predicted in countries with highly unequal income distributions where there are major barriers to migration (need many resources), there will be high positive selection on education.

Because in countries with high levels of income inequality the well educated would see high returns on their training

In the process of fielding the Mexican Migration Project, which utilizes ethnosurveys to learn about Mexican-US migration

- The ethnosurvey combines the strengths of qualitative and quantitative methods in order to

1) compare the behaviors and characteristics of documented and undocumented migrants,

2) measure trends in both groups over time,

3) undertake longitudinal studies of the migration process,

4) discern the background characteristics of migrants before they enter the US,

5) undertake detailed cross-tabulations of Mexicans based on large samples, 6

) study transitions between different legal statuses and movements back and forth across borders, and

7) provide data capable of monitoring the effects of shifting US and Mexican policies

- Ethnosurveys collect life histories of respondents

- Also collect data at the individual, household, community, and national level

- Gather information in both sending and receiving countries

argued that immigrants who face the greatest barriers to migrating will be the most positively selected;

in addition, immigrants who respond to push factors will be less positively selected than those who respond to pull factors

Neoclassical Economics: Macro-Theory

- International migration is caused by geographic differences in the supply of and demand for labor

Assumptions and propositions of model

- International migration caused by differences in wage rates between countries

- International migrants influenced primarily by labor market mechanisms; other kinds of markets do not affect migration

World Systems Theory of Migration

Because political power is unequally distributed across nations, the expansion of global capitalism acted to perpetuate inequalities and reinforce a stratified economic order

- The penetration of capitalist economic relations into non-capitalist or pre-capitalist societies creates a mobile population that is prone to migrate

- For instance, the “brain drain” serves to develop underdevelopment in poor countries

 Assumptions and propositions of model

- International migration is a natural consequence of capitalist market formation in the developing world

- The international flow of labor follows the international flow of goods and capital, but in the opposite direction

- International migration especially likely between past colonial powers and former colonies due to cultural, linguistic, administrative, investment, and transportation linkages

- Migration has little to do with wage and employment differentials between countries

argued that the positive selection of migrants accounts for their better performance in the labor market, compared to natives

Note: Although many scholars contend that legal migrants are likely to be more positively selected than illegal one, empirical evidence suggests that even undocumented migrants are positively selected

Segmented Labor Market Theory

- International migration stems from the intrinsic labor demands (pull factors) of modern industrial societies

- Immigrants satisfy need to fill jobs at the bottom of the occupational ladder that are solely for income and have no implications for status or prestige

- Bifurcation of the labor market into the capital-intensive primary sector and the labor-intensive secondary sector promotes migration because native workers avoid the low wages and instability of secondary sector jobs

Assumptions and proposition of model

- International labor migration is largely demand-based and is usually initiated through recruitment by employers in developed societies

- Wage differentials not necessary for migration to occur

New Economics of Migration theory

Migrations decisions are not made by isolated individual actors, but by larger units of related people—typically families or households—in which people act collectively to maximize expected income and to minimize risk

- In most developed countries, risks to hh income are minimized through private insurance and credit markets, but in developing countries these institutional mechanisms for managing risk are imperfect, absent, or inaccessible

- This theory is supported by empirical evidence showing that the acquisition of a home is probably the single most important motivation for international migration prevailing in the world today

Assumptions and propositions of model

- Families, households, or other culturally defined units of production and consumption are the appropriate units for migration research, not the individual

- A wage differential is not a necessary condition for migration to occur

- Markets other than then labor market can influence migration decisions

Estimated that the US population would only be 1/3 of its current size if it included only the descendents of those who arrived before 1800

“International migration and development in Mexican communities.” Demography, 33(2), 249-264.

Purpose of paper is to clarify link between international migration and economic development by conducting a detailed analysis of migrants’ decisions about savings and remittances from US

- Draw on new home economics theory

- Failures in Mexico’s capital markets may fuel out-migration and discourage productive investment in home economy

- Authors examine various factors related to quantity of remittances and how they are spent, including personal and hh characteristics, trip characteristics, community economic characteristics, and Mexico’s macro-economic climate

Results

- Remitting and saving are more likely the higher a migrant’s monthly earnings and the more stable his job situation in the US

- These behaviors become less likely as migrants build up time abroad, settle north of the border, and bring their spouses

- The more money a migrant paid to be smuggled into the US, the more he remits and saves in order to repay loans and finance next trip

- Migrants are more likely to remit when they come from economically strong communities with high wages, widespread self-employment, and high percentages of women employed

- In agrarian communities, migrants are more likely to remit if there exists an ejido

- Migrants are more likely to channel their dollars into productive investments if they have access to resources such as education, potential family workers, a migrant spouse, ejidos, and assets such as land, businesses, or housing

- Migrants without such resources tend to devote their assets to current consumption (nutrition, clothing, and shelter)

In sum, under the right circumstances (a high-paying US job, secure attachment to the US labor force, and access to capital resources in Mexico) the odds to productive investment rise substantially

- Even when dollars are spent on current consumption, they serve to improve standard of living

Neoclassical Economics: Micro-Theory

- Individual rational actors decide to migrate because a cost-benefit calculation leads them to expect a positive net return (usually monetary) from movement

Assumptions and propositions of model

- International movement stems from international differential variation in both earnings and employment rates

