The World Development Report 2009 emphasises that migration brings benefits both for target regions and home regions. The report describes target regions ideally as those locations where industry is growing and new high-tech services are prospering. They can benefit from well qualified immigrants. Yet emigration also has positive effects in the home regions. This macro-economic analysis only partly covers the complexity of migration as it is taking place in developing countries. It should take a broader scope, cover the viewpoint of the migrant households and pay greater attention to the peculiarities of non-permanent migration. The analyses made in the World Development Report are not fully comprehensive, which affects the quality of the recommendations it makes.

Professor Dr Einhard Schmidt-Kallert
Technische Universität Dortmund Faculty of Spatial Planning,
Department of Spatial Planning in Developing Countries
Dortmund, Germany
einhard.schmidt-kallert@tu-dortmund.de