Global migration trends and determinants

The risk of unemployment in France is higher for second–generation North African immigrants than it is for second generations from other ethnic origins. The extent to which employer prejudice is responsible for this poor labor market outcome is subject to debate. We propose to test the role of intermarriage on descendants' labour market entry. We compare the risk of unemployment of natives and three second-generation sub-groups: people born to two immigrant parents, those born to an immigrant father and a native mother and those born to a native father and an immigrant mother. Using the French employment surveys 2006-2008, we estimate the probability to be unemployed, controlling for human capital variables, region and parents’ social characteristics. Our results indicate that second-generation North Africans born to mixed parents have a higher risk of unemployment if they have an immigrant father than if they have an immigrant mother. This difference in the unemployment rate according to which parent has immigrated is not observed in the case of second-generation South Europeans. We conclude that statistical discrimination probably plays a role in the high rate of unemployment of second-generation North Africans on the French labor market.

While recent research has underlined the importance of immigration and integration policies in understanding the immigrant pathways of socio-economic inclusion, little empirical analysis exists on the labour market experiences of migrants admitted through different immigration channels (e.g. labour, family, asylum, study). This paper addresses this knowledge gap. It begins with a conceptual discussion on how migration policies influence the size, personal and professional attributes, and access to the labour market of the different immigrant categories. My empirical analysis builds on the 2008 Ad-Hoc module on migrant workers of the EU Labour Force Survey which offers the unprecedented opportunity to break down the migrant workforce by immigration categories approximating status on arrival. Regression analyses are used to ‘isolate’ the impact of the immigration route as a determinant of economic inclusion. Results show that immigration status on arrival affects the labour market outcomes in terms of both economic activity and access to an employment commensurate to the migrant skills, with family migrants and refugees retaining a disadvantage in almost all EU destinations. I conclude by reflecting on the implications of different national admission systems for the migrant labour market integration.

Of the total number of refugees and immigrants accepted into Canada every year, around half originate from Asia. Today, South Asians have become the second largest and most diverse visible minority group in Canada. South Asia has been facing an HIV pandemic, and an estimated six million people have been infected and at least 60 percent of HIV+ people in Asia live in India alone. In Canada until 2009, 69,844 cases tested positive for HIV. The numbers who are HIV+ entering Canada from South Asia may be substantial. At present, however, little is known empirically or even anecdotally about the extent of this risk and its impact on health.

This research attempts to assess the perceptions of South Asians in Canada towards HIV and AIDS, and ascertain the prevention and treatment services that they are aware of, accessing, including community based care and the Canadian public system. At a bigger scale, this research seeks to identify the ways in which immigrants and refugees/refugee claimants who are HIV+ from South Asia are vulnerable to discrimination in Canada because of the following factors, which include but are not limited to: lack of information about HIV/AIDS incidence in the community; inability of the Canadian health system to respond appropriately with the lack of information; the community’s need for introspec

The study investigates the socioeconomic and demographic causes and consequences of irregular migration of youth from southern Ethiopia to South Africa. The sample includes 658 eligible young adults aged 15 to 50. A quantitative cross-sectional survey was carried out on Feb. 2010. Data are gathered from four randomly selected local districts and then households from two zones in southern Ethiopia using questionnaire, interviews and discussions. The irregular migration is dominated by young single male aged 20 to 34. The majority of the smuggled migrants are first or second born children. Age, residence and employment status have a significant positive association with migration while sex, marital status, education, duration of residence and birth order have a significant negative association. Household size and ethnicity are found to be insignificant. Over 44% of the respondents view the main cause for the irregular migration to be perceived better opportunities in South Africa and only 8% of them claimed poverty. The migration is facilitated by a network of smugglers in Addis Ababa, Hossana or other towns in Ethiopia and they work in cooperation with several smugglers from Kenya and Somalia. Return migrants are better off now than before migration. Many of the smuggled migrants faced harsh & unexpected negative consequences.