- Individual characteristics that increase the likely rate of employment in the destination will increase the likelihood of migration

- Individual characteristics, social conditions, or technologies that lower migration costs increase the net returns to migration; thus individuals within the same country can display very different proclivities to migrate

- Markets other than the labor market do not directly influence the decision to migrate

Cumulative Causation theory of migration (continuation)

- Each act of migration alters the social context within which subsequent migration decisions are made

- 7 ways in which migration is affected in a cumulative fashion:

1. expansion of networks,

2. distribution of income,

3. distribution of land,

4. organization of production,

5. culture of migration,

6. distribution of human capital, and

7. social labeling

Propositions of theory

- Social, economic, and cultural changes brought about in sending and receiving countries by international migration give a movement of people a powerful internal momentum resistant to easy control or regulation

- Cumulative migratory experience in the population follows an S-shaped curve, starting slowly, rising rapidly, and then reaching an upper asymptote

- Once immigrants have entered a type of employment in sufficient numbers it may be difficult to recruit native workers due to labeling of the job as “immigrant

“Labor migration: Theory and reality.” In The Unsettled Relationship: Labor Migration and Economic Development. Edited by Demetrios Papademetriou and Philip Martin.

Reviews the theory and empirical research on the association between migration and development in sending communities

Balanced growth theory suggests that emigration should lead to a narrowing of income differences between sending and receiving countries

- Furthermore, emigration should be self-stopping because wages rise as people leave and remittances promote development and new jobs

Asymmetric development theory suggests that emigration increases differences between sending and receiving countries for many reasons, including . . .

- Migrants don’t want to return, their remittances are used unproductively, they retire upon their return, skills learned abroad aren’t useful back home, children in sending countries don’t value education because they can make more at a low skilled job abroad, etc.

- In reality, the major effects of emigration on development tend to be negative; these effects can be linked to what Martin terms the “3 R’s”

Recruitment: Employers tend to recruit the best workers

- Would this change if recruitment were government regulated?

Remittances: Remittance rarely promote economic development

- Would this change if local infrastructure channeled this money more effectively?

Returns: Although formal recruitment policies often specify limited duration of work, many migrants stay abroad

“Immigration, Domestic Migration, and Demographic Balkanization in America: New Evidence for the 1990s.”

 - Much of the current debate surrounding immigration has centered around the economic impacts for native-born wkrs, taxpayers, and government programs

- Frey, rather, focuses on the social and demographic impact of recent immigration

- Migrants still tend to settle in a small number of traditional port of entry areas

- International migrants tend to come in “chains” and move to the same areas where the family has already settled

- This inflow of migration pushes out low-income, less skilled domestic workers, who then migrate to different areas

- Domestic migrants are much less tied to one place and move where labor is more abundant

- Uses census data to show that the metropolitan areas with the highest rates of international immigration also tended to have non-negligible of out-migration of domestics

- Not all domestics leaving—mostly those with low education and low-skills (essentially negative selective of domestic out-migrants)

Why might low-skilled domestics leave when immigrants arrive?

- Low-skilled international immigrants might be competition for jobs

- These residents may hold the view that new immigrants contribute to higher crime, reduced services, and increased taxes

- Prejudice

- Could be a spurious association; blue-collar jobs may have decreased while white-collar and low-paying service jobs have grown

- This demographic balkanization will causes areas where immigrants account for most of the demographic change to become increasingly multicultural, younger, and more bifurcated in their race and class structures

- At the same time, areas where domestic migrants account for most demographic change will become less multicultural, and will differ from migrant areas in their social, demographic, and political dimensions

- Census projections suggest that in the near future, a handful of states will have a large share of nonwhites (in a few states whites ill be a minority) while other states will have almost zero nonwhites

- What sets this scenario apart from past patterns is its large geographic scope; will affect the entire country rather than just single metropolitan areas

“What’s driving Mexico-US migration?  A theoretical, empirical, and policy analysis.” The American Journal of Sociology, 102(4), 939-999.

Main purpose of paper is to test the major theoretical frameworks of migration against each other in the case of migration between the US and Mexico

- Frameworks examined include neoclassical economics, social capital theory, new economics theory, segmented labor markets theory, and world systems theory

- Authors look at the factors that predict initial move to the US, perpetuation of movement once it’s begun (repeat migration), and return migration to Mexico

Initial move to US

- Social capital (knowing friends or relatives who have migrated) biggest predictor of making first undocumented trip to US

- New economics theory also supported; possessing capital in Mexico reduces odds of migrating to US

- US-Mexico wage differential does predict odds of migration (in accordance with neoclassical economics) but the effect is quite small

- Economic growth in US does predict increased migration (in accordance with segmented labor market theory)

- World systems theory not supported

- Fewer factors predict initial documented migration to the US, probably because legal migrants quite scarce in data

Subsequent moves to US

- Accumulating human capital and social capital in the US increases the odds of making a return trip

- In accordance with new home economics theory, accumulating capital in Mexico reduces odds of making a return trip to the US

Return migration to Mexico

- Accumulation of human and social capital in the US strongly deters returning to Mexico

- Migrants actually less likely to return to local communities in Mexico with high wage rates (in contrast with neoclassical economics)

- In sum, social capital theory and the new home economics theory are much better predictors of migration than neoclassical economics theory

“The new Americans: Economic, demographic, and fiscal effects of immigration.”

