Migration Analysis: Basic Information

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Migration AnalysisBasic Information

• Alfred Otieno
• Population Studies and Research Institute
• University of Nairobi

2
Migration Issues

• 1. Types of Migration
• What are the major forms of migration?
• 2. Selective Migration
• Why migration can be considered as a selective
  process?
• 3. Brain Drain
• What is the extent of movements of skilled labor?

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Types of Migration

• Emigration and immigration
• Change in residence.
• Relative to origin and destination.
• Requires information
• People and conditions.
• Two different places.
• Two different times.
• Duration
• Permanent.
• Seasonal / Temporary.
• Choice / constraint
• Improve ones life.
• Leave inconvenient / threatening conditions.

A
Problems or benefits?
Emigrant
Immigrant
B
Problems or benefits?
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Types of Migration
1

• Gross migration
• Total number of people coming in and out of an
  area.
• Level of population turnover.
• Net Migration
• Difference between immigration (in-migration) and
  emigration (out-migration).
• Positive value
• More people coming in.
• Population growth (44 of North America and 88
  of Europe).
• Negative value
• More people coming out.
• Population decline.

Gross migration
Immigration
Emigration
Net migration
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Types of Migration

• International Migration
• Emigration is an indicator of economic and/or
  social failures of a society.
• Crossing of a national boundary.
• Easier to control and monitor.
• Laws to control / inhibit these movements.
• Between 2 million and 3 million people emigrate
  each year.
• Between 1965 and 2000, 175 million people have
  migrated
• 3 of the global population.

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Types of Migration
1

• Internal Migration
• Within one country.
• Crossing domestic jurisdictional boundaries.
• Movements between states or provinces.
• Little government control.
• Factors
• Employment-based.
• Retirement-based.
• Education-based.
• Civil conflicts (internally displaced population).

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Types of Migration

• Local Migration
• No state boundaries are crossed.
• Buying a new house in the same town or city.
• Difficult to research since they are usually
  missed in census data.
• Based on change of income or lifestyle.
• Often very high levels of local migration.
• Americans change residence every 5 to 7 years.

Central City
Suburb
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Types of Migration
1

• Voluntary migration
• The migrant makes the decision to move.
• Most migration is voluntary.
• Involuntary
• Forced migration in which the mover has no role
  in the decision-making process.
• Slavery
• About 11 million African slaves were brought to
  the Americas between 1519 and 1867.
• In 1860, there were close to 4 million slaves in
  the United States.
• Refugees.
• Military conscription.
• Children of migrants.
• Situations of divorce or separation.

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Types of Migration
Type Characteristics
International Crossing a boundary easier to control regulated difference in income 2-3 million per year.
National Between states or provinces little control employment opportunities education retirement.
Local Within a city/region change of income or lifestyle.
Voluntary The outcome of a choice.
Involuntary The outcome of a constraint.
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Selective Migration

• Context
• Many migrations are selective.
• Do not represent a cross section of the source
  population.
• Differences
• Age.
• Sex.
• Level of education.
• Age-specific migrations
• One age group is dominant in a particular
  migration.
• International migration tends to involve younger
  people.
• The dominant group is between 25 and 45
• Peak age of immigrants is 26.
• Studies and retirement are also age-specific
  migrations
• Emergence of international retirement migration.

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Population Pyramid of Native and Foreign Born
Population, United States, 2000 (in )
Foreign Born
Native
Male
Female
Female
Male
Age
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Selective Migration
2

• Sex-specific migrations
• Males
• Often dominant international migrations.
• Once established, try to bring in a wife.
• Females
• Often dominate rural to urban migrations.
• Find jobs as domestic help or in new factories.
• Send remittances back home.
• Filipino females 17-30 to Hong Kong and Japan.
• Mail-order bride
• 100,000 150,000 women a year advertise
  themselves for marriage.
• About 10,000 available on the Internet at any
  time.
• Mainly from Southeast Asia and Russia.
• Come from places in which jobs and educational
  opportunities for women are scarce and wages are
  low.

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Selective Migration

• Education-specific migrations
• May characterize some migrations (having or
  lacking of).
• Educational differences
• 21 of all legal immigrants have at least 17
  years of education.
• 8 for native-born Americans.
• 20 of all immigrants do not have 9 years of
  schooling.
• Foreign students
• Often do not return to their home countries after
  their education.
• Often cannot utilize what they have learned.
• Since 1978 some 130,000 Chinese overseas students
  have returned while some 250,000 have remained
  abroad.
• Most research-oriented graduate institutions have
  around 40 foreign students.

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Selective Migration

• Immigration and jobs
• Related to the economic sector.
• High level
• Filling high skilled position in science,
  technology and education.
• Not enough highly trained personnel in the US.
• Result in recruiting abroad (see brain drain).
• Low level
• Filling low paid jobs (minimum wage) that most
  people do not want (agriculture and low level
  services).
• Maintain low wages in low skilled jobs.
• Possibility of an informal economy.

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Brain Drain

• Definition
• Relates to educationally specific selective
  migrations.
• Some countries are losing the most educated
  segment of their population.
• Can be both a benefit for the receiving country
  and a problem to the country of origin.
• Receiving country
• Getting highly qualified labor contributing to
  the economy right away.
• Promotes economic growth in strategic sectors
  science and technology.
• Not having to pay education and health costs.
• It costs about 300,000 to educate an average
  American.
• 30 of Mexicans with a PhD are in the US.

