Have you ever realized that leaving a city could actually have greater urban development impacts than living in a city? This is what we are going to investigate by looking at the consequences of migration and remittances on war-torn cities.

Once peace agreements are signed, every post-conflict country and city must tackle the same crucial challenges of reconstruction and combine their efforts with the development community’s usual suspects, namely UN organizations, governments of donor countries, development banks and NGOs. Millions of dollars are allocated through grants and loans to post-conflict countries during prestigious international conferences organized by the UN or the World Bank. Complete armies of highly recognized international experts and development workers spring into action, the bulk of NGOs and UN staff based in Kabul, Kinshasa or Prishtina move in. Hundreds of donor organization placards and logos are placed in front of brand new or freshly reconstructed buildings in Mostar highlighting their supportive role (‘this school was financed by the European Commission and UNDP’). All this might easily give the impression that the international community at large is the driving force behind any post-conflict recovery. This fails to take into account more informal and discreet types of key players who have a strong and durable impact, not only on building peace, but also on rebuilding war-torn cities’ urban and real estate fabric, local culture and local economy: the migrants.

At the same time that conflicts are taking
place, the number of vulnerable people whose survival relies on external resources increases dramatically. Once peace treaties are signed, their needs do not disappear. On the contrary, while it becomes pressing to reintegrate populations effected by war (especially refugees), a new type of war is creating additional victims: economic war, whose weapons are high unemployment and inflation rates, insignificant foreign investments, a destroyed industry and a non-existent banking system. Whether for political or economic reasons, legally or illegally, migrating to wealthier and safer cities during and after conflicts is the only survival strategy many people have found to cope with the lack of security, economic opportunity and housing in their city of origin, not to mention the chance to earn extra income which is typically sent back to their families.

This revenue – called financial remittances – represents tremendous amounts of money and can dramatically help local communities effected by war, ensure basic needs and foster economic recovery. With a single click on the internet, migrants can transmit their earnings to the other side of the planet via Western Union, even to remote or insecure areas NGOs and international organizations cannot reach. Those left behind use these funds to buy food and clothing, cover health and education expenses, and finance shelter construction, home repair, and the creation of small businesses. The boom of illegal settlements in many war-torn areas is certainly not foreign to this phenomenon. While the use of remittances focuses mainly on private needs, some collective initiatives have also emerged with transnational migrant networks pooling their resources through Home Town Associations and investing collectively in infrastructure projects that benefit the whole community, such as parks, schools and clinics.

According to the World Bank, recorded financial remittances sent to developing countries by migrants approached US$ 200 billion in 2006, surpassing by far the US$ 107 billion of aid in 2005 (i.e., aid assistance to developing countries from all donors, referred to as Official Development Assistance). This means that migrants contribute twice as much to the development of their countries and cities of origin than the entire donor community. The true size of remittances is estimated by some to be much larger, as a significant share of this flow is transferred through informal operators or hand carried by travelers and therefore officially invisible. Given these figures, we must wonder who really owns the reconstruction process reshaping war-torn cities and communities.

When remittances are calculated as a share of GDP, small countries, especially those effected by conflict or disaster, appear to be extremely dependant on migrants’ funds. Remittances represent over 20% of GDP in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Moldova and Haiti, and over 10% in Serbia & Montenegro, Lebanon, Albania and Tajikistan. Migrants coming from war-torn regions transfer their earnings at times when investment from the private sector has disappeared and international assistance has not yet been pledged or is insufficient. Also, despite the regular changes in their political status due to stricter immigration policies (switching status from internally displaced, to refugee, returnee, asylum seeker and deportee), migrants continue to move, legally or illegally, from one city to another even years after the end of the hostilities and continue to send money back to their families. This is an ongoing process which secures a minimum and reliable source of income for those who stayed behind. These remittances thus ensure the sustainability of development activities in cities of origin, compared to some NGOs or development organizations that leave the country or reduce their budget in favor of other conflict areas once the political situation stabilizes and the emergency phase is over.

The positive repercussions of migrants on their countries and cities of origin is not limited to money transfers alone. Social remittances should also be carefully considered. Flows of ideas, information, business contacts, new norms and values, know-how and skills can also reshape local cultures and societies. The migration of women from eastern Europe, for instance, contributed to the equalization of gender relation ships, as in the west these women are able to command higher incomes and in time have become more active decision makers.

There is currently an emerging consensus among international institutions and development experts that migrants have a huge and positive influence on their home countries. Some even argue that the potential benefits of migration outweigh those of a free international trade, especially for developing countries. A great deal of literature has been devoted to documenting and analyzing the economic outcomes of remittances and their social benefits. However, hardly any report has yet addressed the urban impact of migration and remittances on cities of origin (whether war-torn or otherwise). The rare chapters dealing with urban issues concentrate on destination cities in Europe and the US. 70 in Kinshasa (as compared to 71 MacDonald’s in Manhattan, according to the Yellow Pages).

Beyond countries, cities are at the heart of the flows of money, information, skills and social values generated by migrants. They are also the ones coping with the negative consequences of migratory movements in post-conflict contexts, such as housing shortages, high rents, land ownership disputes, repossessions (especially in the case of state-owned properties), infra structure pressures, the increase of illegal settlements, social fragmentation, and the migration of highly skilled people. On the one hand, migration has hugely positive and negative repercussions at the local level, and on the other, local authorities have neither the political power nor sufficient capacity and training to effectively cope with them.

Migration issues are officially handled by national governments and international organizations whose assistance is also based on the nation-state raison d’être. However, if they work closely with traditional development agencies and governments cities influenced by migration flows could legitimately emerge as new key pillars for the management of migrationrelated urban issues. The scope of today’s migration flows challenges existing institutions in terms of mandate, resources, effectiveness and coordination; it also challenges the nationstate paradigm. While the United Nations is currently debating the need for a renewed institutional framework for organizing inter national migration and its positive economic outcome at national and global levels, little attention is given to its urban impact at local level. In an effort to link migration with urban development and post-conflict reconstruction, local authorities, together with UN-Habitat, could probably be invited to join the on-going debates and highlight the extent to which migrants and their financial and social remittances reshape cities.