- In 1995, a panel of experts at the NRC was commissioned to answer the following 3 questions:

1. What is the effect of immigration on the future size and composition of the US population?

- Population projections suggest that immigration will account for 2/3 of the growth of the US population by 2050

- Immigration will affect the age distribution of the population (for instance, large increases in school age children)

- The size of the Asian-ancestry and Hispanic-ancestry populations will grow

2. What is the influence of immigration on the overall economy?

- Authors expect gains to the US economy as a whole, even though certain segments of the population may not benefit

- Higher-skilled domestic workers and the owners of capital will likely benefit

- Low-skilled domestic workers who compete with immigrants for jobs may not

- These negative effects would not necessarily be concentrated at the local level, because domestic workers would likely migrate out of areas where immigrants move in search of work

- Immigration is unlikely to have a very large effect on relative earnings or GDP per capita

3. What is the fiscal impact of immigration on federal, state, and local governments?

- Immigrants increase the tax burden on native households, especially in states where more immigrants live

- This is because immigrant-headed households tend to have more school-age children, are poorer, and have lower incomes and pay lower property taxes

- However, the economic characteristics of different generations of foreign-born residents vary substantially; like native-borns, the young and old tend to be a fiscal burden while working-age individuals tend to be net-payers

Worlds in Motion: Understanding International Migration at the End of the Millenium. Clarendon Press: Oxford.  Chapter 1: New Migrations, New Theories.

The modern history of international migration can be divided into roughly 4 periods

Mercantile Period: (1500-1800) World immigration dominated by flows out of Europe to colonies

Industrial Period: (1800-1925) Economic development of Europe leads to the spread of industrialism to the former colonies in the New World

- 85% of emigrants go to 5 destinations: Argentina, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and US

Period of limited migration: (1925-1960) Depression and wars halt migration

Post-industrial migration period: (1960s-onward) Supply of immigrants shift from Europe to Third World

General patterns of migration in the late 20^th century

- Most immigrants today come from countries characterized by a limited supply of capital, low rates of job creation, and abundant reserves of labor

- Today’s immigrant-receiving societies are far more intensive in capital and less intensive in land than destination countries in the past

- Immigrants no longer viewed as wanted or needed, despite the persistent demand for their services

- Large wealth and power discrepancies between sending and receiving societies

- In fact, Massey argues that considering the large disparities in wealth, power, and population that prevail within these systems, the actual size of the migration flow is really quite modest; it is not so much the actual size of flows as the potential size of flows that accounts for countries’ obsessive interest in immigration

2 traditional approaches to explaining immigration suffer from a number of shortcomings

1. At the micro-level, neoclassical models suggest that migrants act as rational actors responding to economic disparities between countries

- Such models have a difficult time explaining why one less developed country has a high rate of emigration while another doesn’t, why migrants don’t always go to places where wages are highest, why migration sometimes ceases before wage disparities disappear, why migration sometimes occurs in the absence of wage disparities

- Also cannot explain moves that are not economic in nature

- Assume that potential migrants are homogenous with respect to taste and risk

- Thus, Massey argues that economic disparities are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for emigration

2. At the macro-level, push-pull theories argue that migration enables an equilibrium to be achieved between forces of economic growth and contraction in different geographic locales

- One shortcoming of such theories is that they cannot account for the effects of restrictive immigration policies

- However, all borders do remain “porous” to some degree (might even be in the best interest of the government to allow some migrants to cross borders illegally)

New theories of international migration must recognize the interplay of individuals, motivations, and contexts defined at various levels of aggregation (household, community, national, and international) to explain why some individuals migrate and some do not, and why some countries send so many migrants abroad while others send only a few

Worlds in Motion: Understanding International Migration at the End of the Millenium. Clarendon Press: Oxford.  Chapter 2: Contemporary Theories of International Migration.

Theories that account for the initiation of migration

Neoclassical Economics: Macro-Theory (Todaro 1970; 1976)

International migration is caused by geographic differences in the supply of and demand for labor

Assumptions and propositions of model

- International migration caused by differences in wage rates between countries

- International migrants influenced primarily by labor market mechanisms; other kinds of markets do not affect migration

Neoclassical Economics: Micro-Theory (Borjas 1989; 1990)

Individual rational actors decide to migrate because a cost-benefit calculation leads them to expect a positive net return (usually monetary) from movement

Assumptions and propositions of model

- International movement stems from international differential variation in both earnings and employment rates

 - Individual characteristics that increase the likely rate of employment in the destination will increase the likelihood of migration

 - Individual characteristics, social conditions, or technologies that lower migration costs increase the net returns to migration; thus individuals within the same country can display very different proclivities to migrate

 - Markets other than the labor market do not directly influence the decision to migrate

New Economics of Migration (Stark and Bloom 1985) Migrations decisions are not made by isolated individual actors, but by larger units of related people—typically families or households—in which people act collectively to maximize expected income and to minimize risk

- In most developed countries, risks to hh income are minimized through private insurance and credit markets, but in developing countries these institutional mechanisms for managing risk are imperfect, absent, or inaccessible

- This theory is supported by empirical evidence showing that the acquisition of a home is probably the single most important motivation for international migration prevailing in the world today

