Examining the Benefits of International Migration Ventures: The Statistics from Ghana

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume IV, Issue VII, July 2020 | ISSN 2454–6186

Examining the Benefits of International Migration Ventures: The Statistics from Ghana

Isaac Addai
University of Education, Winneba, Ghana

Abstract: – The role that international migrants can play in promoting development in their home countries has been at the core of migration research over the past five decades in Africa. There is however rare research conducted, examining the views of these international migrants on the benefits of their migration venture long after returning to their origin country. Using the Respondent Driven Sampling, the paper investigates the views of former international migrants known in the Ghanaian parlance as Burgers as to whether their international migration venture had been beneficial to them long after resettling back home.The mean years after respondents returned to their country of origin is 28. The earliest year of respondents returning was 31 years and the latest year of returning was 25 years as at the time of survey. 69 Burgers representing 90 percent of the respondents surveyed on average of 28 years after returning from an international migration to Ghana the country of origin, view their migration venture as not being beneficial to them. The paper is a pace-setter in promoting theoretical advances in the analysis of the impact of international migration on African countries in general and on Ghana in particular.

Keywords: Investigation, International migration, Burger, Beneficial, Impact, Years, Ghana.

I. INTRODUCTION

Migration issues have assumed major research concerns in economic sociology in recent times. The (UN General Assembly 2015) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development concern itself for the first time with migration issues by including migration issues within the global development agenda and acknowledging the importance and contributions of migrants to sustainable development by specially referencing migration issues in six of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).Migration studies on the African continent have also received increased attention in the last five decades. The role that international migrants can play in promoting economic development in their home countries have been at the core of migration research over these periods. These international migration studies on Africa are cast in potential positive effects in the form of remittances, knowledge transfers and investments by international migrants. Researchers have published the optimistic stance claiming African international migration have been regarded as a strategy to overcome constraints in terms of access to financial, human, and to some extent social capital, especially in countries where credit markets are imperfect and access to formal education is limited, (de Haas 2010).

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