International migration: recent policy directions

Despite the lack of specific law for refugees, the Government of India continues to treat incoming refugees on the basis of their nationality & political considerations. India is not a signatory to 1951 UN convention for refugees, in view of continuously growing concern of national security. This creates an immediate need for national refugee law. The study looks after the trends, patterns and future projection of refugee population coming to and departing from India, it also explores the need for creating National Refugee law for India. Data for the study is taken from United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for the period 1991-2011. Results shows increasing trend of refugee population coming to India over a period of time. Maximum Proportion of refugees are coming from China, while people from India seeking asylum are mainly in the US and Canada.

The immigration debate in France and Netherlands, 2010-2102: scope and limits of the demographic approach
Demographers usually pretend to oppose facts to myths, science to illusion, when facing the public debates around sensitive issues such as immigration. The “fact-checking” attitude recently adopted by the media seems to comfort this classical opposition. However, the capacity of scientists to elaborate neutral and undisputed facts meets more and more scepticism. Demographers seem to enjoy no privilege at all to proclaim any scientific truth over “integration criteria”, “ethnic statistics”, “European values” challenged by Islam, not to mention the very definition of “migrants” or “migration background”.

In order to address more concretely this kind of issues, a systematic comparison will be made here of the immigration debates held in France and in the Netherlands in the years 2010-2012, with a special stress on the role played by social scientists. Three topics will be selected: the definition of “immigrés” and “allochtoon”, the “halal” or “ritual slaughter” controversy and the transmission of national “norms and values” to non-European migrants.

This paper analyzes the international migration of Brazilians to Japan, regarding its historical conformation and the migratory policies that largely define this process. This immigration began around 1980 and in the last three decades the flow of Brazilians towards Japan became significant and dynamic. To understand the migratory dynamics along this period, we adopt a perspective of the migratory processes’ temporal expectation (Roberts, 1995) that contemplates three main dimensions: 1) a formal and prescribed dimension; 2) the ethnic group dimension; and 3) the family groups dimension. This paper focuses on the analysis of the formal and prescribed dimension through the migratory policies that guide flow of workers. We also approach the 2008 international economic crisis period, considering Brazilian and Japanese governments’ official guidelines. The crisis’ context worsened immigrants’ situation in Japan, provoking a decrease in Brazilian population in that period. The methodology is based on the descriptive analysis of official statistics of the Japanese government on migration and the registry of foreigners in the country. Publications of Brazil’s National Immigration Council (CNIg – “Conselho Nacional de Imigração do Brasil”) were also consulted.

Šantić Danica, research assistent, Geographic Faculty, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Spasovski Milena, professor, Geographic Faculty, University of Belgrade, Serbia

''Serbia in the international migration syistem''

Serbia is a country with a long migration tradition, but recently the share of person in international economic and political migration rapidly increases. In the last decades of the 20th and the beginning of the 21th century is evident strengthening оf overall migrations on different levels (local, regional and international), with dominantly emigration character and strong diasporas, with the largest number of refugees and displaced persons in Europe and increasing of illegal migration. Relevant international institutions send recommendations to states and governments to implement proactive politics towards migrations by formulating and implementing migration policy within the population policy and other development policies. It is necessary to improve the socio-economic policies and programs in the country for the purpose of expressing favorable trends in the distribution of population, internal and international migration is necessary to stop and redirect the trend of migration due to the crisis in the 90's of young, educated professionals and scientists.

By 2014, the Philippines will be celebrating the 40th year of the institutionalization of a “labor export” policy when then President Ferdinand Marcos enacted the 1974 Philippine Labor Code. Then, labor migration was regarded as a stop-gap measure for the country’s economic problems (while there were opportunities available for labor at that time). Nearly four decades since that Philippine policy, the world has embraced “migration and development” as a broader socio-economic, transnational approach to dealing with overseas migration.

The Philippines, for its part, has seen its economy slowly but steadily growing —that international credit ratings agencies have looked at the Philippines as among the emerging economies, and by 2050, among the 20 biggest economies. This brings to the fore the role of the overseas migration phenomenon itself. Has national development policy integrated the overseas migration phenomenon and identified how origin countries like the Philippines manage not just the outflows of people but the developmental impacts?

This paper intends to assess the Philippines’ policies as it relates to not just overseas migration but to overseas migration as a factor of Philippine socio-economic development. The question here is this: is the policy a "development" or a "migration-and-development" policy?