Assumptions and propositions of model

- Families, households, or other culturally defined units of production and consumption are the appropriate units for migration research, not the individual

- A wage differential is not a necessary condition for migration to occur

- Markets other than then labor market can influence migration decisions

Segmented Labor Market Theory (Piore 1979)

- International migration stems from the intrinsic labor demands (pull factors) of modern industrial societies

- Immigrants satisfy need to fill jobs at the bottom of the occupational ladder that are solely for income and have no implications for status or prestige

- Bifurcation of the labor market into the capital-intensive primary sector and the labor-intensive secondary sector promotes migration because native workers avoid the low wages and instability of secondary sector jobs

Assumptions and proposition of model

- International labor migration is largely demand-based and is usually initiated through recruitment by employers in developed societies

- Wage differentials not necessary for migration to occur

World Systems Theory (Wallerstein 1974; 1980)

- Because political power is unequally distributed across nations, the expansion of global capitalism acted to perpetuate inequalities and reinforce a stratified economic order

- The penetration of capitalist economic relations into non-capitalist or pre-capitalist societies creates a mobile population that is prone to migrate

- For instance, the “brain drain” serves to develop underdevelopment in poor countries

Assumptions and propositions of model

- International migration is a natural consequence of capitalist market formation in the developing world

- The international flow of labor follows the international flow of goods and capital, but in the opposite direction

- International migration especially likely between past colonial powers and former colonies due to cultural, linguistic, administrative, investment, and transportation linkages

- Migration has little to do with wage and employment differentials between countries

Theories that account for the perpetuation of migration

Social Capital Theory

- Various resources, actual or virtual, accrue to an individual or group by virtue of possessing a network of relationships and serve to lower the costs of migration

- For instance, migration networks are an important source of social capital

Assumptions of theory

- Once begun, international migration tends to expand over time until network connection have diffused so widely in a sending region that all persons who wish to migrate can do so without difficulty

- As migration becomes institutionalized through the formation of networks it becomes progressively independent of the factors that originally caused it

Cumulative Causation (Massey 1990)

- Each act of migration alters the social context within which subsequent migration decisions are made

- 7 ways in which migration is affected in a cumulative fashion:

1. expansion of networks,

2. distribution of income,

3. distribution of land,

4. organization of production,

5. culture of migration,

6. distribution of human capital, and

7. social labeling

Propositions of theory

- Social, economic, and cultural changes brought about in sending and receiving countries by international migration give a movement of people a powerful internal momentum resistant to easy control or regulation

- Cumulative migratory experience in the population follows an S-shaped curve, starting slowly, rising rapidly, and then reaching an upper asymptote

- Once immigrants have entered a type of employment in sufficient numbers it may be difficult to recruit native workers due to labeling of the job as “immigrant"

Theory that account for the perpetuation of migration

                       Social Capital Theory

- Various resources, actual or virtual, accrue to an individual or group by virtue of possessing a network of relationships and serve to lower the costs of migration

- For instance, migration networks are an important source of social capital

Assumptions of theory

- Once begun, international migration tends to expand over time until network connection have diffused so widely in a sending region that all persons who wish to migrate can do so without difficulty

- As migration becomes institutionalized through the formation of networks it becomes progressively independent of the factors that originally caused it

“The dynamics of mass migration.” National Academy of Science. 96, 5328-5335.

- Authors use dynamic schedules of in and out migration that change as migratory experience within a community accumulates to produce more reliable population projections

- This work serves to quantify the mechanisms of cumulative causation theory and illustrates shortcomings of standard projection methodologies

- Past empirical work suggests that the persistence of migration stems from human and social capital accumulation, however, standard projection methodologies still use constant probabilities of in and out migration

Creation of dynamic migration rates:

- Equation relates individual’s propensity to migrate at time t to individual’s age, sex, number of migratory trips made in t-1, migratory experience in t-1, number of trips made by other community members in t-1, and migratory experience of other community members in t-1

- This method requires really good data; authors’ data come from Mexican Migration Project

- Authors construct dynamic migration projections and compare to standard migration projections

- Find that using fixed migration projections instead of dynamic leads to 5% overstatement of size of Mexican community after 50 years, 11% understatement of US migrants, 15% understatement of migratory experience in sending population, and 85% understatement of size of Mexican population in the US

Heaven’s Door

Chapter 1: Reframing the immigration debate

- 10 “symptoms” of the immigration debate

1. Absolute number of current immigrants at an historic peak (although US population larger too)

2. Relative skills/economic performance of immigrants has declined

3. Immigrant earnings lag

4. Change in nation of origin (1950s: majority Europe and Canada, 1990s: latin America and Asia)

5. Immigrants effects on wages/economic opportunities for elast-skilled US workers (negative effects diffused all over US)

6. Effects in specific states with more generous welfare

7. Small measurable economic gains (cheaper goods and services diffused over all consumers, but difficult to measure)

8. Ethnic skill differentials do not close across generations

9. Ethnic capital (skills of entire group spill over to individuals)

10. Ethnic ghettos (like black ghettos) foster urban underclass

Chapter 2: The skills of immigrants

- Immigrants of 1960 less likely to be hs dropouts than natives; immigrants of 1998 almost 4 times as likely to be hs dropouts than native born

- These lower skill levels are accompanied by a widening wage gap upon entry to US

- However, we must consider that wage inequality in general has increased since 1980s (deunionization of American labor force, skill biased technology change (ex: introduction of PC increases the productivity of skilled workers more than unskilled), globalization of economy, etc.)

