Immigrant integration and settlement

Human migration has from time in memoriam been considered an important element of population dynamics which has significant consequences on both areas of origin and destination. According to Oderth (2002), migration has shaped the nature of both the receiving country and that of origin more than any other phenomenon in human geography. The existence of an intricate relationship between immigration and development is also captured by Hammer et al. (2002), who claim that migration can have a decisive impact on the direction and speed of development on both the country of origin and destination. The focus of this work is on south-south migration with Cameroon being the country of destination. Many Africans are living in Cameroon for political, socio-cultural and economic reasons. Some have been born here never returning back to their country of origin. Nine localities in the south west region were selected, Questionnaires were used in the collection of data, and respondents were selected randomly. Results show that they were welcomed in most rural areas because they constituted a source of labour especially for the cocoa farmers, but with continuous poor economic situation, most are engaged in businesses and fishing activities. They are considered in the urban areas as criminals and illegal occupants of the land.

African diasporas within the sub-region of West Africa, are often overlooked actors in the area of remittances, development and integration. This issue becomes manifest as very little attention is paid to diasporas in the policy making and expanding literature on African Migration. Attention has always been paid to the African diasporas in the Western countries of the US and Europe. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the concept of “diaspora” has acquired a new and challenging position in public discourse as well as in Social and Cultural Sciences, where its range of meaning has been extended from traumatic histories of Jewish, Armenian or Black communities to various groups of migrant origin and “new diasporas”. There are increasingly new transnational people with the status of diasporas in West Africa. In the context of global cultural politics, the very concept of diaspora seems to have become a symbolic resource. Drawing on the data collected from the Nigerian and Ghanaian diasporas in Ghana and Nigeria respectively, this paper discuses its findings from their social, economic and cultural involvements.. The effects of these contributions to bilateral and multilateral relations in West Africa , thereby enhancing the sub-regional integration will be discussed.

Keywords: Migration, Diaspora, Remittances

Brahmaputra valley is a multi-ethnic region with rich culture-traditions and a complex history. Apart from agriculture, crafting is also considered as an important traditional means of livelihood of its inhabitants. The Moria community of Assam is the traditional brass artisans who came to Assam during Muslim invasion as a warrior and later they became canon and gun makers during Ahom regime. According to Assam history, these people were originally warriors; who accompanied the Muhammedan General Turbak in the invasion of Assam. In 1532 AD, the Muslim invaders were repulsed by the Ahoms and their General Turbaq was killed and captured 900 Muslim soldiers. The Muhammadans who were taken as prisoners in this war were became brass item manufactures their livelihood. The Morias are a backward community since they don’t know cultivation beside brass manufacturing which has less demand today. Therefore, brass items manufacturing became economically unproductive to Morias and thus most of them shifted their activities to tertiary sectors for a better economic prospects and better livelihood.
In this paper an attempt has been made to explain the traditional livelihood system and subsequent changes.

In immigrant integration studies, many objective measures have been
examined and subjective measures have received less attention. Using Family Life Survey Data collected in Hong Kong in 2009, this paper examines the impact of immigrant status on married adults’ life satisfaction in Hong Kong. The regression models show that immigrants are less satisfied with their life in Hong Kong overall.
However, wealth attainment has a mediating impact on the negative influences of immigrant status on life satisfaction. Hours-of-workings seem also plays a very important mediating role. Longer duration or earlier arrival in Hong Kong could help narrow the gap of life satisfaction of immigrants and non-immigrants. The results
indicate that economic achievement is the most important factor for immigrant to gain similar level of life satisfaction in the host society.

This article examines the identity formation of the Haitians in a middle class black neighborhood in New York. Segmented assimilation theory predicts that the Haitian second generation will integrate into the black American underclass or maintain strong ethnic group identities. The black middle class, however, is an unexplored pathway of cultural assimilation for black immigrants in general and Haitians in particular. This paper uses the literature on the racial and class experiences of the black American middle class as a departure point for understanding the boundary work of middle class Haitian youth. Based on qualitative interviews with 43 participants, we uncover the mechanisms of identity formation for this invisible population. Racial, ethnic and class boundaries compel them Haitian youth to create strategies of either empowerment or distancing in order to negotiate between their middle class status and ethnoracial exclusion. Haitian middle class youth performed different identities in their racially-segregated neighborhood, ethnically-homogenous religious setting and mixed-race schools. This study’s findings contributes to our theoretical understanding of the identity work of middle class immigrants.