The study analysed labour emigration from Nepal and estimated its effects on poverty reduction and agricultural growth. Using secondary data it compares agricultural output elasticities of foreign employment and assesses the role of foreign employment on the relationships between growth, poverty and agricultural development. The growth of the labour emigration follows a polynomial function of degree two with positive coefficients of second and first degrees. The major destinations of the Nepalese labour force are Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. Econometric models are employed at the sectoral level to establish the effects of migration on poverty and agricultural production. The results show that every million increase in the remittance inflow decreases the poverty head count by 0.007 percent, but every labourer emigrated reduces agricultural gross output by NRs 18,000. The results will be useful for devising sound policies on migration, poverty and agricultural development. The migration can be encouraged till it takes away the surplus labour from the economy and increases labour productivity without creating labour scarcity in the domestic production. Policy of increasing labour productivity at the domestic industries can increase the domestic wage rate that can ration the labour migration.

As an immigration country, Australia's demography is inevitably tied up with immigration policy. In recent years refugees as a suset of actual and potential immigration have become a major focus of Australian policy and politics. This paper links the demographic data on this phenomenon with the reactions of the Australian government and Australians more broadly.
The population groups of particular concern are Africans from Somalia and South Sudan plus some from coastal West Africa; Hazaras, an ethnic minority from Afghanistan; Iranians,Iraqis and now Syrians fleeing conflict in the Middle East and Tamils from Sri Lanka. The demographic data used covers national populations in the source countries; refugee populations in camps and elsewhere; asylum seekers attempting to enter mainland Australia and her off-shore islands and refugees who succeed in becoming permanent residents in Australia.
Policy aspects which are covered include the demography of the populations at risk as contrasted with the demography of those who achieve migration to Australia and the demography of chain migration amongst refugees and the impact of Australian law and policy on this migration. The data used comes from Censuses, Australian migration statistics and international statistical sources as well as policy documents.

This paper is divided into three parts aiming to understand what should be the most useful contents of policies for contemporary highly skilled migrations.
So, we will firstly provide a short overview of the methods proposed by several Authors in order to describe the main characteristics and trends of international brain drain. Then, in the second part we will show an overview of strategies adopted so far by the governments of those countries that, according to the demographic and economic literature, are the most involved in the brain drain phenomenon. As this kind of analysis does not allow to capture some problematic aspects of the actual world economic system, the discussion will be enriched by the analysis on how changing demographic, economic and social scenarios within the different countries may affect causes and dynamics of highly skilled migration. The most recent data published by the United Nations within the World Population Prospects and data from the analysis of the World Economic Forum (2011 and 2012) will be used as main sources.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between international migration and access to social programs in the context of poor households in Mexico. Are there any differences in the access to social programs between households with migrants and households without migrants? This is a relevant question in lieu of a changing pattern in international migration in Mexico, where the bibliography has shown that poor households have started to have members that migrate to the US. We use a cross-section household survey of the most impoverished municipalities in Mexico (2011) to characterize households with international migration experiences and their differences in access to conditional transfer programs: Oportunidades, Setenta y más, and Seguro Popular. With this survey, it will be possible to estimate the wellbeing of households, their access to the most important social programs in Mexico, and socio-demographic of households that will be validated with census information. Impact evaluation of these social programs have presented mixed results in finding an increasing probability of migration due to access to social programs. Thus, the main contribution of work will be to provide evidence about the processes with which the links between poverty, migration, and access to social programs occur.

The first question that inspired the development of this work was "what motivated the change in the migratory flow between Brazil and Spain among the XIX, XX and XXI?"
Brazil was the third destination chosen by the Spanish in volume of immigrants, behind only to Argentina and Cuba (Bassanezi, 1996), In a first moment motivated by coffee and then attracted by the industry.
Nowadays the brazilians occupy the 14th position among the countries that have most immigrants within Spain. The simple combination of these two phenomena suggests that there was a reversal of flows: in the past, the Spaniards were "repelled" from Spain because of wars and were attracted by working conditions in Brazil; nowadays, Brazilians are "expelled" also the country due to poor employment conditions and safety, among other factors, and depart for Spain, in search of better living conditions.
However, Patarra (2005) says that this reasoning is wrong. The entry and exit of people from Brazil never stopped; context, characteristics, and significance of the volume flows are totally different and can not be compared. For her, "the international migratory movements constitute the planetary territorial restructuring - which, in turn, is intrinsically related to restructuring economic-productive on a global scale." (Patarra, 2005, p.24)