Internal migration and urbanization: insertion and selectivity

In the two recent decades internal migration in Mexico has developed a new pattern. One of the most important changes experienced is that whereas in the past most migrants had a rural origin, nowadays they tend to come from an urban area. In addition, the places of destination have diversified. Despite these transformations, migrants are still an auto-selected group that differ from non-migrants in their socioeconomic and sociocultural characteristics. Several works have documented this selectivity. Nevertheless, all of them treat migrants as if they were a homogeneous group and as if they were going to the same place. In this paper we explore the different patterns of migrants’ selectivity according to their place of destination. Our results show that migrants, as a group, are more likely to be female, young and more educated than natives, but that there are three different patterns of migrants selectivity. Most importantly, migrants’ selectivity is linked to the labor opportunities and requirements in the places of destination.

Increasing earnings inequality has been a feature of China’s segmented urban labour markets in recent decades. This paper examines the effects of household registration or hukou-induced segmentation on earnings inequality and returns to education in urban China, using data from a survey conducted in four large Chinese cities in 2008, with a particular focus on three groups (urban locals, urban-to-urban migrants, and rural-to-urban migrants). The paper estimates returns to education in urban China by estimating separate Mincer equations for the three groups. A quantile regression is also carried out to examine the effects of covariates on earnings at different points of the conditional distribution. In addition, a decomposition of earnings differentials between groups is carried out to further identify the effect of education on earnings inequality using the Blinder-Oaxaca approach. The results indicate that factors such as downward mobility, fewer years of schooling and jobs in informal sectors have negative effects on rural migrants (but less so on urban migrants). It also finds that education is an important source of inequality. Inequality in educational attainments plays an important role in determining returns in urban labour market.

The main objective of this paper is to study the spatial pattern and levels of inter-state migration and to understand how regional disparities in development influences inter-state migration pattern in India. This study is based on 1991 and 2001 census migration data. In this analysis, two rates namely in-migration and out-migration rates have been computed separately for both males and females. Statistical method of correlation and regression has been used to find the linkage between regional disparities in development and migration. It shows that people mainly moved to the states which have witnessed higher growth rates of urbanization and achieved higher economic development compared to the states where employment opportunities are less. However, there are also some states which are showing significant in-migration as well as out-migration. The decadal growth rate of migration has increased during the period 1991 to 2001. Another important finding is that the overall sex ratio of migrants has reversed favouring males during the last decade. While there is a negative relationship between rate of in-migration and poverty, the volume of in migration is positively correlated with development.

It is widely accepted assumption that migrants in developing countries who are not absorbed by the modern sector may enter informal sector as a transitional phase. The purpose of this study is to assess whether this assumption is valid for Indonesian case using the Indonesia Family Life Survey 2007 data. By taking advantage of the longitudinal data of employment and migration histories of 15 years and old individuals, multinomial regression with correlated random intercept is employed to study whether migrants are more likely to work informal sector than non migrants and to what extent can working in informal sector be linked with migration motives. The results show that migrants in Indonesia are more likely to work in formal sector than non migrants. In connection with migration motives, migrants with work-related motives are less likely to work in informal sector than migrants with motives related to family-related reasons. Among migrants with work-related motives, those who move due to being unemployed and who lack of employment opportunity in origin locations have higher likelihood to work in informal sector than formal sector compared with those who moved for other job-related reasons such as job transfers and closer to job.