International migration

Question 1

Who is an international migrant?

Answer 1

“Under the United Nations recommendations, an international migrant is defined as any person who 1) changes his or her country of usual residence 2) for at least one year, for any purpose. The 3) crossing of an international border, with a change of usual residence, differentiates international migration from internal migration.”

Question 2

Ways to come into country - legal vs illegal

Answer 2

USA: Almost 110,000 foreigners enter States on a typical day

• Front door: Ca. 3,100 foreigners receive immigrant visas / green cards that allow them to live, work, and become naturalized U.S. citizens after five years
• Side door (temporary): Over 105,000 tourist, business, and student visitors arrive; some stay only a few days, others for several years
• Back door (unauthorized): 1,500 unauthorized foreigners a day were settling in the United States (until the 2008 recession)  Half of the unauthorized eluded apprehension at the Mexico-U.S. border, while the others entered legally through the side door but violated the terms of their visitor visas by working or not departing

Canada:

Has the same front, side and back door principle, but differs in that over half of the legal immigrants include a family member who achieved enough points to obtain an immigrant visa
-> point selection system ensures that the average educational level of adult immigrants arriving in Canada exceeds the average educational level of Canadian-born adults

Question 3

Development of immigration to US

Answer 3

1st wave: mostly English-speakers from the British Isles, arrived before records were kept beginning in 1820

2nd wave: dominated by Irish and German Catholics in the 1840/1850s
* Civil War practically stopped immigration in the 1860s

3rd wave: between 1880 and 1914, brought over 20 million European immigrants to US, most southern and eastern European immigrants arriving via New York’s Ellis Island found factory jobs in northeastern and midwestern cities
* 1880s qualitative restrictions (no prostitutes, workers with contracts that tied them to a particular employer for several years, and Chinese)
* slowed by World War I + 1920s quantitative restrictions
* 1920s - 1960s: immigration paused (1930s Depression & WWII) –> Immigration rose after World War II ended, as veterans returned with European spouses and Europeans migrated

4th wave: began after 1965, and has been marked by rising numbers of immigrants from Latin America and Asia.

Question 4

2 dimensions of migration change

Answer 4

1) quantity = number of immigrants
2) composition of immigrants (age, gender, region of origin/destination)

Question 5

How did the quantity of immigrants change?

Answer 5

Massive increase: The number of international migrants more than doubled between 1980 and 2010, projected 400 million by 2050

BUT increase only in absolute numbers the relative number of international migrants has remained quite stable, fluctuating between 2.7 - 3.3 % of the world population

Even decline in migration rate: 80% increase in migrants vs. 104 % increase in population

→ Global migration has thus not accelerated

Question 6

How have global migration spread & distance changed?

Answer 6

• Increasing diffusion of migration across all possible bilateral (country-to-country) corridors; but while array of origin countries increases, pool of prime destination countries shrinks (opposite: refugees)
• Increasing geographical distance covered by ‘average’ migrant (but what about legal, linguistic, cultural distances?)

Question 7

How has the composition of global migration changed?

1) Geography

Answer 7

1) Europe:

transformation of (western) Europe from a region of colonizers and emigrants into predominantly a region of immigration since the 1950s (i.e. Gastarbeiter)
+ main origin countries of migrants shifted from TR; S-Europe to C- & E-Europe

2) Gulf countries:

Since the 1973 oil shock, the Gulf countries as well as Libya emerged as new global migration destinations, initially for workers from oil-poor Arab countries (i.e. Egypt, Sudan) but increasingly also from Asian countries (i.e. Philippines) as well as from countries in the Horn of Africa countries

3) Asia/Africa

South-North migration flow definitely large, but even larger is the South-South corridor: The largest flow of migrants, just over 97 million (i.e. within Africa and even more within Asia) –>
Abel & Sander (2014) “estimate the largest movements to occur between South and West Asia, Latin and North America, and within Africa.”

