The International Migration System: Reflections on the Challenges and Opportunities Ahead

An estimated 244 million people—or about 3.2 percent of the world’s population—were international migrants in 2015. Migration will only grow both in size and complexity, partly in response to the inexorable aging and persistent low fertility of a growing number of wealthy and middle-income countries. It has become increasingly unclear, however, whether the migration system can be managed well enough so that all actors—immigrants, members of the communities they leave and in which they settle, and sending and receiving societies—can fully draw its many benefits. 

As Migration Policy Institute co-founder, President (2002-2014), and since then, Distinguished Senior Fellow and President Emeritus Demetrios G. Papademetriou steps down from his day-to-day work at the Institute, he provides a far-ranging presentation of what migration's challenges and opportunities are likely to look like in the next couple of decades. His presentation is followed by a conversation with Andrew Selee, MPI's incoming President. Drawing from his decades of experience as a thought leader on migration policy around the globe, Papademetriou sets forth his views on the immediate and long-term challenges governments face as they grapple with the economic, social, and political impacts of aging populations and low fertility—and the proper role for migration as one of the responses to it. He offers suggestions on how governments on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond might better manage migration and thus capitalize on the opportunities it presents while reducing its negative effects on those who lose from the process.