Global migration trends and determinants

Falling fertility leading to population ageing is causing serious labour shortages in developed nations. Further, globalization, needs of knowledge economy and compulsion to maintain international competitiveness are fueling skilled migration. Question arises what role skilled migration can play in moderating effects of population ageing and maintaining competitiveness of knowledge economies as well as provide direct and indirect benefits to sending nations. This study explores these issues through quantitative and qualitative field data collected from Indian skilled professionals working in Singapore in various sectors. Importance of study lies in the fact that India skilled migrants play very a very important role in Singapore and to the best of knowledge of researcher; this is the only study on them based on field data. The findings show that demographic constraint faced by Singapore and its need to attract foreign talent along with India‘s advantages in supplying cost effective globally competent manpower provides strong complementarities between two countries which are being exploited for mutual gain, particularly in a regional cooperation framework. Skilled Indian migrants are also contributing to home country through remittances, skills transfer, new technology and new ideas, and institutional development.

Previous research has provided evidence of positive educational selection into South-North migration flows, showing that immigrants to developed countries tend to be more educated than non-migrants in their home countries. However, we know little about whether and how educational selectivity operates in other types of migration flows. This study tests whether theories of educational selectivity apply to a growing South-South migration flow: intraregional migration in South America. Using census data from three large receiving countries in South America (Argentina, Brazil, and Chile) and the corresponding major South American sending countries, we assess whether immigrants are more or less educated than non-migrants in their home countries and analyze if and how educational selectivity varies by gender, receiving country, country of origin, and labor market characteristics. Preliminary findings suggest that most intraregional migrants in South America are positively selected on education, but that the degree of selectivity varies by gender, country of origin, and labor market characteristics.

The flow of African immigrants to Brazil raises questions about the reasons for migrating. There is a new flow of Africans to Brazil by the means of multilateral agreements, but there is also still continuous refugee immigration to the country. The paper aims to understand the reality of migration and living conditions of African refugees nowadays in Brazil, as origin and destination locations are punished by poverty, exclusion and inequality. The methods used for the research include literature review, documents study, laws, international treaties, and surveys. The main data sources used were UNHCR and the survey about Living Conditions of Refugee Population (CVPR) in Brazil, coordinated by Professor Rosana Baeninger (NEPO/Unicamp). In 2011, Brazil had 4477 refugees, of whom 63.7% were from Africa. Thus, it is relevant to differentiate both flows – new migrants and refugees - discussing the concept of forced migration (Aydos, 2010) and glancing over Brazilian political and institutional context (Moreira, 2012).

Keywords: forced migration; refugees; Brazil

Demographers for long have observed sex selection among people who migrate. For example, in the case of Mexico, while men have for long dominated the flows of immigrants entering the United States, this trend is shifting somewhat. Less attention, however, has been focused on the sex selectivity of children. In particular, it is not known whether children born in Mexico and living in the United States are more likely to be boys or girls. This paper examines the sex selectivity of foreign-born Mexican-origin children living in the United States across five periods (1980, 1990, 2000, 2005-2007, and 2008-2010). The results of this analysis suggest that there is a greater than expected number of boys among foreign-born Mexican-origin children living in the United States.

Raw income differentials between the two countries have gone from 2.9 times larger in the US than in Mexico during the 1970s to 3.2 times larger in 2010. Along with the widening of the regional economic and wage gap, the international migration from Mexico to US has increased from less than 120 thousand migrants a year in 1970 to more than half million migrants a year in 2010. Using United States and Mexican micro-data on socioeconomic characteristics of workers living in communities close to the border, this paper compares wages of identical individuals both sides of the border after controlling for unobserved differences between the productivity of migrants and non-migrants as well as explain the Mexican social and economic policies to indirect control of emigration in the country. We found that domestic-born, domestic-educated workers in the US side gain around 3.4 times the wage of an identical domestic-born, domestic-educated worker in Mexico. However, Mexican-born-educated legal workers in the US side of the border gain 2.8 times the wage of an identical worker in the Mexican side. Illegal workers in the US side of the border gain only 1.8 times more than their Mexican counterparts, which may not represent the larger benefit of moving, as their wages increase 1.6 times just for moving close to Mexican side of the border.