- We also must consider whether economic assimilation is a good thing

- Acquiring skills valued by US employers is good because it places less burden on the welfare state by reducing immigrant underclass, but the more immigrants look like US natives, the less natives benefit (complementary perspective)

Chapter 4: Labor market impact of immigration

- In the short run, low-skilled immigrants drive down wages of low skilled native borns and perhaps increase wages of complementary workers, but in the longer run concentrated immigration benefits capitalists (relocate to immigrant heavy cities) and causes native borns to migrate within US

- One methodological problem is that it’s difficult to tease apart whether immigrants cause economic improvements, or if they’re attracted to cities with growing economies

Chapter 5: Economic benefits from immigration

- Borjas argues that African Americans are biggest losers with regards to immigration because:

- Employers are the primary beneficiaries of immigration, but Blacks own small share of capital stock and are thus less likely to be in hiring class

- Immigrants compete with blacks in low-skilled labor market

Chapter 6: Immigration and the welfare state

- More recent immigrants more(less?) likely to use welfare

- Longer immigrants are in US, the more likely they are to use welfare (better knowledge of the US welfare system)

- Inconclusive evidence about whether immigrants “pay their way” or not

- Important to keep in mind that throughout discussions of assimilation and comparison of immigrants by date of entry, most analyses use repeated cross-sections and not longitudinal data

-Must think about who isn’t represented in these samples

Chapter 10: The goals of immigration policy

- Several potential strategies for selecting immigrants: family ties (current US emphasis), country of origin (past US emphasis), SES characteristics (Canadian points system), refugees

- Discussion of open market for visas (sliding scale for price based on sending country GDP): would increase skill level (although employers seeking less skilled workers would likely find ways around this), but there are moral issues (should liberty be for sale)

- Borjas acknowledges that evaluating immigration from a “what are the economic benefits for the US” perspective is only one way

Chapter 11: Proposal for an immigration policy

- Borjas argues that the US should adopt a policy that favors skilled workers (higher skilled pay a larger proportion of their income as taxes, are less likely to be on welfare, and increase productivity of US firms)

- Argues in favor of a points system

- More diversity in immigrant sending countries could reduce ethnic enclaves

In the US, for example, more than 1/3 of total population growth during the 1990s came from immigration

The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World.” Chs. 1, 2, 4, and 6.

Ch.1: Introduction

- Since 9/11, population movements have been viewed with much more scrutiny

- Very difficult to tell how many international migrants there are in the world

- A report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) indicated that the number of migrants doubled between 1965 and 2000, from 75 million to 150 million

- Over 2% of the world’s population has lived outside its national borders for at least 12 months

- Most likely there has been a remarkable upsurge in illegal migration in recent decades, but again, it’s difficult to tell

Certain general tendencies of world migration in recent years include. . .

 - The globalization of migration; i.e. the tendency for more and more countries to be affected by migration

- The acceleration of migration in all major regions of the world

- The differentiation of types of migration (labor, refugees, family reunification, etc.) within the same country at the same time

- The feminization of migration; i.e. women migrating not only for family reunion, but also as labor migrants (major example: Filipino women to Middle East)

- The growing politicization of migration

Ch. 2: The migratory process and the formation of ethnic minorities

3 main theories of why people migrate

1. Economic (push-pull) theories suggest that certain factors compel people to leave one area while certain pull factors attract them to another

- Push factors include demographic growth, low living standards, lack of economic opportunities, and political repression

- Pull factors include demand for labor, availability of land, economic opportunities, and political freedom

- Economic theories have been criticized as too individualistic; empirical studies cast doubt on hypothesis that individuals migrate to maximize economic utility

2. Historical-structural theories suggest that rich capitalist countries exploit poorer countries by recruiting their cheap, foreign labor

3. Migration-systems theory takes an interdisciplinary approach and suggests that migration is the result of macro-level structures (such as a history of colonization or trade between 2 countries) interacting with micro-level structures (such as individual desire for economic gain, informal networks of friends and community members, etc.)

Emergence of discourse on transnationalism

- Globalization and improvements in technology have led to immigrants becoming attached to both new home and country of origin

- In light of transnationalism, migrants will likely maintain closer ties to countries of origin in the future

Discourse on the formation of ethnic minorities

- Minorities are created by their subordinate position in society and a sense of collective consciousness

Ch. 4: Migration to developed countries since 1945

 3 major migratory flows 1945-1970

 1. Migration of workers from the European periphery to Western Europe, often through “guestworker systems”

 - For instance, France and West Germany recruited temporary foreign workers

2. Migration of colonial workers to former colonial powers

 - For example, Irish in GB and N. Africans in France

3. Permanent migration to North America and Australia, at first from Europe and later from Asia and Latin America

 - Often migration flows began with temporary recruitment (ex: Bracero system of recruiting Mexicans to do agrarian labor in California and Texas) but migrants settled permanently

- One common feature of migratory movements 1945-1970 is the predominance of economic motivations

Since 1970 many shifts have occurred in migratory trends, including. . .

