Migration policies and trends

Since the opening up and reforms of the Chinese economy in the 1970s, migrant labor from China's countryside has found employment in cities. The process has a strong impact on China’s economy and urbanization. According to official statistics, the number of migrant workers in China is 150 million, which is 11.5% of the total population . However, with the implementation of a series of national policies and the impact of the global financial crisis from 2008, many migrant workers lost their jobs in the cities and returned to their home villages. This poses great challenges as well as opportunities for the development of rural China. The research presented in this paper explores the employment status of the return migrants and the major determinants for their occupational choice. It is based on a field survey in Hunan Province, done in 2011. Comparing of the returnees’ employment status between two rural regions, we found that the rural industrialization, featuring in collective land use and industrial incentives, plays a significant role in creating employment for return migrants. Hence, rural industrialization is an important strategic choice of urbanization in China, by adjusting the rural economy and transfer of surplus workforce.

Education migration has been increasing significantly during the last six decades. Each year since 2001, Canada has received over 130,000 students from abroad and one of the top source countries is South Korea. In the last decade there has been a significant trend of increasing numbers of younger foreign students in Canada and other English-speaking countries. South Korean transnational families mobilizing abroad for their children’s education have a strong presence in various aspects of Canadian society yet few studies have been conducted to understand this phenomenon from micro to macro levels. Thus, our analysis is three-pronged. Firstly, we explore 1) how the phenomenon of education migration for minor students and accompanying mothers has been produced by home and host countries in their social policies and legislation and 2) how this new transnational family arrangement impacts the family functions and relationships in Canada and 3) how the young education migrants fare in the Canadian school system.

Despite widespread recognition of the potential benefits of managed migration for achieving future economic prosperity and welfare sustainability, migration policies are mostly shaped by short-term labour market objectives and electoral concerns. Nevertheless, new demographic rationales are emerging in migration policies and debates in some of the major immigrant-receiving countries. In the UK, the impact of immigration on population growth has become a ubiquitous issue in political and media debates on immigration policy. As part of the political agenda of the current conservative-led Government coalition, a range of restrictive policy changes to reduce net migration 'from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands' have been adopted to prevent the UK population from ‘hitting’ 70 million within the next two decades. This paper reviews the role of these emerging ‘neo-Malthusian’ arguments and the key issues and challenges in setting and achieving demographic objectives – with particular reference to managing the size of the population – in migration policy-making. It challenges the notion that an ‘optimum’ population size should play a central role in migration policies and debates and the viability of migration policies inspired by demographic objectives.

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.