Migration and financial transfers: UK-Somalia

Refuge

Volumn 23, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 20-27

  Lindley, Anna ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

FORCED MIGRATION; INCOME DISTRIBUTION; LABOR MIGRATION; MIGRANTS REMITTANCE; REFUGEE;

AFRICA; EAST AFRICA; EURASIA; EUROPE; SOMALIA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 33746400566     PISSN: 02295113     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (57)

1. Financial transfers to Somalia are estimated at between US$700 million and $1 billion per year, US$360 million of which are estimated to go to family members for food, shelter, clothing, schooling, health care, and other necessities; see Abdusalam Omer and Gina El Koury, "Regulation and Supervision in a Vacuum: The Story of the Somali Remittance Sector," Small Enterprise Development 15 (2004): 44-52.
2. International assistance to Somalia totalled US$271,604,400 in 2003, according to Somalia Aid Co-ordination Body, Donor Report 2003 (Nairobi: SACB, 2004).
3. Somali migrants in richer countries also send money to family members in other countries, particularly Egypt, Ethiopia, and Kenya. Somalis in the UK transfer around US$12 million per month to Somalia, according to Abdusalam Omer, A Report on Supporting Systems and Procedures for the Effective Regulation and Monitoring of Somali Remittance Companies (Nairobi: UNDP, 2002).
4. The basis for this estimate of remittances from the UK is unclear andwould seem to be based on estimates from remittance companies, and is likely subject to a wide margin of error. The UK's total bilateral assistance to Somalia is around US$15 million for the year 2004-05; see Department for International Development, Press Release: UK provides more funding to Somalia's humanitarian needs, London: DFID, (accessed December 3, 2004).
5. For example, Dilip Ratha, "Workers' Remittances: An Important and Stable Source of Development Finance," in Global Development Finance, ed. The World Bank (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2003). 157-75.
6. Relevant work includes: Nadje Al-Ali, Richard Black, and Khalid Koser, "Refugees and Transnationalism: The Experience of Bosnians and Eritreans in Europe," Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 27 (2001): 615-34;
7. Nicholas Van Hear, "Sustaining Societies under Strain: Remittances as a Form of Transnational Exchange in Sri Lanka and Ghana," in New Approaches to Migration? Transnational Communities and the Transformation of Home, ed. Nadje Al-Ali and Khalid Koser (London: Routledge, 2002);
8. Cindy Horst, Transnational Nomads: How Somalis Cope with Refugee Life in the Dadaab Camps of Kenya (PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam, 2003);
9. Paul Collier, Policy for Post-Conflict Societies: Reducing the Risks of Renewed Conflict (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2000);
10. Stephanie Riak Akuei, "Remittances as Unforeseen Burdens: The Livelihoods and Social Obligations of Sudanese Refugees (report in the series Global Migration Perspectives, ed. Jeff Crisp and Khalid Koser, Global Commission on International Migration, Geneva, 2005).
11. Considering Displacement, Family and Resettlement Contexts in Refugee Livelihood and Well Being. Is There Anything States or Organisations Can Do?" (London: University College London, 2004).
12. From 1969, the country was ruled by General Siyad Barre, whose "scientific socialist" regime retained power in latter years through a mixture of repression, manipulation of clan affiliations, and harvesting geopolitical rent from the Cold War superpowers. Civil war broke out in the north in 1988, and Barre was ousted in the south in 1991.
13. See UNDP, Human Development Report 2001 Somalia (Nairobi: UNDP, 2001). Recent population estimates vary considerably, which indicates just how circumspect you have to be about statistics on Somalia.
14. Ninna Nyberg Sørensen, "Opportunities and Pitfalls in the Migration-Development Nexus: Somaliland and Beyond" (DIIS Working Paper 2004/21, Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen, 2004).
15. Shamis Hussein, "Somalis in London," in The Peopling of London, ed. Nancy Merriman (London: Museum of London, 1993) 163-68;
16. Save the Children Fund Wales Division, The Somali Community in Cardiff (Cardiff: Save the Chidren Fund, 1994).
17. See Home Office, Control of Immigration Statistics United Kingdom 2003 (London: The Stationery Office, 2004). A grant of settlement allows someone subject to immigration control to remain in the UK indefinitely and is described as "the main available measure of longer term immigration of persons subject to immigration control." Since 1998, people recognized as refugees are simultaneously granted settlement and those granted Exceptional Leave to Remain can apply for settlement after four years' residence with that status.
