As part of Prateep Nayak’s INDEV 101 class, Margaret Walton-Roberts, an associate professor in the Geography and Environmental studies department at Wilfred Laurier University and associate director of the International Migration Research Centre, spoke about her research in migration and development.
Margaret entered her current field of study while doing research in Vancouver as a graduate student. There, she interviewed people working in small businesses, which included six individuals in the construction industry. While speaking with these workers, she learned about their families and their migration experiences from India to Canada. She was fascinated by their connections to their home villages, and how they continued to invest money with plans to go back and visit their homes. This fascination motivated Margaret’s future research, where she studied Indian Migration, immigrant settlement in mid-sized Canadian cities and the impact of transnational networks in both source and destination locales.
Migration in the 1970’s often had a “brain drain” on the source country. Skilled migrants would emigrate to destination locales which would negatively effect the country of origin. However, Margaret has noticed a phenomenon she calls “Brain Chain/Gain” in present day. Today, there are more diasporas migrants (and their descendants) who maintain a relationship, from psychological to material, with their country of origin. These diasporas have become powerful actors in the money flow to source countries.
Margaret researches from a transnational perspective, meaning her research puts a particular emphasis on thoughts and actions that cross national frontiers. Transnationalism picked up in the 90’s and now has moved into migration development issues all over the world. Margaret says, “[t]he future of this research is to have a global understanding of migration and how it relates to policy and governance. This global understanding will take into consideration individual countries own policies, but realize that the issue of migration spans beyond a country’s borders.” To assume that migration is beneficial without examining the effects on the source country is an ineffective way of governing migration just as education and training individuals who leave the source country and add to the “brain drain” is an ineffective policy method.