- Transition of many Southern and Central European countries from places of emigration to places of immigration

- In Italy, foreign workers increased from 300,000 to 1.4 million 1981-2001

- Recruitment of foreign labor by oil-rich countries

- Increasing international mobility of highly qualified personnel

- Proliferation of illegal migration and legalization policies

- Attempts in the US to limit migration (primarily from Mexico) have included measures such as high fences, video surveillance and border patrol, and denying welfare benefits to illegals

Replacement migration in Western Europe is a big issue at the turn of the century

- UN population report in 2000 suggests that extremely high levels of immigration would be needed to achieve replacement levels in most countries

Ch. 6: Next waves: The globalization of international migration

- Objective of chapter is to describe current trends in international migration to, from, and within the Arab, African, and Latin American regions

Arab region

- Morocco and Turkey have largest population of expatriates living in the EU

 - Many Arab workers from poorer regions flock to the oil industry in Libya, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE

 - Gulf War transformed Iraq from region to immigration to one of emigration

 - Some, but much smaller, migration of Arabs to non-oil producing states

Africa

- Africa has the world’s most mobile population

- Migration often a way to escape poverty/starvation

- Many zones have freedom of movement policies, but depending on political environment migration may or may not be tolerated

Latin America and the Caribbean

- 4 areas of migrants:

Southern cone w/ Europeans,

Andean with Indians and mestizos,

Latin America with Indians and mestizos, a

nd Caribbean with Africans

- Seasonal labor migration very common

- Poor economies in the 1980s ->immigration to the US, Canada, and Europe

Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration.

Chapter 1: Rethinking immigration

- Many of the features of the old assimilation concept are now largely rejected in the literature; these features include . . .

Seeming inevitability of assimilation

- Elevation of the culture of middle-class, Protestant whites to the standard by which other groups should be assessed and aspire

- Minority group expected to change completely, while majority group expected to be unaffected

- The ethnic or racial community played no positive role

Alternatives to this old assimilation model

- Pluralism and transnationalism suggest that ethnic diversity will flourish in the modern world, driven by advances in the global economy

- The choice to have multiple ethnic identities will no longer result in a loss of the advantages once accorded exclusively to the mainstream

- Segmented assimilation theory suggests that members of the second and third generation immigrant groups will be incorporated into American society as disadvantaged minorities

- Alba and Nee argue that this theory overlooks the variation in outcomes across different immigrant groups

- Alba and Nee assert that the traditional view of assimilation is still quite viable, but with some tweaks

- Believe that ethnicity should be thought of as a social boundary and that assimilation, as a form of ethnic change, can occur on either the minority or majority side of this boundary

Chapter 6: Evidence of contemporary assimilation

- Assimilation must be thought of as a multigenerational process

- Language usage is a good proxy for assimilation

- The three-generation model of language assimilation asserts that, in general, by the third generation English will be the only language spoken in the home

- Socioeconomic assimilation more variable across ethnic groups

- Groups who migrate with more education tend to have children who are at least as educated as the native population

- Groups who come as labor migrants tend to have children who are more educated than the first generation, but less educated than the native population

- Residential assimilation more difficult for those with black skin color (ex: Afro-Caribbeans)

 “Estimating migration flows from birthplace-specific population stocks of infants.” Geographical Analysis, 36(1), 38-53.

Purpose of paper is to develop an inferential method of calculating net internal migration across 4 regions of the US

- To do this, authors estimate infant migration by counting infants (children aged 0-4) who were enumerated in the CPS in a region other than where they were born, and using this information to infer all other age-specific migration flows

- Typically, demographers use residual methods to calculate net migration

- Differences in population size between 2 dates are due to rate of natural increase and rate of net migration

- Instead, authors propose to create model migration schedules similar to model mortality schedules

- Rests on the assumption that, like mortality, there are certain regularities in the age profile of migration

- Also rests of assumption that children aged 0-4 would not have migrated more than once

- Authors characterize US internal migration profiles into 2 families: those with and without a retirement peak

- Find that the age category best predicted by this method is 20-24 year olds, and the worst is 80-84 year olds

“Transnationalism in question.” The American Journal of Sociology, 109(5), 1177-1195.

Traditional theories of transnationalism argue that in today’s age of globalization, the alignment between the nation-state and society has waned

- Transnational communities have emerged as migrants find new and more ways to connect their home and host societies

- Waldinger and Fitzgerald argue that what immigration scholars describe as transnationalism is typically its opposite

- Transnationalism implies an imagined community that extends beyond loyalties to a particular place or ethnic group

- Immigration scholars typically use transnationalism to mean migrants’ connections to multiple places/groups

- Furthermore, they argue that transnationalism and assimilation are not opposing concepts, although they are often described as such

- Both transnationalism and assimilation deal with boundaries between two or more societies; these concepts are not about transcending or eliminating differences between ethnic groups, but rather about distinguishing between members and outsiders of groups

- This is apparent in the observation that states make migrants transnational by bounding the territories that they seek to connect

- Scholars of transnationalism should conduct more temporal studies, to see if the state-spanning efforts of migrants have really increased in recent years

- Furthermore, such studies should distinguish between having no homes versus having two homes (which one better characterizes the feelings of today’s migrant?)