18. Around two-thirds of Somali asylum applications that received an initial decision in 2003 were refused, but many will succeed on appeal. See Home Office, Control of Immigration Statistics United Kingdom 200,
19. and Anushka Asthana, "Living in Fear: My Week with the Hidden Asylum Seekers," Observer, March 28, 2004.
20. Katrine Bang Nielsen, "Next Stop Britain: The Influence of Transnational Networks on the Secondary Movement of Danish Somalis" (Working Paper No. 22,: Sussex Centre for Migration Research, Falmer, March 2004).
21. Field notes, December 2004;
22. David J. Griffiths, Somalis and Kurds in London: New Identities in the Diaspora (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002);
23. and E. Silveira and P. Allebeck, "Migration, Ageing and Mental Health: An Ethnographic Study in Perceptions of Life Satisfaction, Anxiety and Depression in Older Somali Men in East London," International Journal of Social Welfare 10 (2001): 309-20.
24. Interviews.
25. Interviews.
26. Field notes, August 2004.
27. Field notes, March, April, and December 2004;
28. and David Phelps, Dee DePass, and Joy Powell, "Minnesota Somalis Send Millions Back to East Africa," Star Tribune, November 19, 2000.
29. J.E. Taylor, "The New Economics of Labour Migration and the Role of Remittances in the Migration Process," International Migration 37 (1999): 63-86.
30. Oded Stark and Robert Lucas, "Migration, Remittances and the Family," Economic Development and Cultural Change 36 (1988): 465-81.
31. See references in note 3;
32. also Cindy Horst, Money and Mobility: Transnational Livelihood Strategies of the Somali Diaspora, Global Migration Perspectives No.9 (Geneva: Global Commission on International Migration, 2004).
33. Khalid Medani, Report in Internal Migration and Remittance Inflows: Northwest and Northeast Somalia (Nairobi: UN Coordination Unit and Food Security Assessment Unit, 2000), 16.
34. Lucy Hannon, A Gap in Their Hearts: The Experience of Separated Somali Children children (Nairobi: Integrated Regional Information Networks, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2003) (emphasis added].
35. Sylvia Chant and Sarah A. Radcliffe, "Migration and Development: The Importance of Gender," in Gender and Migration in Developing Countries, ed. S. Chant. (London: Behaven Press, 1992).
36. Interviews; Lucy Hannon, A Gap in Their Heart;
37. and Cindy Horst, Transnational Nomads.
38. Nicholas Van Hear, New Diasporas (London: UCL Press, 1998);
39. Anthony H. Richmond, Global Apartheid: Refugees, Racism and the New World Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
40. Interview, April 2004;
41. and Lucy Hannon, A Gap in Their Hearts, 64.
42. Lucy Hannon, A Gap in Their Hearts [emphasis added].
43. .
44. Nicholas Van Hear, From Durable Solutions to Transnational Relations: Home and Exile among Refugee Diasporas (Geneva: New Issues in Refugee Research, UNCHR, 2003).
45. The price for smuggling a girl from Somalia to Italy is $7,000, comparedwith $3,500 to other European countries; see Sørensen. comparedwith $3,500 to other European countries; see Sørensen.
46. Gary Becker, "A Theory of Social Interactions," Journal of Political Economy 82 (1974): 1,063-1,093;
47. Andres Solimano, "Workers' Remittances to the Andean Region: Mechanisms, Costs and Development Impact" (Conference on Remittances and Development, Multilateral Investment Fund - Inter-American Development Bank, May 2003, Quito, Ecuador);
48. B. Poirine, "A Theory of Remittances as an Implicit Family Loan Arrangement," World Development 25 (1997): 589-611;
49. Oded Stark and David E. Bloom, "The New Economics of Labor Migration;"
50. and Oded Stark and Robert Lucas, "Migration, Remittances and the Family."
51. Ismail I. Ahmed, "Remittances and Their Economic Impact in Post-war Somaliland," Disasters 24 (2000): 380-89.
52. Jennifer Hyndman, Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 151.
53. She quotes Doreen Massey, Space, Place and Gender (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994)
54. Field notes.
55. Interviews.
56. Interview, November 2003. A man told me about one rotating fund in really enthusiastic detail: he was hoping to join, but was not sure if the women would trust him, as he is a man.
57. Jeff Crisp, Policy Challenges of the New Diasporas: Migrant Networks and Their Impact on Asylum Flows and Regimes (Oxford: Transnational Communities Programme, 1999).