This article is written by Abhay Venkitaraman, a WES 2025 student journalist and writer for The Boar.
“We firmly believe that migration is a global good.”
That is what Ugochi Daniels, Deputy Director General for Operations at the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), said during her keynote at the Warwick Economics Summit. All throughout, Daniels made a passionate yet substantive argument for “safe, regular, [and] dignified” migration, suggesting it was “a pathway for global prosperity”.
Daniels commenced her speech by discussing the key roles the IOM, a UN organisation, plays globally. Firstly, the IOM has a “humanitarian imperative”, working to protect migrants “who are one the move”. She also highlighted the role the IOM plays in “[facilitating] regular pathways for labour mobility”, alongside addressing the displacement of people from their homelands.
To exemplify why people are displaced in the first place, Daniels referenced the real-life story of ‘Mark’ and ‘Grace’, which took place during the Nigerian Civil War. After being told he was about to be murdered, ‘Mark’ fled Nigeria with his daughter ‘Grace’ and her younger brother, traversing forests, seas, and borders in pursuit of safety. Daniels didn’t immediately reveal whether the family realised that aspiration.
She proceeded to highlight that, over the past year, we’ve seen “the highest level ever” of people being displaced within their own countries. These people are classified as internally displaced people (IDPs), and there are currently over 79 million of them. Moreover, there has been a protracted increase in the number of people being displaced for extended periods of time – sometimes for over a decade. To highlight the gravity of this, Daniels remarked: “Imagine not having a home for 10 years, and what that means for you.”
Daniels also discussed the phenomenon of ‘missing migrants’: people who die or go missing in the process of migrating. As per the IOM, there have been over 72,000 missing migrants since 2014, with roughly 31,000 stemming from the Mediterranean. The organisation notes that these figures are undercounts.
She discussed the harrowing experiences IOM workers undergo when extracting this data. “On a daily basis”, they must go to morgues, conduct interviews about the number of people who went missing on a given migration journey, and even “look at corpses in different states of decay”.
Alongside those that pass away, Daniels highlighted that 50 million people annually are trapped in “situations of modern slavery” – with ¼ of these being children. Many of these people are migrants falling victim to smuggling or trafficking. This is the result of a “highly lucrative” business model, she suggested, which “turns people’s hopes and journeys of hope into tragedy”. Importantly, the number of people being smuggled and trafficked is growing – this problem stems from a dearth of safe and legal migration routes.
Daniels suggested the IOM was focused on “solutions” to resolve these pressing challenges. These solutions are oriented around preventing displacement, assisting those “on the move”, and helping people who wish to migrate so they are not forced to turn to smugglers and traffickers.
Subsequently, Daniels addressed the politics of migration. 2024 has often been described as “the year of democracy” when roughly ½ of the world’s population had the opportunity to vote. Very rarely was migration absent from the agenda in these elections. Daniels argued that not only are debates surrounding migration influencing public policy, but they are also moulding public opinion.
In this regard, she pointed to the stigmatising, dehumanising rhetoric that is commonplace in debates surrounding migration. Daniels referred to her experiences in Costa Rica. She found that migrants “did not want to be called migrants”, because “migrants are hunted like dogs”. The word ‘migrant’ is seen as a dirty word, even though essentially every economy globally has a “migrant component”.
Migrants contribute a trillion dollars of GDP every year according to Daniels – a figure that is “resilient to economic shocks”. She also argued that they are a major contributor to economic dynamism, particularly in developing countries. Besides their impact on the countries they emigrate to, Daniels also pointed out that remittances are “very significant” for many countries’ national accounts. For example, the latest data suggests remittance inflows comprise roughly 38% of GDP in Tajikistan and 42% in Tonga.
Currently, there are roughly 30 million vacant jobs in the top 30 global economies. Daniels hinted at the possibility of “migration magic”, where migrants can fill these vacancies. For this to occur, she added, governments need to “regularise” migrants, ensuring they can find jobs. Evidence vindicates the importance of doing this. A 2015 study found that the level of immigrant integration into the labour market is a key determinant of whether they make a positive or negative contribution to nations' public finances (Hansen et al., 2015).
Despite what Daniels argues are the positive economic effects of migrants, she noted that only in half of countries do migrants have the same access to social services as non-migrants. She advocated for this inequality to be redressed, although she did not discuss how the tricky politics this would likely entail could be navigated.
Daniels moved to a call to action. She told the audience: “I’m not just speaking to you – I’m investing in you.”. She expressed hope that “we can all agree the current migration situation is undesirable, understand the potential migration brings to the table, and that the next generation of world leaders can take steps to realise that potential.
Rounding off her address, Daniels returned to the story of ‘Mark’ and ‘Grace’. She revealed a twist: ‘Grace’ was, in fact, herself – and ‘Mark’ was her father. Her family did indeed make it to safety, with Daniels remarking: “I am what a good migration outcome looks like.”
The views and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Warwick Economics Summit.
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