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From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Dec. 30, 2011 5:00PM EST

Ten years ago this month, an English economist coined the term “BRICs” to describe four fast-growing, dynamic countries he believed would transform the global economy: Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Since then, they've reshaped the world in a way even he never imagined. The four now comprise quarter of the world's GDP from 11 per cent 10 years ago. And it's not just the BRICs – emerging markets from Turkey to Indonesia, with booming populations and a growing middle class are turning old notions of wealth and power upside down.

What was economic theory a decade ago is now playing out in the most concrete of ways: altered migration patterns. Workers are voting with their feet to join these emerging economies, while traditional magnets for the world's workers, such as the United States, are losing their lustre.

“The shifting balance of global economic growth is bring global migration flows with it,” says Madeleine Sumption, policy analyst at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute. “We're seeing lower migration to crisis nations, whereas most of the growth is towards developing nations.”

People are still seeking work in traditional markets, like Germany or Canada. But new, surprising flows are taking place in this post-recession, rocky recovery era -- Mexican Americans are returning home, for example, and Spanish graduates are emigrating to Chile and Chinese scientists in the U.K. are leaving to return home. The shift promises to create new types of diasporas, change remittance flows and alter labour markets

Here is the world that was, as told through key flows in labour migration:

1. U.S. to Mexico: Illegal immigration from Mexico into the United States has stalled, with arrests of people trying to cross the border tumbling to a 40-year low. At the same time, a growing number of Mexicans in the U.S. are returning home, census figures show, motivated by better economic prospects. Mexico’s jobless rate is nearly half that of the U.S., while its economy is growing twice as fast.

2. U.S., Europe and Canada to China: The Chinese government’s Thousand Talents Program aims to attract overseas workers to create a highly skilled work force by 2020. It is building world-class universities and offering scientists well-heeled labs to get them back. Workers – many of Chinese ancestry – are also lured by rising salaries and an economy growing at a rate quadruple that of the U.S. They’re not just leaving from the U.S. and Europe; flows from Canada to China are also on the rise, according to the Asia Pacific Foundation.

3. U.S. to India: Young, educated and tech-savvy workers of South Asian descent are heading to India for work. In fact, 300,000 Indian professionals working overseas are expected to return there in the next five years, a recent report by employment firm Kelly Services estimates. A growing number are second-generation Americans of Indian descent who land jobs in India’s booming tech sector. India has the second-largest diaspora in the world, at 25 million people, and the government’s Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs is aiming to lure skilled workers back home.

4. Eastern Canada to the prairie provinces: The rush to the prairie provinces, which slowed during the recession, has resumed. Alberta and Saskatchewan tallied the strongest population growth in the country in the third quarter. In Saskatchewan’s case, international immigration hit its highest level for any quarter since record-keeping began in 1971. Meanwhile, Alberta saw an influx of workers from elsewhere in Canada – Ontario in particular.

5. Portugal to Brazil and Angola: Thousands of young Portuguese are fleeing high unemployment in their southern European country, and many are opting for former colonies, particularly Brazil. A common language and better job prospects are the main draws. Brazil’s jobless rate, at 5.8 per cent, is less than half that of Portugal, at 12.4 per cent, and the country is facing skilled-labour shortages as it prepares for the 2016 Olympics and 2014 World Cup of soccer. Other Portuguese job-seekers are moving to Angola to work in the country’s booming natural-resources sector.

6. Ireland to elsewhere: Ireland’s history of emigration is repeating itself. It re-emerged as a country of net emigration in 2009 for the first time since 1995, reporting the highest net outflows in the European Union, according to the Migration Policy Institute. A housing bust and rising unemployment mean that the country is seeing its deepest recession in more than a generation.

7. Spain to Chile and Argentina: It’s a reversal of fortune. Spain’s jobless rate, at 22.8 per cent, is the highest in Europe and its youth-unemployment rate is approaching 50 per cent. In contrast, Chile and Argentina’s jobless rates have ebbed to about 7.2 per cent (in Argentina’s case, it’s a 20-year low). Chile is short of engineers as the country benefits from a copper-fuelled boom, while Argentina is profiting from high prices for its grain exports and strong growth in its key trade partner, Brazil.

8. Greece to Australia and Germany: So cial unrest is growing in Greece as the country faces its fourth year in a row of contraction, austerity measures kick in and joblessness runs at a record high of 17.7 per cent. Some young graduates are heading north to Germany. Others are headed to Australia, which barely saw any recession and has a jobless rate of just 5.2 per cent. When the Australian embassy in Athens announced this fall that it was seeking skilled workers, it was deluged with thousands of applicants.

9. Libya to Algeria/Niger/Chad: Fears that the Arab Spring would cause a flood of migrants to rush into Europe proved largely unfounded. Some did head to Italy and Malta, but far fewer than expected. The real shift was to neighbouring countries, as unrest in Libya prompted more than 100,000 migrant workers to flee to their home countries. Thousands of Philippine workers also left Libya for home.

10. Tajikistan to Russia: Millions of workers from Tajikistan and other Central Asian nations have fled dire poverty at home to work in Russia. Most work in construction or other low-paid, temporary jobs. Many Tajik migrant workers face exploitation by employers in Russia and are the subject of frequent xenophobic attacks, human-rights groups said this year. Tensions have flared up recently between the two countries, with reports that the Russian government has been deporting Tajiks to their home country.

11. Myanmar to Thailand: Migration patterns around Southeast Asia have not seen the same massive shifts in recent years as in other places, partly because the region has not had the same economic shocks as elsewhere. Most of Thailand’s migrant workers come from Myanmar, with the remaining portion from Cambodia and Laos. Thailand’s severe flooding this year has been especially hard on its migrant-worker population, thousands of whom lost their jobs and homes, along with their legal status, and were forced to return to Myanmar.

12. Japan to Brazil: Japan’s economy has been stagnating for years. Brazil’s is on a tear. And so a growing number of Brazilians in Japan are going home. Since Brazil’s economy began booming in 2008, fewer Brazilians are emigrating and some have returned, including a third of the ethnic Japanese Brazilians who had moved to Japan, according to the Brazilian Communities Abroad Office of the Foreign Ministry.

Sources: Migration Policy Institute, International Organization for Migration, Migration News, news wires, The Economist.

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