Asia has surpassed Europe as the continent with the most international migrants, at 80 million compared with 78 million migrants

Question 8

How has the composition of global migration changed?

2) Skills

Answer 8

• immigrants’ skill levels have gone up
• reflects the overall increase in education levels worldwide + growing demand for skilled labor in the highly specialized and segmented labor markets of middle- and high-income countries
• BUT demand for lower-skilled migrant labor in agriculture, construction, catering, and domestic and care work has been sustained

Question 9

How has the composition of global migration changed?

3) Gender

Answer 9

• proportion of women among persons migrating to OECD countries has remained rather stable, fluctuating around 46 % over the last six decades
• Recent inflows included more women than was the case during the period of labor recruitment, but the share of women was highest around the mid-1980s (family!)

-> questions the widespread assumption that international migration has undergone a process of feminization

Question 10

How has the composition of global migration changed?

4) Education

Answer 10

Migrants’ levels of education increased almost steadily over time. But: still a high proportion with very low level of education!

Question 11

Why is popular idea that south-north migration is essentially driven by poverty in origin countries wrong?

Answer 11

immigration costly adventure, neither occurs from the poorest countries nor is undertaken by the poorest segments of the population

-> quite the opposite: middle-income countries tend to be the most migratory and international migrants predominantly come from relatively better-off sections of origin populations

Question 12

What does the Migration Transition Theory say?

Answer 12

• Demographic shifts, economic development, and state formation initially increase internal (rural-to-urban) and international emigration.
• Only when countries achieve higher development levels does emigration decrease alongside increasing immigration, leading to their transformation from net emigration to net immigration countries

-> So, the higher the HDI the more attractive the country

Question 13

What are determinants of migration?

Answer 13

socio-economic developement (HDI)

migration policies

Question 14

How have migration policies changed?

Answer 14

Since WWII, immigration & emigration policies have generally become more liberal and are today more about selection than about numbers: Easier legal entry, stay, and exit for most migrant categories, but strict visa and border patrol policies to prevent entry of asylum seekers and other “unwanted” migrants!

Question 15

Are migration policies effective?

Answer 15

In general migration control works but restrictive migration policies can have unintended side effects that limit their effectiveness to achieve intended goals -> Substitution effects:

(1) spatial substitution through the diversion of migration via other routes or to other destinations (choice of other geographical routes and destinations)

(2) categorical substitution through a reorientation toward other legal or illegal channels

(3) inter-temporal substitution affecting the timing of migration in the expectation or fear of future tightening of policies (“now-or-never” migration in anticipation of restrictions)

(4) reverse flow substitution if immigration restrictions interrupt circulation or discouraging return

Question 16

Who is a refugee?

Answer 16

• “Refugees are not migrants.” (UNHCR) -> distinction between immigrant & refugee gains in importance if immigration policies become more restrictive, because the latter have legitimate claims to enter and be protected!
• Initial 1951 Convention applied the refugee category only to Europeans (!) displaced by WWII which changed in the 1967 Protocol BUT internally displaced persons were still not included bc still in their own country, even though there are nowadays more IDPs than statutory refugees
• “Recognition of his refugee status does not […] make him a refugee but declares him to be one. He does not become a refugee because of recognition, but is recognized because he is a refugee.” (UNHCR, 2011; cited by FitzGerald & Arar)

Question 17

Data problems with refugee numbers

Answer 17

• Time-series suffer from very narrow initial coverage of refugees and displaced people in UNHCR data: only 60 million Europeans officially recorded after WWII; but an additional 90 million displaced in Asia (not counted in UNHCR statistics)!
• Statistical increase in refugees number since 1960 largely reflects the growing number of countries included in statistics UNHCR from 20 (1960) to 214 (2016)

Question 18

How did refugee numbers change?

