The debate over whether migration is a positive or negative for the Pacific is a long-standing one. Bernard Poirine’s 1995 paper “Should we love or hate MIRAB” set out both sides of the argument, and why he thought both migration and foreign aid were positives for the Pacific.
Naren Prasad’s blog “The Pacific’s remittance dependence: labour out, cash in“, published on this site on 6 February, is the latest contribution to this debate. Prasad echoes many of the arguments summarised by Poirine and made more recently on this blog by David Abbott and Steve Pollard (based on their 2019 “Mired in MIRAB” paper). Prasad argues that the Pacific is at a worrying turning point and that its growing remittance dependence is bad because it threatens the viability of Pacific island economies and reduces the political urgency for reform.
I disagree with Prasad and in this rebuttal I argue that he ignores the facts, puts forward weak analysis and fails to provide useful migration policy guidance to Pacific governments.
First, the facts. There are only four high-income Pacific countries (excluding colonies) in the Pacific, and three of them have had massive out-migration: Cook Islands, Niue and Palau. If migration is so bad for you, how have these three countries been so successful?
At the same time, the poorest countries in the Pacific (Solomon Islands and Kiribati) are among the ones that have had the least out-migration.
Also, as I have shown in my analysis with Rubayat Chowdhury, in the 2010s the Pacific island region was the fastest growing region in the world — in part because of growing remittances. So where is the worrying turning point that Prasad is talking about, and why does he paint such a bleak future?
Second, the analysis. Prasad focuses on remittances. The three high-income Pacific countries I mentioned above — Cook Islands, Palau and Niue — all got rich by migration (as well as by tourism and rents), but not by remittances. None of them has a high ratio of remittances to GDP. Rather migration helped them get rich by increasing income for those left behind. Tourism cannot expand indefinitely in most Pacific countries and income sources such as fishing licence revenue and foreign aid are largely or completely independent of population. So, for these economies, a smaller population at home is a richer population.
Prasad argues that without migration Pacific economies would be more viable. But, of the Pacific island economies, only Nauru has managed to make it to high-income status without migration, and that is because of its extraordinary regional processing centre arrangement with Australia. Would middle-income countries such as Tonga and Samoa be more viable (richer) without migration? These small island economies are so isolated that they cannot industrialise and their potential to export services is limited as well. Stop or limit their peoples’ ability to live and work overseas and you reduce not increase their viability.
Cook Islands, Niue and Palau not only are high-income countries, but they all have stable populations. They are viable. The question we should be considering is not whether Pacific economies can be viable with migration, but whether they can be without. I would suggest that Nauru is the exception that proves the rule.
Prasad’s other purported negative feedback mechanism from migration to growth is that without migration there would be more pressure for reform and therefore better governance. It is very hard to know what might improve governance where it is weak, but if less migration was one way to do it, then we would expect to see better governance in places without much migration, such as Nauru and Solomon Islands. We don’t. The basic problem with politics in the Pacific is that it is clientelistic. More or less migration is not going to change that.
Some of Prasad’s lines sound compelling but do not survive closer scrutiny. No country has ever got rich from remittances, argues Prasad. Fair enough, but, as I’ve argued above, some Pacific countries have nevertheless got rich through migration. And, even if that wasn’t true, so what? No country has ever got rich from agriculture (at least not since the era of decolonisation). Does that mean agriculture should be discouraged or deplored, or that we would write it off as a development strategy? Of course not.
A final problem with Prasad’s paper is that it has very little guidance for Pacific countries as to what their migration policy should be. An implication of his analysis is that Pacific countries should limit migration opportunities for their citizens. But Prasad avoids this conclusion by falsely claiming that states cannot stop people leaving. But Pacific governments could, simply by not signing up to (or by withdrawing from) the various New Zealand, American and Australian arrangements that provide out-migration opportunities for their citizens.
Does anyone really think a Pacific country would be better off by not taking part in Australia’s PALM or PEV or New Zealand’s RSE and PAC/SQ? I don’t, and I’m yet to meet a Pacific leader who does. In fact, there are a growing number of Pacific leaders calling for freer movement of people across the Pacific.
