This Migration and Development Brief provides updates on global trends in migration and remittances. It highlights developments related to migration-related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators for which the World Bank is a custodian: increasing the volume of remittances as a percentage of gross domestic product (SDG indicator 17.3.2) and reducing remittance costs (SDG indicator 10.c.1).

In 2021, remittance flows to low- and middle-in-come countries (LMICs) are projected to reach $589 billion, registering a 7.3 percent increase. The recovery in 2021 follows the resilience of flows seen in 2020, when remittances recorded only a modest 1.7 percent decline to $549 billion, in the face of one of the deepest record-ed global recessions. Remittances now stand more than threefold above official development assistance and, excluding China, more than 50 percent higher than foreign direct investment. This underscores the importance of remittance flows in smoothing consumption in recipient countries during periods of economic hardship.

The international migrant stock seems to have declined for a second consecutive year, with weak new migration flows and large return migration in 2020 and 2021. The number 

of foreign workers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, which is among the top destinations for migrants and top sources of remittances, continued to decline in 2021. Deployment of workers from Pakistan to the GCC region fell by over 64 percent during 2020 and again by another 11 percent during the first nine months of 2021, and in Bangladesh it fell by 19 percent in the first three months of 2021 compared to the same period of 2020. Migrants attempts to enter the United States through its southern border increased signifi-cantly in 2021. However, there was an increase in the number of transit migrants stranded in Mexico and Central American countries.