This paper first develops a dynamic model of a system of piecewise continuous differential equations to study the simultaneous interactions between three endogenous variables: Capital inflow (FDI), the real wage rate and the net migration flow into a region. Stability of the general model is compared with two special cases of either or both sticky real wages and fixed capital input. We add return migration and possible immobility (no one moves) to the dynamic equation of immigration to fully capture the determinants of net migration. Empirically, we apply this general model with Cobb-Douglas production and calibrate it for Guangdong over 1990-2010, a fast growing province with the highest volume of net migration flow in China. We claim three contributions: this paper is the first theoretical and empirical one to study these simultaneous interactions and innovates by recognising the inherent regime shifts due to migration costs and two way migration; we find that the wage elasticity plays a crucial role for stability condition; the results of calibration indicate that regions in Guangdong are heterogeneous but with positive simultaneous interactions between those three endogenous variables. Some policy implications and further research directions are also suggested.

More and more attention and concern were put on the migration phenomenon caused by environmental changes. However, many of the problems on migration caused by environment had not yet reached a consensus. Environmental migrants happened due to environmental changes, but in many cases, environmental change was not a sufficient condition. Based on summarizing environment migration theories, the paper indicated that social vulnerability theory could better explain how environmental changes affected immigration, comparing with others. The paper also pointed out that although different from international environmental migration, Chinese environmental migration was carried out under the guidance of the government and organized also, these theories still offered references.

Studies on children ‘left-behind’ indicate that children suffer psychologically from parental migration. Yet, most of these studies are case studies with no comparison group, leaving open the question whether the findings relate particularly to transnational families. Also, most studies target Latin America or Asia. The literature identifies important factors for children’s well-being: which parent migrates, length of separation, networks of family support and school systems. This study investigates children’s well-being through a cross-national survey conducted in 3 African countries in 2010-11 (Ghana N=2,760; Angola N=2,243; Nigeria N=2,168). It compares children in transnational families with those living with their parents in the country of origin. As such it further tests findings from previous qualitative studies and adds the case of African transnational families to the literature. Children’s well-being is measured through the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire. Results show that children experience greater psychological difficulties when mothers or both parents have migrated, live with non-kin, change caregiver often, and have their migrant parent(s) away internationally. Negative well-being is further associated with low economic conditions and divorced or separated families that children are in.

This paper addresses two gaps in the migration literature: (1) the need for longitudinal microdata to study the impact of migration and (2) the absence of studies that analyze whether immigrants in “new destinations” in the U.S. are doing better or worse socioeconomically in those places. The 1996 and 2001 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation are used here to track the before- and after-migration incomes of natives and immigrants in the U.S. using descriptive and multivariate regression techniques, taking selection and endogeneity into account. The goal is to assess whether immigrants who migrated between “traditional” and “new” metropolitan areas during the late 1990s and early 2000s are better or worse off economically compared to (1) before they migrated, (2) non-migrant immigrants in traditional metropolitan areas, and (3) native migrants. Destination types are categorized by traditional versus new destination state and also by size of metropolitan area. This research is necessary for understanding how immigrants in different parts of the U.S. are incorporating socioeconomically.

Recently, scholars have noted the increasing similarities of immigration policies in industrialized Western democracies but until lately, the scope of analysis has typically excluded South Korea. With its late development, image of ethnic and cultural homogeneity, history of isolation, very low number of foreign residents, and resistance to immigration, there were few indications that South Korea would be a migrant destination country. By the mid-1990s however, its economic rise was accompanied by a rapid increase in the number of both short and long-term migrants and in a span of only two decades, it has become a migrant receiving country. This gave rise to various economic, political, and socio-cultural issues and compelled the government to adopt various policies to control and manage immigration. For a time, it has borrowed similar labor importation policies as neighboring Japan but in the last decade, has increasingly adopted policies that are both similar and different to those adopted in classical countries of immigration in North America and Europe. This paper surveys immigration trends and policies in South Korea and assesses in what ways they are converging and/or diverging with those of immigrant receiving industrialized Western democracies and why.

The discourse concerning the mobility of human capital internationally typically evokes migratory patterns from poorer to relatively more wealthy countries and this focus is strongly reflected in the (brain drain) literature. This emphasis omits an important and as yet understudied aspect of the phenomena however, namely skill transfer to non-OECD and in particular, emerging nations. This paper contributes to the literature by first developing a new dataset of international bilateral migration stocks by gender and education level, which includes both OECD and non-OECD countries as destinations in 1990 and 2000. We then use pseudo-gravity model regressions to impute missing values where data are not available, such that we are able to provide, for the first time, a global assessment of human capital mobility. The comprehensiveness of the resulting matrices facilitates a more nuanced definition of emigration rates based on the concept of the natural labour force, which additionally considers both entries and exits of workers.