There is no doubt migration does pose some serious challenges. I recently drew attention to the significant depopulation occurring because of migration in FSM and RMI. Pacific governments should focus on training, on making inward migration easier, and on making it more attractive for residents to stay. Of course, as Prasad says, they should improve governance. But they should not attempt to limit outward migration. Because a Pacific with more migration opportunities is clearly better off than one with fewer.
We would have to ask the following:
• Can Pacific Island Countries (PICs) be considered as rich if their economies depend on earnings from workers in other nations?
• Can PICs be considered wealthy when much of their economies’ income comes from rents, such as remittances, aid, fish licence fees, and earnings from Sovereign Welfare Funds, all of which—except remittances—are received by governments and, as records show, are poorly invested in domestic economic and social development?
• Has PIC’s reliance on rents, including labour exports, maintained a poorly performing, ‘upside down’ economy: https://micsem.org/video-listing/the-upside-down-economy/ that remains permanently dependent on aid and rents? Additionally, has this also diminished the need for, or policy commitment towards, domestic efforts for growth?
• Are PIC societies wealthy if they have to rely on losing family members overseas, and in the long run, possibly sacrificing their unique languages, culture, identity, and purpose?
• The influx of foreign workers to replace departing nationals can be substantial. In 2021, the population of the Cook Islands included an estimated 1,450 persons from other Pacific and Asian countries, about 10% of the total. In Palau (2020 census), one-third of the population were non-Palauan nationals. It has also recently been estimated that between 50,000 and 80,000 workers emigrated from Fiji between 2023 and 2024. This is a significant number, given that the total labour force in Fiji was estimated at just over 376,000 in 2022.
• Pacific Rim countries might gain from PIC migration, but PIC domestic businesses and governments complain about losing their workforce, whether skilled or unskilled, which can increase the cost of PIC labour, threaten the competitiveness of domestic industries, and weaken the quality of government services.
• Are donor development programmes that have long supported PIC domestic growth and now support the importation of PIC labour inherently contradictory?
• While the three countries mentioned have high migration and high incomes per capita, others do not follow this pattern. RMI and FSM, both with high migration, have similar COMPACT resources as Palau but do not have high per capita incomes. Tuvalu, Tonga, and Samoa have also experienced high migration, and while Tonga and Samoa have received high remittances, neither has achieved high GDP per capita like the Cook Islands, Niue, or Palau.
• Can the populations of the Cook Islands, Niue, Palau, and other PICs be considered stable when they face a significant and growing imbalance between a shrinking local workforce and a rising dependent population, driven by high rates of emigration—particularly in Polynesia—high youth unemployment in Melanesia, and an increasing number of elderly people?
• Remittances alone are not a primary driver of growth; if they were, Tonga and Samoa in particular would consistently outperform other Pacific countries. Remittances certainly impact the lives of families and individuals who receive them, either directly or indirectly through family systems. However, if they are mainly spent on imports, the multiplier effect is low and adds little to GDP, at most reflecting the value-added between the import cost and retail price, minus intermediate expenses.
• We do not deny that remittances are important for poverty alleviation and the wellbeing of recipients, but we must remember that in almost every PIC, the number of families not receiving remittances is considerably higher than those receiving them. Consequently, most families depend on domestic economies for their livelihoods. Without domestic economic growth and increased employment opportunities, those not receiving remittances are more likely to fall further into hardship unless governments boost private sector investment and create more domestic jobs.
• The answer is domestic growth. Domestic growth is better for the economic, social, and cultural health of the PICs, but remove the aid and rents, and what has been the record of growth and the record of donor and development partner aid programmes?
David Abbott and Steve Pollard
I would like to thank Stephen Howes for this thoughtful response to my blog. Let me start by agreeing with him: migration has delivered clear and concrete benefits to Pacific households (raising incomes, reducing poverty, and expanding opportunity). That is not in dispute. My argument was never that migration is “bad,” nor that it should be restricted. People have always moved, it is their right and their choice. I am a migrant myself, and a remittance sender. So this is not an anti-migration manifesto.