Internal migration is much more common than international migration. It has been suggested that this is partly due to blocked international mobility; many people who prefer international migration cannot afford the costs and instead migrate internally. Several studies have shown that internal and international migrants have different socio-economic profiles, although the direction of the difference varies. This paper aims to shed light on the differences in characteristics of internal and international migrants and therewith on the role of blocked mobility. The paper focuses on migration aspirations rather than actual mobility; this gives an idea of people’s preferences rather than what they are able to accomplish. If internal migration is indeed a second-best international migration aspirations should be much higher. The paper looks at a range of factors that may have differing influences. These are education, perceived quality of life in the residence country, perceived job opportunities, migration networks, migration culture, internet access and urbanisation. The analysis draws on data from EUMAGINE; a multi-method project conducted in a total of sixteen research areas of Morocco, Turkey, Senegal and the Ukraine. The results show that in most areas international migration aspirations are indeed higher than internal migration

This paper analyses shifts in global migration patterns between 1960 and 2000. In order to operationalize the concept of ’globalisation of migration’, the paper elaborates separate Emigration Dispersion and Immigration Diversification indices, which simultaneously capture the spread, distance and intensity of international migration. The results challenge the idea that there has been an increase in the intensity, diversity and geographical scope of migration per se. Migration has globalized from an origin country perspective but not necessarily from a destination country perspective. While global migration rates have declined over the past 50 years, migrants from an increasingly diverse array of origin countries have concentrated in a decreasing pool of prime destination countries. Major shifts in the scope, direction and diversity of migration primarily manifest themselves on a (sub-) regional level. The main shifts in global migration have been directional and are linked to major geopolitical and economic shifts. While the global migration map has changed, access to international migration remains unequally distributed and most migrations remain concentrated in a few large migration corridors. Rather than refuting the globalization of migration as such, this seems to reflect the asymmetric nature of globalization processes.

Experts and international organisations highlight the impact of remittances on productive investments for development. A number of surveys reveal that remittances are partly used for farm investments (Taylor et al., 2006; Wouterse and Taylor, 2009). Based on the New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM) it is hypothesized that households invest remittances for reducing income risks by diversifying agricultural production, for overcoming credit constraints and for productive investments. Furthermore, it is assumed that remittances contribute to land use changes in the farm sector. These considerations lead to the following research questions: (1) How far are remittances to rural areas used for farm investment? (2) How far do investments out of remittances influence land use change? For that purpose, a survey among 400 households was conducted in Kerala (India) and the research region of Malappuram, because this region features high a density of migration, high amounts of remittances transferred from the Gulf countries, water shortages during dry season, and a long farming tradition . The data are analysed by correlations and descriptive statistics. The results indicate that farm investments correlate positively with remittances. Besides, households which receive remittances have a higher likelihood to change their land use.

The appeal of studying abroad (in English-speaking countries) is strong from Iran. According to MSRT of Iran, India is the first Iranian abroad students’ destination. From total 45,000 Iranian students study abroad, 6,000 are in India. With regard to their demographic variables, they experience different level of satisfaction and adaptation.

This study consider the demographic variables of Iranian migrant students in India and their level of satisfaction and culture adaptation

Methodology
A mixed method research was used for the study. 34 students participated in depth interview and 396of Iranian post graduate students in India responded to questionnaire, included demographical factors and satisfaction level and cultural adaptation. Using the chi- square and ANOVA, Spss and others statistical techniques used for analyses.

Some findings
There are significant relationship between gender and level of satisfaction, age and cultural adaptation, marital status and level of satisfaction, residency duration and cultural adaptation, residency duration and level of satisfaction and finally gender and cultural adaptation

China is facing more and more international immigrants as its economic development and globalization. According to the 2010 Population Census, there are 593.8 thousand foreigners living in China for at least 3 months or plan to live for 3 months. The paper compared the data of international immigrants between population census and other data sources, such as Minstry of Public Security, Minstry of Health, Ministry of labor and social security, etc based on the special administrative system on international migration in China. The paper analyzed the demographic characteristics of international immigrants, their citizenship, gender and age structure, education, purpose of immigration, duration of stay, as well as their living arrangement in China. Based on the Census data, the paper also compared the internationl immigrants with the migrants from Hongkong, Macao and Taiwan, analyze the characteristics of immigration in different regions, such as economic developed area like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, border area like Yunnan, Guangxi.