How Immigrants Contribute to the Dominican Republic's Economy is the result of a project carried out by the OECD Development Centre and the International Labour Organization, with support from the European Union.

How Immigrants Contribute to Developing Countries' Economies is the result of a project carried out by the OECD Development Centre and the International Labour Organization, with support from the European Union. The report covers the ten project partner countries.

Popular notions about migration to the United States from Latin America and the Caribbean are too often distorted by memories of earlier European migrations and by a tendency to generalize from the more familiar cases of Mexico and Puerto Rico. Between Two Islands is an interdisciplinary study of Dominican migration, challenging many widespread, yet erroneous, views concerning the socio-economic background of new immigrants and the causes and consequences of their move to the United States. Eschewing monocausal treatments of migration, the authors insist that migration is a multifaceted process involving economic, political, and socio-cultural factors. To this end, they introduce an innovative analytical framework which includes such determinants as the international division of labor; state policy in the sending and receiving societies; class relations; transnational migrant households; social networks; and gender and generational hierarchies. By adopting this multidimensional approach, Grasmuck and Pessar are able to account for many intriguing paradoxes of Dominican migration and development of the Dominican population in the U.S. For example, why is it that the peak in migration coincided with a boom in Dominican economic growth? Why did most of the immigrants settle in New York City at the precise moment the metropolitan economy was experiencing stagnation and severe unemployment? And why do most immigrants claim to have achieved social mobility and middle-class standing despite employment in menial blue-collar jobs? Until quite recently, studies of international migration have emphasized the male migrant, while neglecting the role of women and their experiences. Grasmuck and Pessar's attempt to remedy this uneven perspective results in a better overall understanding of Dominican migration. For instance, they find that with regard to wages and working conditions, it is a greater liability to be female than to be without legal status. They also show that gender influences attitudes toward settlement, return, and workplace struggle. Finally, the authors explore some of the paradoxes created by Dominican migration. The material success achieved by individual migrant households contrasts starkly with increased socio-economic inequality in the Dominican Republic and polarized class relations in the United States. This is an exciting and important work that will appeal to scholars and policymakers interested in immigration, ethnic studies, and the continual reshaping of urban America.

The Dominican Republic stands out as a fast growing economy that has not been able to generate a commensurate reduction in poverty. Three reasons have been raised before to explain this conundrum: (i) a labor market that does not translate productivity gains into salary increases; (ii) a domestic economy with weak inter-sectoral linkages; (iii) and a public sector that does not spend enough nor particularly well to reduce poverty. In addition, the country remains largely exposed to natural disasters and exogenous shocks that, if not mitigated properly, may affect the sustainability of growth in the medium and longer terms. This book assembles a collection of empirical analyses that explore three complementary hypotheses that could help understand why the Dominican Republic continues, to this date, experiencing high economic growth rates with limited poverty reduction. The first hypothesis is concerned with testing whether the observed pattern of fast economic growth cum persistent poverty in the DR is partly driven by a poverty methodology that does not account for price variation that affects distinctly the consumption patterns of low-income and better-off households. If that hypothesis holds, the DR may face a situation in which household income for households at the bottom of the distribution is underestimated. The second hypothesis tests whether the pattern of specialization in the DR might be such that it does not favor unskilled labor. If that hypothesis holds, then returns to capital are probably much higher than returns to labor which would be an indication that the DR has had a comparative advantage in products that are capital intensive instead of labor-intensive. The third hypothesis investigates whether poverty and wage inequality in the DR are affected not only by immigration but also by emigration. The contribution of the volume, therefore, lies in precisely offering a more careful exploration of specific issues around common explanations for the shortcomings of the DR in reducing poverty on a faster basis.

Using Dominicans in New York City as a case study, Ramona Hern?ndez challenges the old belief that workers necessarily migrate from one region to another because of supply and demand or because of a de facto government policy to make people leave or stay. As a result, she shows that the traditional correlation between migration and economic progress does not always hold true.

How Immigrants Contribute to South Africa’s Economy is the result of a project carried out by the OECD Development Centre and the International Labour Organization, with support from the European Union.