In recent years, substantial numbers of people have migrated, or sought to migrate, from regions that are afflicted by poverty and insecurity to more prosperous and stable parts of the world. Such population flows have been both prompted and facilitated by a variety of factors associated with the process of globalization: growing disparity in the level of human security; improved transportation, communications and information technology systems; the expansion of transnational social networks; and the emergence of a commercial (and sometimes criminal) industry devoted to conveying people across international borders. The implications of international migration raise a number of challenges and dilemmas for policy makers that are not going to recede. This policy brief summarizes the key issues presented at the UNU-WIDER (United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics Research) conference on Poverty, International Migration and Asylum in Helsinki in 2002.