- In sum, Waldinger and Fitzgerald argue that that transnationalism should not be thought of as an either/or concept, but rather as a matter of degree

Give Us Your Best and Brightest: The Global Hunt for Talent and Impact on the Developing World.

Chapter 2: Absent Human Capital: What Do We Know?

- Difficult to measure the human capital of migrants for many reasons, such as. . .

1. Education categories are broad

2. Don’t know if migrants received education in sending or receiving country

3. Don’t know quality of education

- Authors find that Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean have lowest levels of college educated in the US

- In India, the highest-quality college-educated individuals are the most likely to migrate

- For instance, 31% of graduates from IIT settle abroad

- The migration of physicians and nurses from developing countries is especially troubling

- 85% of Filipino nurses work abroad

- Surveys show that many foreign students in OECD countries plan to settle abroad

Chapter 9: Better than Before: The Role of Returning Emigrants

- Reasons why immigrants might return to their home country include. . .

1. Destination did not live up to expectations

2. Economy improves in home country

3. Preference for lifestyle back home

4. May value foreign experience when young but choose to settle in home country

5. In many cases, return migrants are negatively selected (couldn’t hack it abroad)

6. However, the few highly skilled migrants that return home tend to especially value the public good and helping others (because they often forgo profits in doing so)

- Return migrants can be used to help their countries develop, especially if policies are in place to make use of their skills

“Educational selectivity in US immigration: How do immigrants compare to those left behind?” Demography, 42(1), 131-152.

2 reasons why we should care about the selectivity of migrants

1. May affect the composition of remaining population in home country (ex: brain drain)

2. May affect how well immigrants and their children adapt in the US

Theories of immigrant selectivity

- 6 “levels” that could potentially affect immigrant selectivity

1. Self-selection

2. Country-level exit policies (ex: China, Soviet Union)

3. Political and economic conditions in sending country

4. Demand for certain types of labor in receiving country

5. Historical relationship between sending and receiving country

6. Receiving country’s immigration policy (quotas)

- Many people believe that immigrants are negatively selected; move to new land because of economic hardship back home

- Academic scholars tend to believe the reverse; individuals who migrate are more ambitious and/or have higher SES than those left behind

- Chiswick (1978) argued that the positive selection of migrants accounts for their better performance in the labor market, compared to natives

- Although many scholars contend that legal migrants are likely to be more positively selected than illegal one, empirical evidence suggests that even undocumented migrants are positively selected

- Lee (1966) argued that immigrants who face the greatest barriers to migrating will be the most positively selected; in addition, immigrants who respond to push factors will be less positively selected than those who respond to pull factors

- Massey (1999) argued that although migrants tend to be positively selected initially, they become less highly selected over time as successive waves migrate from a particular country

- Migration becomes less costly over time due to accumulation of social capital by those left behind

Research question #1: How does the education of migrants compare to those of nonmigrants in home country?

Results: For all countries except for Puerto Rico, migrants more educated than nonmigrants

- Also finds that migrants from countries with highly unequal income distributions are less positively selected, but only in countries where there are no major barriers to migration (for instance, Indians tend to be highly selected despite large inequality because only the well-off have resources to move)

- Borjas predicted that this would be the case because in countries with high levels of income inequality the well educated would see high returns on their training

Research question #2: What factors are related to educational selectivity?

- Highly educated populations have less educational selectivity (could be due to ceiling effect)

- Increased inequality -> decreased educational selectivity

Research question #3: How is selectivity related to changes in the regional origins of migrants?

- No significant findings

Research question #4: How has the educational selectivity of migrants changed over time?

- Looks at data from Mexico only

- Finds evidence for increased selectivity between 1960 and 1970 (end of Bracero program?)

- Since 1970, difficult to tell whether educational selectivity has decreased or stayed the same

 “Immigration and ethnic change in low-fertility countries: A third demographic transition.” Population and Development Review, 32(3), 401-446.

Authors proposes that a third demographic transition is underway in Western Europe and the US

- High levels of immigration of persons from remote geographic and racial origins coupled with persistent sub-replacement fertility and emigration of the native population is causing the native population in these countries to be displaced into a minority position

How extensive is this pattern of events?

- To answer this question, Coleman projects forward the population in 7 European countries and the US, assuming fertility at current average for natives and at replacement for immigrants, average ASDRs, and current migration rates from poor countries and lower than current from rich countries

- Results suggest that by 2050, foreign-origin populations will comprise between 15% and 32% of total population in most countries

- The aging of native populations, relative to the youthful age structure of most foreign-origin populations, plays a large role in this

- One major difficulty with such projections, which Coleman notes, is that it is difficult to draw the line between foreign and native populations

- Different countries use to the term foreign-origin to mean different things, such as lack of citizenship, origin of mother, origin of grandmother, etc.

- Coleman defines foreign-origin population as those with parents or grandparents born abroad

- Such an arbitrary division doesn’t capture whether the person self-identifies as a member of another national group, the degree of assimilation to the native culture, etc.

Should this transformation of the ethnic and racial composition of Western countries be deemed a demographic transition?