My argument is also not new. As Stephen rightly notes, it builds on decades of MIRAB thinking. But even that literature has long warned about dependence, labour market erosion, and weak incentives for reform. What may be new is not the idea, but the scale, speed, and perhaps a growing comfort with letting external inflows do the heavy lifting that domestic policy should be doing.
And this is no longer just an academic debate. Policymakers across the Pacific are beginning to sound slightly uneasy, Fiji’s recent parliamentary discussions and the Prime Minister’s speech (9/3/2026), Samoa’s debates about capping seasonal workers, and even moves in the Caribbean toward more structured labour mobility frameworks. I see this not only in policy discussions, but back home, in my own village in Dreketi (Fiji).
The country examples cited (Cook Islands, Niue, Palau) are important, but also, as other commentators mentioned a bit special: microstates with privileged migration access, significant aid flows, and external rents. They are not easily replicable models for larger Pacific economies struggling to staff hospitals, schools, and public administrations. In small states, losing a few hundred skilled workers is not a rounding error, it’s a crisis. Fiji’s private sector is already complaining. And while higher income per capita may look good on paper, a country is not developed simply because fewer people are left to divide the pie.
So this is not a debate about migration versus no migration. It is about whether migration complements development, or replaces it. My concern is that remittances are becoming a bit too good at solving short-term problems, while conveniently postponing the harder work of building productive economies. We may soon find ourselves very efficient at exporting workers, but less so at creating jobs and providing incentives for people to stay. At that point, migration stops being a choice and starts looking like the default strategy. And that, I think, is where the policy conversation needs to go.
Just adding that there is a perspective, in my view the most coherent one, where migration doesn’t complement or replace development (which implies some additive properties, or even being zero sum; I couldn’t possibly disagree with the idea of it being either additive or zero sum any more than I do already..), but is instead an inseparable cause, effect, and fundamental part of development.
That emigration increases as countries become more successful and there is a natural turning point is the most important stylised fact in this regard, and at the micro level we see the exact same in who exactly moves and who does not:
https://www.cgdev.org/publication/emigration-life-cycle-how-development-shapes-emigration-poor-countries
Interesting initiative from some sociologists and other colleagues up north:
https://migrationasdevelopment.wordpress.com/
The example of Tuvalu updating its Constitution to address climate change shows how law can be used to protect justice and the common good. The decision demonstrates ethical responsibility because it will impact both present and future human populations. The Constitution should be updated because climate change threatens land and homes and cultural identity according to ethical principles which protect human life. The statement shows that laws function as instruments which defend human dignity while establishing safety standards.
The example demonstrates that legal systems require ongoing transformation to tackle emerging social and environmental issues. Tuvalu establishes climate change as a national priority through constitutional review which improves its governance system. The legal system through its connection to leadership and decision-making processes shows how government offices protect citizens from environmental pollution.
The Constitution updates create justice because they establish fairness through recognizing rights of climate change victims. The small island nation Tuvalu produces minimal global emissions yet experiences severe climate change threats. Environmental justice needs legal solutions which recognize indigenous voices and their environmental needs.
The Tuvalu example demonstrates how legal systems and ethical standards and justice principles function together. Laws exist beyond their control purposes because they serve to protect people and their cultural heritage and the future well-being of their communities.
This is a strong contribution to the debate, and I agree with the central point that migration has been a net positive for much of the Pacific. But I think there’s a bigger system dynamic here that’s still being underplayed.
What we’re really looking at is not a set of isolated national labour markets, but an uneven and incomplete regional one.
The examples cited — Cook Islands, Niue and Palau — are instructive, but not just because of migration alone. They’ve had structured, relatively frictionless access to larger, higher-income economies through free association arrangements. That has allowed them to relieve domestic labour constraints, lift household incomes, and maintain viability despite very small domestic bases.
