New perspectives on migration determinants

Previous research has provided evidence of positive educational selection into South-North migration flows, showing that immigrants to developed countries tend to be more educated than non-migrants in their home countries. However, we know little about whether and how educational selectivity operates in other types of migration flows. This study tests whether theories of educational selectivity apply to a growing South-South migration flow: intraregional migration in South America. Using census data from three large receiving countries in South America (Argentina, Brazil, and Chile) and the corresponding major South American sending countries, we assess whether immigrants are more or less educated than non-migrants in their home countries and analyze if and how educational selectivity varies by gender, receiving country, country of origin, and labor market characteristics. Preliminary findings suggest that most intraregional migrants in South America are positively selected on education, but that the degree of selectivity varies by gender, country of origin, and labor market characteristics.

Internal migration is much more common than international migration. It has been suggested that this is partly due to blocked international mobility; many people who prefer international migration cannot afford the costs and instead migrate internally. Several studies have shown that internal and international migrants have different socio-economic profiles, although the direction of the difference varies. This paper aims to shed light on the differences in characteristics of internal and international migrants and therewith on the role of blocked mobility. The paper focuses on migration aspirations rather than actual mobility; this gives an idea of people’s preferences rather than what they are able to accomplish. If internal migration is indeed a second-best international migration aspirations should be much higher. The paper looks at a range of factors that may have differing influences. These are education, perceived quality of life in the residence country, perceived job opportunities, migration networks, migration culture, internet access and urbanisation. The analysis draws on data from EUMAGINE; a multi-method project conducted in a total of sixteen research areas of Morocco, Turkey, Senegal and the Ukraine. The results show that in most areas international migration aspirations are indeed higher than internal migration

Whilst studies have shown that migration is often undertaken as a livelihood strategy amongst transnational families in Southeast Asia, little has been explored concerning the role and implications of debt on patterns of everyday remittance use. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from the CHAMPSEA (Child Health and Migrant Parents in Southeast Asia) study in Thailand and Vietnam, this paper seeks to unpack the relationship between debt, remittance use, and migration as a strategy of poverty alleviation. Although the results from our survey indicated that a significant proportion of actual remittance use planned for uses such as children’s education, house building or subsistence needs was diverted towards debt repayment, a closer look at the qualitative data revealed a more complicated picture concerning the nature of debt in two distinct but overlapping ways: debt as entrapment (whereby debt is perpetuated as a vicious cycle of poverty); and debt as strategy (whereby the household undertakes deliberate decisions to purchase material investments through instalment loans). These findings emphasise the complex nature of migration, whilst highlighting the need for studies on migration and development to incorporate a more nuanced understanding of debt concerning household decision-making practices and remittance use.

Latin American and The Caribbean outmigration coincided with the onset of the Demographic Transition for some countries, but little is known on how both processes are related. To what extent natural growth did contribute in explaining net migration´s trend? What other processes could have inhibited its impact on international mobility?

Country level data from UN Population Division, World Bank and the Quality of Governance Institute was organized into a macro-panel, where 16 countries were followed up from 1975 to 2010. A multivariate linear model with fixed effects and interactions, to account for demographic inhibitors, such as urbanization, industrialization or increase in productivity, was estimated.

Similar to what has been found for the Trans-Saharan migration system, natural increase has a negative and significant effect on net migration´s evolution, even while other processes are going on. Urbanization significantly inhibited the effect of natural increase on net migration, up to four times, but this was not the case for productivity increase or for industrialization.

There have been a number of studies on microeconomic and macroeconomic determinants of migration, but few discussed on the race and religion factors on skilled labour immigration. This paper makes contribution toward filling this void by examining how religion influences the skilled labour immigration flow into Malaysia. Specifically, the sharing of religious cultures enables the formation of exchange networks that can overcome the failure or non-existence of the social and economic institutions for affecting the flow of skilled labours into Malaysia. The determinants of immigration are analysed with pooled cross-country and time series data on skilled immigration into Malaysia from 39 countries during 1998-2004. Results demonstrate clearly the sharing of Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu culture by three major races which are the Malays, Chinese and Indians in Malaysia has a significantly positive influence on the inflow of skilled labour immigrants.