The study tried to measure the effect of religious affiliations and religiosity on marriage timing of people in United Kingdom. Special Emphasis is being put on the Muslim people due to previous finding from 2001 census which found that Muslim people tend to marry earlier compared to other religious groups in United Kingdom. Since Majority of Muslims in United Kingdom is from South Asian descent, this issue is closely related to the issue of how immigrants in United Kingdom are adapting to the British culture. Understanding Society wave 1 data which contains sample boost on ethnic minorities was used in order to get more samples from Muslim people. Analysis of Survivor functions was used to measure the change in marriage timing over time while Cox proportional Hazard model was used to measure the effect of covariates on marriage timing. It is believed that the role of cultural and religious values are still very strong among Muslims in United Kingdom, which results in support toward practices and attitudes that facilitate early marriage for Muslim people in United Kingdom.

Keyword: Muslim, Marriage Timing, Immigrants, Cox Proportional Hazard Model, Religiosity

Residential segregation and internal migration are studied as critical processes in understanding ethnic and race relations, but these processes are generally studied in relative isolation. In this article, we use the unique demographic context of Israel with its unparalleled levels of immigration, to examine how immigrant seniority and ethnicity shaped both patterns of residential segregation and spatial mobility.
Our analysis focuses on the first cohort that was born around the establishment of Israel (1938-1958), and we use Theil's H to measure 'Eveness' in segregation across four rounds of the Israeli census from 1961 to 2008. Our findings illustrate how initially marked social-geographic boundaries were later erased. We suggest that the dynamics in Israel should be understood through the combined effects of seniority and ethnicity and we relate these findings and their implications to both classical and segment assimilation theory.

We develop two indexes to measure the capacities of communities to welcome and integrate newcomers: (1) a welcome-ability index – an indicator of integration capacity and opportunities in communities, and (2) an integration index – a measure of economic, social, and political integration of individuals. The latter is an outcome of the processes measured by the former. The first, a community-level measure, takes into account opportunities and facilities, including employment and educational opportunities, facilities for health care, positive attitudes towards immigrants, and opportunities for political participation. The second, an individual-level measure, takes into account the multi-dimensionality of societal integration, specifically, economic inclusion and parity, social recognition and belonging, political involvement that insures the legitimacy of institutions, and civic participation. The welcome-ability index is illustrated with data gathered for a project that collated baseline information on Ontario communities served by local partnerships specifically tasked with enhancing the capacities of communities to welcome newcomers.
The integration index is developed with data from the 2008 Canadian General Social Survey on Social Networks.

In the last two decades Italy is increasingly taking a multi-ethnic face as a crossroads of peoples and cultures thanks to the gradual and widespread stabilization with a rising contribution of the foreign population in defining the socio-economic, cultural and political set-up of the country.
In recent years there has been a substantial increase of foreign students: in fact, in the last six years, their number doubled reaching an incidence of foreign students on the total school population equal to 7.9%. With particular reference to the Southern regions, we can point out the case of Apulia characterized by a strong youth component and, consequently, by an important number of foreign students. Other than official observations conducted mainly at a national level, data used for this contribution will be those of a field survey organized ad hoc, conducted in collaboration with the Regional School Division and financed by the European Fund for the Integration. Thanks to the several information collected, it has been possible to find out, beyond quantitative aspects, qualitative features very useful for a more complete phenomenon interpretation. Among the different aspects we would like to put the emphasis on the linguistic integration, basing on the consideration that language is the vehicle for a full socio-economic integration.

The principal objective of this study is to understand the influence of the massive in-migration of peasants on the adoption of agriculture by the nomadic population, the role of socio-economic factors and environmental conditions in this process basing on the historical data from the Northern Kazakhstan, end of XIX – early XX cc.
The main hypothesis is that the arrival of migrants had a considerable impact on the autochthone nomadic society. On the one hand it destabilized the equilibrium of the functioning of the nomadic society within the ecological zone of semi-arid steppes and rendered difficult practicing the nomadic herding; on the other hand it favoured the encounter between the nomads and the sedentaries, induced a learning process and the subsequent adoption of the new technology.
This study benefits from a unique detailed data set coming from the materials of the first statistical survey of the steppe areas of Kazakhstan.
The main funding is that the proximity to the Russian settlements matters for the agriculture adoption by the Kazakh economies, even after controlling for socio-economic and environmental factors. Even within the environment favourable for practicing agriculture, those Kazakh economies that are closer to the Russian settlements choose to specialize in agriculture.