But that model comes with trade-offs that are often glossed over. In the case of the Realm countries, access to labour mobility has also meant constraints in other areas — including limited access to institutions like the UN, IMF and World Bank, which in turn shapes their fiscal sovereignty and long-term development pathways. It’s not a neutral arrangement — it’s a negotiated one, with costs as well as benefits.
What’s missing from the broader Pacific picture is that this level of mobility has not been replicated regionally. Instead, labour mobility is fragmented — largely bilateral, externally driven, and often tied to specific sectors like seasonal work. So we end up with a structural imbalance: underemployment in some Pacific countries, acute labour shortages in others, and no mechanism to efficiently move labour within the region itself.
That’s where remittances need to be understood differently. They’re not just a passive outcome of migration — they are, in many cases, a core economic stabiliser and a medium-term tool for managing these imbalances. Dismissing them as a development dead-end risks overlooking their functional role in how Pacific economies are currently holding together.
The point raised in the comments about the type of migration is critical. Mobility that is either highly restricted (seasonal, temporary) or fully permanent doesn’t create a flexible regional labour system. What’s missing is something in between — pathways that allow Pacific people to move, work, return, and reintegrate more fluidly across the region.
Arrangements like the Falepili Union between Tuvalu and Australia also show that mobility is increasingly being negotiated under pressure, and not always from a position of equal choice. Not all Pacific countries are entering these arrangements with the same options available to them.
So I don’t think the question is whether migration is good or bad — the evidence is pretty clear on that.
The real question is whether the Pacific can move faster toward a more coherent regional labour mobility system — one that balances outward migration, inward flows, remittances, and domestic capacity — rather than continuing with the current patchwork of arrangements.
Until then, we’ll keep seeing the same tensions play out across the region.
An excellent article and comment from Watna. Prasad’s claim ‘No country has ever got rich from remittances’, is a bit of a stretch. Remittances are a central part of the Philippines economy, and the more successful states of India such as Kerala are likewise high remittance receivers. I’m not sure where Tonga fits in this picture. The Pacific is not the only country with clientelism: the US is currently showing how its done.
All four high income Pacific countries are in free association with developed countries. So it’s not a question of whether migration is a problem for the Pacific or not, we have always migrated! It’s about the type of migration that’s allowed to happen. The migration policies of Australia & co have a lot of impact on Pacific economies and incomes. Pacific people are happy for PALM, PEV etc…because that is all those countries are willing to offer us. We either come to do seasonal labour on strict conditions and return with no flexible migration options or we are immediately locked into permanent migration that basically has Pacific people there for 4 straight years before they can obtain citizenship (and structural inequalities mean only certain people access this) and then the freedom to move back or around again. Meanwhile what Pacific people are calling for are migration pathways that allow us to freely and securely move , live, get educated, do business within OUR region, this would likely result in what you’re seeing in those free association states. And to do so without having to hand over sovereignty to Australia & co through security treaties. I’m glad you mentioned Nauru- why, when NZ and Australia took so much from Nauru in phosphate pre-independence, did Nauru not benefit from beneficial migration pathways with them? And in their destitute phosphate depleted “post-colonial state”, Australia uses this to negotiate their abhorrent detention centres which was apparently a good thing from an economic pov as you’ve pointed out. In all of this we have to ask, where is the relationality?? The reciprocity?
Finally, your reference to Tonga and Samoa as being too isolated to become “viable” is not a new criticism or belittlement from the West, something Pacific people keep countering over and over again, not least by Epeli Hauofa when he said, “The idea that the countries of Polynesia and Micronesia are too small, too poor, and too isolated to develop any meaningful degree of autonomy is an economistic and geographic deterministic view of a very narrow kind that overlooks culture history and the contemporary process of what may be called world enlargement that is carried out by tens of thousands of ordinary Pacific Islanders right across the ocean-from east to west and north to south, under the very noses of academic and consultancy experts, regional and international development agencies, bureaucratic planners and their advisers, and customs and immigration officials-making nonsense of all national and economic boundaries, borders that have been defined only recently, crisscrossing an ocean that had been boundless for ages before Captain Cook’s apotheosis.”