Research
Migration Trends In The Americas
Contributor, February 2025
The Migration Trends in the Americas report (Oct–Dec 2024) highlights the evolving dynamics of human mobility across the region. While the U.S. and Canada remain major destinations, migration within Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has grown rapidly—driven largely by Venezuelan displacement, now accounting for over 6.8 million people across the Americas. Intraregional (South-South) movements are approaching parity with migration flows to North America, especially when excluding Mexican nationals. Regular migration continues to be the dominant form, with countries like Colombia, Chile, and Canada issuing millions of residence permits to support migrant integration. Meanwhile, irregular migration through dangerous transit routes like the Darién Gap saw notable declines in late 2024, although risks and fatalities remain high.
The report also highlights the vital role of remittances—reaching $136 billion in 2024—in supporting economies and households across the region, often surpassing foreign investment and aid. Taken together, the data and trends presented offer a broad snapshot of regional mobility, providing a foundation for reflection, cooperation, and response in a rapidly evolving migration context.
Data Insights Into Belgium’s Remittance Landscape: Trends and Drivers
Lead Researcher, June 2024
Belgium stands as a key contributor within the global remittance landscape, showcasing remarkable growth in remittance outflows over the last two decades. This is supplemented by Belgium’s varied demographic profile, where migrants alongside second-generation migrants, account for more than a third of the Belgium’s population in 2022. Remittances serve as an essential lifeline, providing crucial financial support to family members of migrants in the remittance recipient countries. Given Belgium’s considerable remittance outflows and its substantial migrant population, understanding the dynamics of remittance flows becomes necessary.
This study systematically analyzes Belgium’s remittance landscape, utilizing data from diverse sources to explore trends and drivers, employing an two-step GMM with instrumental variables (IV) approach. The research focused on estimating bilateral remittance outflows to 102 corridors and assessing the impact of various determinants
Market Analysis of Remittance Costs in Belgium
Lead Researcher, June 2024
The market analysis part of the O-REMIT project, implemented by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on behalf of the Belgian Directorate-General for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid, offers a comprehensive exploration of remittance transaction costs from Belgium to various international corridors. The market analysis, encompassed data collection from August to November 2023, and yielded critical insights into the dynamics of transaction costs in the realm of international money transfers from Belgium, a field where data is considerably lacking.
This report highlights the pressing need for more detailed data on the transaction costs associated with remittances from Belgium. During the development of the report, it was notable the significant data gap on transaction costs of remittances in Belgium, highlighting the critical role of having higher availability of transaction cost data. Although the data provides a snapshot limited to the specific period of data collection, it crucially points to Belgium’s challenges in meeting the SDG 10.c. This goal strives to reduce transaction costs below 3% and to eliminate corridors with costs above 5% by 2030.
Essentials of Migration Data
Contributor, 2024
The Essentials of Migration Data (EMD) is based on a comprehensive review of available manuals, toolkits and guidelines from IOM, other international organizations, national statistical offices and academic institutions and on a number of consultations with data experts from IOM, other international organisations and national statistical offices. While the guide is primarily aimed at government stakeholders seeking to improve the dissemination of migration data and statistics at the national level, it will also be useful to practitioners from IOM and other international organizations, engaged in migration data capacity-building projects.
Manual on Child-Specific Data Capacity Strengthening on Children on the Move
Contributor, 2023
The Manual on Child-Specific Data Capacity Strengthening on Children on the Move is the result of a highly collaborative and multi-step effort that involved multiple members of the cross-sectoral International Data Alliance for Children on the Move (IDAC). It was conceptualized and developed by IDAC’s Working Group 1, which is led by the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) and focuses on national data capacity-strengthening to ensure that migrant and displaced children are counted and seen in policy and programme design.
The manual aims to help countries and their national statistical systems to improve the collection, analysis, sharing and use of data on children on the move. It provides analytical guidance to national statistical authorities and relevant actors on how to acquire or enhance the appropriate capacity to collect data on migrant and displaced children, in compliance with the United Nations’ Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics. It also shares several country experiences regarding migration data flows and official statistics.
Las Características y el Desarrollo de la Economía Popular Un Modelo Formal con Evidencia Etnográfica
Contributor, March 2018
This paper explores the reasons underlying the economic prosperity of certain popular merchants in Bolivia. Even if economics often associates popular merchants with poor economic performance and low productivity, anthropological evidence shows the existence of large fortunes in the Bolivian popular economy (Tassi et al., 2013). The paper develops a formal model which traces back the origin of this prosperity in the coopetitive capacity (competitive plus cooperative) of popular merchants built upon the sharing of input costs. The paper argues that the coopetitive capacity of these actors is based on social networks of godfatherhood weaved at popular celebrations, which is documented with ethnographic evidence.