The rise of the remote workers, the end of the migrant workers?

Migration flows today are mostly driven by people pursuing better economic opportunities. These individuals move from peripheries to hubs — often crossing a border and sometimes an ocean — to get a job.

How will migration patterns change in a post-pandemic world where an increasing share of those jobs will be available as remote positions? Will the number of migrant workers decrease, as well as the remittances they send back home? Will more people start moving away from hubs if they can work from anywhere? What would be the net impact on the peripheries of the world?

Re-Shuffling the Migration Flows

With big tech companies like Facebook and Twitter making bold announcements about going remote, many already predict an important movement of people away from the big tech hubs to the peripheries or even the emergence of so-called Zoom cities. Analysis based on large-scale employee surveys or looking at the various analyses based on the real-estate market already shows early signs of this reverse migration in the US and most European countries.

We can imagine many foreign-born employees of companies going remote might take one step further and move back home, as many of them already do when they retire. What could have the most lasting effects…