Labour market performance and migration flows - European ...

Chapter IIThe impact of migration on labour markets in Arab Mediterranean countriesCorm (2009) presents figures on aggregate migration from AMCs and other MENA countries forthe first years of this century which are based on Dumont and Lemaître (2005) for OECDcountries, and on Baldwin-Edwards (2005) for the Gulf countries, which are reported in Table 5.2.Table 5.2. Migrants by region of destination as a percentage of resident population in the origincountry, 2000-2002Country of residenceCountry oforiginNorthAmerica andAustraliaMainEuropeanCountriesGulf andother ArabcountriesTotalAlgeria 0.11 4.32 0.22 4.64Egypt 0.27 0.21 2.77 3.25Jordan 1.11 0.25 9.26 10.62Lebanon 7.10 2.80 3.50 13.40Morocco 0.23 5.18 0.96 6.37Palestine 0.24 0.21 - 0.45Syria - - - -Tunisia 0.13 4.46 1.11 5.71Note: the figure for Jordanians in the Gulf and other Arab countries includes Palestinians.Source: Corm (2009)This table – which is based on destination-countries figures – demonstrates that the percentage ofmigrants over resident population in all Arab-Mediterranean countries, except for Palestine, ishigher than the world average of 2.9 percent. At the same time, the levels of total migration out ofthese countries are low when compared to other regions in the developing world such as LatinAmerica. Migrants from the Maghreb amount to 5.5 percent of the population, while migrants fromthe Mashreq are about 3.3 percent of the population. Egypt is the largest labour exporter amongAMCs – in absolute terms, as World Bank (2008a) claims that 10 percent of the Egyptian labourforce is employed in other AMCs and Arab countries alone. 8282 World Bank (2008) shows that skilled Egyptian migrants mostly go towards the Gulf Countries and Libya, while unskilledmigrants tend to go to Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon; CAPMAS (2004) estimates that 2.7 million Egyptians are abroad, 1.9million in other Arab countries and 0.8 millions in OECD, in particular in the US, Canada and Australia.125