Answer 18

peak in 1992: wars in former Yugoslavia

decrease from 1992 to2005 = decreasing levels of conflict, particularly in Africa and Latin America

another peak in 2017: wars in Syria, Afghanistan, etc. + inclusion of refugees in Africa and elsewhere who were previously not recorded

-> So, some fluctuation in refugee numbers but generally less then 10% of global migrant population & 0,1-0,3 % of global population

Question 19

Where do refugees migrate to?

Answer 19

More than 80 % of all refugees currently stay in developing countries (mostly neighbouring countries) and this share has increased rather than decreased over recent decades

BUT shrinking number of origins (currently: 3/4
originate from just five countries) & increasing number of (more distant) destinations. (➔ opposite to migrants)

Question 20

Who (from East German population) internally migrated after re-unification?

Answer 20

East Germans mainly behaved in line with basic principles derived from migration theory:

Age: Young, single adults were most likely to migrate from East to West Germany, whereas elderly individuals and parents of school-aged children were much less mobile

Ties: having relatives in West Germany enhanced the migration risk, whereas stronger ties with the local community reduced it

Gender: On average, women migrated to the West earlier in the life course than men, but the latter catch up later

Education: In general, highly educated individuals – college graduates especially – were more likely -> severe human capital losses for East at first, then losses were less severe given the large number of highly educated West German civil servants who took up positions in sectors not often required in the GDR, such as finance, insurance, etc.

Question 21

What was the motivational factor for East Germans to go to the West?

Answer 21

Mainly directed to areas with strong labour markets, and to regions located close to the migrants’ region of origin → wage differentials between East and West Germany are identified as the most prominent economic factor for westward migration

Question 22

How has internal migration changed after re-unification?

Answer 22

After substantial initial declines, East Germany currently even experiences small net population gains through internal migration
- Larger East German cities such as Leipzig, Dresden have been transformed since the 2000s into attractive destinations, including for West Germans
- But still losses from the past, ca. 10% net population lost in the East (massive loss in economics/culture) and while cities flourish, most rural regions in the East continue to experience net migration losses to the West, even 30 years on from reunification

Noticeable net population losses occur only among labor market entrants (25–29 year olds) -> continuous attractiveness of the West German labor market!

Men have dominated West-East migration throughout the entire study period – and East-West migration since about 2008
Unclear: shortages of women in many rural regions of East Germany, cannot be solely explained by exceeding female East-West migration!
(shortage of women in rural East German could be largely attributable to female rural-to-urban migration within East Germany and not to East-West migration)

Question 23

How does the propensity to migrate change across the individual’s life course?

Answer 23

Earlier not so much, than for education more, after retirement triggers negative migration propensity (only move to elderly home left)

–> link to early-to-mid-20s peak commonly found in the age profile of migration: migration age profiles broadly mirror the age structure of key life-course transitions, especially among women

Question 24

How do countries differ in their migration age profiles?

Answer 24

• In countries such as China and Nepal, where life-course transitions take place at young ages, migration tends to occur early in life // Alternatively, where life-course transitions happen at older ages, as in Europe and North America, migration takes place later in life
• BUT not all migrations, of course, are triggered by life-course transitions. In those countries where the transitions appear less closely tied to migration, contextual factors such as economic development, social inequalities, degree of gender equity, cultural norms, and value systems may shape the structure of the life course and influence its interaction with migration

–> remains to be established whether migration age profiles will converge as countries experience higher levels of educational attainment and delayed transitions to adult roles, or whether cultural and socioeconomic differences will preserve cross-national variations in migration age profiles

Question 25

How could Covid-19 change migration?

Answer 25

• Massive increase in migration expected, maybe even exceeding it (recuperation effect)
• A Vicious Cycle:

Feedback loop predicted in which (rebound) spikes and their consequences will contribute to political mobilization for stricter immigration policies, further contributing to a vicious cycle of the suppression of migration, episodic spikes in migrant inflows, and subsequent anti-immigrant prejudice and politics.

• Migrants have historically been stigmatized as carriers of disease. Thus, our model best predicts the consequences not of border closures, writ large, but of pandemic-induced closures.