- In order to call it a transition, Coleman argues it must be

1) fast in historical terms,

2) without precedent,

3) irreversible, and

4) of substantial social, cultural, and political significance

- Coleman believes this pattern meets these criteria

- The magnitude of replacement, geographic remoteness of immigrant groups, and speed of change have never been seen before

Plus, such an invasion has never occurred without force

- The changes are unlikely to be universal, but Coleman argues they will occur in all developed countries

How mixed-ethnic individuals are incorporated into society will matter greatly for the implications of this transition

- Will they assimilate to native culture?  Uphold the immigrant culture?  Identify as transnational?

- Perhaps ethnic divisions will cease to have meaning

“How immigration affects US cities.” Center for Research and Analysis on Migration, Discussion Paper Series.

This paper describes the effects of immigration on overall population growth and the skill composition of cities

Specifically, it addresses the effects of immigration on 6 distinct domains

1. Population growth

- Overall, immigrant inflows to specific cities lead to relatively modest outflows of natives; thus immigrant inflows tend to drive up the population one-for-one

2. Composition of the city’s workforce

- High immigration cities tend to have relatively more low-skilled people in the population

- This affect isn’t necessarily causal, however, because city-specific demands might attract both immigrants and low-skilled workers (for example, lots of new construction)

3. Local incomes and structure of local economy

- Low-skilled workers experience slight decrease in wages, whereas high-skilled workers experience slight increase in wages

4. Local housing market

- No major differences in housing prices in high immigrant cities

5. Revenues and expenditures

- The average immigrant pays a little less in taxes than the average native, but is also much less likely to receive benefits

- However, once the children of immigrants are taken into account, immigrants impose a net fiscal burden

6. Local externalities

- Immigrants may get in the way of effective governance because they have different values, make it difficult to enforce “good” behaviors (compared to a more homogeneous society), and cause conflict with natives

- This line of reasoning suggests that cities with high immigration would have lower output per capita, lower wages, and lower property values, but the evidence cited above suggests this isn’t the case

“Measuring undocumented migration” from Rethinking Migration.

- As fertility and mortality have fallen throughout the developed world, migration has emerged as a major force of demographic change

- In the US, for example, more than 1/3 of total population growth during the 1990s came from immigration (Kent and Mather 2002)

- Given even lower rates of fertility and mortality in Western Europe and Japan, the contribution of immigration to growth was likely even greater

- Unfortunately, measuring migration is very difficult

4 data sources that demographers typically use to measure migration, and their limitations

1. Population Censuses

 - The US census blends de jure and de facto types by enumerating people at their place of “usual” residence but still attempting to include people regardless of their legal status

- One major drawback of the US census is that it has no question on legal status

 - Misses many many undocumented migrants and there is no way to estimate the degree of underenumeration

- Cross-sectional design means that snapshot of immigrants is inevitably biased due to selective emigration and mortality

- For example, the commonly observed pattern of wage rising with time spent in host country may reflect the accumulation of human capital or may reflect the selective out-migration of migrants who are economically unsuccessful

 - Few or no questions asked about characteristics of migrants before arrival in host country

2. Intercensal Surveys

- Surveys that ask about place of birth and year of entry to allow for a better understanding of changes in the immigrant population over time

 - Like census data, suffer from cross-sectional design, no info on legal status underenumeration of undocumented migrants, and no information on immigrant background

- Also suffer from small sample size

3. Registration Systems

- Some countries maintain population registries

- However, it is unrealistic to expect undocumented migrants to report themselves to government representatives

 - Many countries record the arrival of foreigners to the country

- However, only foreigners who indicate they plan to be permanent residents would be counted as immigrants; many people first enter the country for work or as students but end up staying, and they would not be counted

- Furthermore, many pieces of info that would be useful to social scientists are not included on visa application (for instance, years of education)

- Documenting who exits the country would help solve this problem, but the US has not done this since 1957

 4. Specialized Surveys

 - Some surveys have been designed to enumerate and characterize immigrants

 - One problem with longitudinal surveys is that undocumented migrants are at heightened risk of dropping out, whether deliberately or because of high rate of geographic mobility

- The New Immigrant Survey in the US intends to interview immigrants right after they become resident aliens and to follow them for 5 years

- One major problem with this is there are many reasons to believe immigrants who become legal differ in important ways from those who don’t

Massey and Durand are in the process of fielding the Mexican Migration Project, which utilizes ethnosurveys to learn about Mexican-US migration

- The ethnosurvey combines the strengths of qualitative and quantitative methods in order to 1) compare the behaviors and characteristics of documented and undocumented migrants, 2) measure trends in both groups over time, 3) undertake longitudinal studies of the migration process, 4) discern the background characteristics of migrants before they enter the US, 5) undertake detailed cross-tabulations of Mexicans based on large samples, 6) study transitions between different legal statuses and movements back and forth across borders, and 7) provide data capable of monitoring the effects of shifting US and Mexican policies

- Ethnosurveys collect life histories of respondents

- Also collect data at the individual, household, community, and national level

- Gather information in both sending and receiving countries

“Migration, fertility, and aging in stable populations.” Demography, 45(3), 641-650.

Uses stable-population model to examine how net migration into low fertility countries in Europe could be used to alleviate population decline

- Demonstrates that migration can increase the growth rate of a country, which tend to make the age distribution younger

- However, migration can also be viewed as accelerating population aging, because incoming migrants are inevitably older than newborns

- Overall, migration appears to be a solution to slowing down population aging and to maintaining population size