The Role of Economic and Social Remittances in Shaping Migration Flows from Ethiopia (October 2022)

In 2019, the IOM Regional Data Hub (RDH) for the East and Horn of Africa (EHoA) launched a multistage research project aimed at better understanding the experiences, decision-making, perceptions and expectations of young Ethiopians along the Eastern Route from Ethiopia to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, in particular the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, via Djibouti and Somalia. The project included conducting original research with individual migrants along the route (phase one and two) and in communities of high emigration in Ethiopia (phase three).

The third stage of the project was conducted in the first half of 2021 in communities of high emigration in Ethiopia. This stage’s aim was to gain a better understanding of the environment in which migration was taking place and investigate how it was lived and experienced at household and community level. Phase three was also designed to better understand how money, information, knowledge and ideas flow transnationally between communities in Ethiopia and migrants abroad, as well as to gauge whether the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) had changed the migration environment and impacted migration from and to these communities.

This briefing paper is the sixth in a series of thematic reports that build on the analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data collected during the various stages of the research project, particularly data collected during the third phase of the research in communities of high emigration in Ethiopia. Its aim is to explore the role of both monetary and social remittances in the migration systems of five communities in Ethiopia.

Source: International Organization for Migration