demanded by their own citizens, and the resultant effects on the political debate regarding migrant workers, particularly those that may be undocumented. This exchange of experiences will also touch upon issues of what has worked and has not worked in the context of examples and lessons learned from other countries and regions.

The event has been structured to provide a maximum amount of time for discussion between participating sites, both during the video conference and in the pre-video conference workshop to be held at each site, the results of which will be recorded by each site via the internet and discussed at the opening of the video conference..

The one-hour pre-video conference workshops start promptly at 01:00 a.m. Washington time

and at the following times at participating locations:

Chisinau 08:00 Moscow 09:00 Yerevan 10:00 Dushanbe 10:00

Perm’ 11:00 Almaty 11:00 Bishkek 11:00 Manila 1:00 PM

Topic for the pre-video conference workshops

Ø  What can sending countries do to increase the quantity and quality of the jobs their migrants receive?

Ø  What sort of arrangements with hosting countries would be appropriate and effective?

Pre-conference discussion continues directly into video conference, which starts at 02:00 a.m. Washington time. Total event time 2.5 hours

Program Producers

At World Bank, Washington: GDLN Studio2, Room MC-C2-123

Discussants: Ms. Patricia A. Sto. Tomas, Chairman of the Board, Development Bank of the Philippines

Prof. Ernesto Pernia and Dr. Editha Tan, School of Economics, University of Philippines;

Program Leader: Mr. Sudharshan Canagarajah, Lead Economist, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Dept, Europe and Central Asia Region, World Bank;

Program Moderator: Mr. Gary Fine, Regional GDLN Coordinator, Europe and Central Asia Region, World Bank

WB participant Mr. Neil Ruiz, Migration specialist, development prospects group (DECPG)

Program Agenda

Washington time zone

01:00 Pre-video conference local workshops All sites linked through Adobe

02:00 Greetings and brief discussion with sites on Mr. Sudharshan Canagarajah results of the pre-conference workshop Mr. Gary Fine

(based on online responses)

02:30 What sending countries could do to improve migration outcomes (Philippines)

Philippine experts will discuss country’s policies to support its workers abroad, what are the policies of countries hosting its workers and what are the arrangements between them, with comment by other Philippine participants in Manila.

02:45-04:00 Are the policies of the Philippines appropriate for the CIS countries?

Moderated discussion between the sites will focus on the relevancy of the Philippine policies and those of hosting countries in Asia for the CIS, and if so, how can they be adapted to the CIS reality and implemented?

Participating Countries/GDLN Affiliates*

City/Country / Participating GDLN Affiliate or World Bank Country Office / Local World Bank Program Facilitator
or local GDLN affiliate contact
Bishkek, Kyrgyz Rep. / World Bank Country Office / Mr. Damir Esenaliev
Chisinau, Moldova / Moldovan Academy of Sciences (MAS) / Mr. Victor Neagu; Ms. Natalia Rusu (MAS)
Dushanbe, Tajikistan / World Bank Country Office / Mr. Utkir Umarov
Moscow, Russian Federation / World Bank Country Office / Mr. Andrei Markov; Mr. Sergei Gradirovsky
Perm’, Russian Federation / Perm’ State Technical University / Ms. Nadezhda Dicheskul
Yerevan, Armenia / American University of Armenia (AUA) / Mr. Aghassi Mkrtchyan;
Mr. Igor Mkrtumyan, (AUA)

*GDLN, or the Global Development Learning Network, is a partnership of distance learning centers worldwide dedicated to development. This event is coordinated by the Modern Humanities University, GDLN affiliate, Moscow, Russia.

Can’t join us? View the live webcast --> http://webcast-ext.worldbank.org/streaming/live.ram

Speaker Profiles

Ms. Patricia A.Sto. Tomas is currently Chairman of the Board of the Development Bank of the Philippines. Prior to this appointment, Ms. Sto. Tomas was a Secretary of the Department of Labor and Employment, where she reoriented the department towards achieving its core mandates of employment facilitation, and worker's welfare and protection. Ms. Sto. Tomas was the first head of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration when it was established in 1982, and in that capacity she led the formulation of policies and standards to govern the employment of Filipinos abroad, and helped establish innovative and protective mechanisms that became a model for other countries sending workers overseas. Ms. Sto. Tomas holds an M.S. degree from the University of the Philippines at Los Baños and a Masters degree in Public Administration from Harvard University.

Mr. Ernesto M. Pernia is Professor of Economics at the School of Economics, University of Philippines. He currently also serves as Director of Public Affairs at the University of Philippines and Vice-Chair at the division of Social Sciences and the National Research Council of Philippines. Mr. Pernia has held a number of senior positions at the ADB, ILO and as Fellow and Research Associate at various universities in the US and Philippines. He is the author of publications on a range of issues related to development economics, population and human resource economics, and urban and regional economics. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Mr. Neil Ruiz, a migration specialist at the World Bank’s development prospects group, has written a number of migration policy briefs with the Brooking Institute and Migration Policy Institute, and has worked as a teaching assistant and fellow assistant at MIT and Harvard University. Neil holds his Master’s Degree in economic history from Oxford University and is currently pursuing his PhD in political economy and international migration from MIT.

Mr. Sudharshan Canagarajah, a Lead Economist in the Europe and Central Asia Region (ECA) of the World Bank, is currently in charge of economic policy matters for Tajikistan. He has been with the World Bank for about fifteen years in several positions in different world regions and has published extensively in economic growth, fiscal policy, poverty, public expenditure and labor market issues. Mr. Canagarajah is currently involved in extensive analytical and policy work on migration and economic growth issues in ECA. He holds a PhD in economics from Cambridge University.

Mr. Gary Fine is the Regional GDLN Coordinator and a Senior Private Sector Development Specialist in the Office of the Regional Vice President, Europe and Central Asia Region, where he also serves as the region’s coordinator for the Global Development Learning Network (GDLN) and the GDLN Eurasia network of distance learning partners. Mr. Fine, a Russian speaker and former Wall Street investment banker, has many years’ experience working on private sector and capital markets development issues in the CIS countries. He holds a Master degree in Business Administration (MBA) from Columbia University.

Reading Material

ftp://repec.iza.org/RePEc/Discussionpaper/dp2871.pdf

http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?ID=191

For additional information, please contact:

Sudharshan Canagarajah, program team leader, , tel. +1 202 473 4458

Gary Fine, ECA regional GDLN coordinator, , tel. +1 202 473 4741

Matin Kholmatov, Consultant, , tel: +1 202 473 0277