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Brain Drain

• Country of origin
• Education and health costs not paid back.
• Losing potential leaders and talent
• Developing countries lose 15 of their graduates.
• Between 15 and 40 of a graduating class in
  Canada will move to the US.
• 50 of Caribbean graduates leave.
• Long term impact on economic growth.
• Possibility of remittances.
• Many brain drain migrants have skills which they
  cant use at home
• The resources and technology may not be available
  there.
• The specific labor market is not big enough.

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Brain Drain

• A reverse migration trend
• High costs in developed countries.
• New opportunities in developing countries.
• Part of the offshoring process of many
  manufacturing and service activities.
• Qualified personnel coming back with skills and
  connections

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Migration Explanations

• 1. Push - Pull Theory
• What are the major push and pull factors
  behind migration?
• 2. Economic Approaches
• How can migration be explained from an economic
  perspective?
• 3. Behavioral Explanations to Migration
• How can migration be explained from a human
  behavior perspective?

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Push - Pull

• Context
• Migrations as the response of individual
  decision-makers.
• Negative or push factors in his current area of
  residence
• High unemployment and little opportunity.
• Great poverty.
• High crime.
• Repression or a recent disaster (e.g., drought or
  earthquake).
• Positive or pull factors in the potential
  destination
• High job availability and higher wages.
• More exciting lifestyle.
• Political freedom, greater safety and security,
  etc.

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Push - Pull
1

• Intervening obstacles
• Migration costs / transportation.
• Immigration laws and policies of the destination
  country.
• The problem of perception
• Assumes rational behavior on the part of the
  migrant
• Not necessarily true since a migrant cannot be
  truly informed.
• The key word is perception of the pull factors.
• Information is never complete.
• Decisions are made based upon perceptions of
  reality at the destination relative to the known
  reality at the source.
• When the migrants information is highly
  inaccurate, a return migration may be one
  possible outcome.

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Economic Approaches

• Labor mobility
• The primary issue behind migration.
• Notably the case at the national level.
• Equilibrate the geographical differences in labor
  supply and demand.
• Accelerated with the globalization of the
  economy.
• Remittances
• Capital sent by workers working abroad to their
  family / relatives at home.
• 126 billion in 2004
• 16 billion each year goes out of Saudi Arabia as
  remittances.
• 2nd most important most important source of
  income for Mexico (after oil and before tourism)
  22 billion in 2005.

Labor shortages High wages
Migration
Surplus labor Low wages
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Economic Approaches

• (Illegal) Immigration and the welfare state
• Welfare policies appear to be promoting illegal
  immigration.
• Welfare
• Creates a disincentive to work among the national
  population.
• Attracts immigrants seeking benefits (e.g. health
  and education).
• Some analysis indicate that low skilled immigrant
  (illegal or not) cost more than they bring to an
  economy.
• Employment laws (minimum wage, benefits)
• Make employing nationals artificially high.
  
• Attracts immigrants that can offer lower wages
  and no benefits.
• Emergence of a significant black labor market
  used even by large corporations (through
  subcontracting).
• The government, in an attempt to protect U.S.
  workers, has priced them out of the market.

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Behavioral Explanations of Migration

• Life-cycle factors
• Migration linked to events in ones life.
• People in their 30s are the most mobile.
• Education, career, and family are being
  established.
• Later in life, flexibility decreases and inertia
  increases.
• Retirement often brings a major change.
• Large migrations of retired people have been
  occurring in the direction of amenities-oriented
  areas.

25 50 75
Stay with parents
Move to college
First job
Marriage
Promotion
Children leave home
Retirement
Loss of mobility
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Behavioral Explanations of Migration

• Migrants as risk-takers
• Why, among a population in the same environment
  (the same push factors), some leave and some
  stay?
• Migrants tend to be greater risk-takers, more
  motivated, more innovative and more adaptable.
• Non-migrants tend to be more cautious and
  conservative.
• Can be used to explain the relative dynamism in
  some societies, like the USA since the 1800s.
• Summary
• No one theory of migration can adequately explain
  this huge worldwide phenomenon.
• Each brings a contribution to the understanding
  of why people move.

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Refugees

• 1. Definition
• What is a refugee and how one qualifies for this
  status?
• 2. Contemporary Evolution
• How the refugee situation has evolved in time?

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Definition

• The United Nations definition
• The 1951 Convention Regarding the Status of
  Refugees and the 1967 Protocol on the Status of
  Refugees
• ..... any person who, owing to a well-founded
  fear of being persecuted for any reasons of race,
  religion, nationality, member of a particular
  social group or political opinion, is outside the
  country of his nationality, and is unable or,
  owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself
  of the protection of that country. .
• The problem lies in the definition of who is a
  refugee.
• There are no international agreements to protect
  people who cross boundaries for their economic
  survival.

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Definition

• Conditions to qualify for refugee status
• Political persecution must be demonstrated.
• An international boundary must be crossed
• Domestically displaced persons do not qualify.
• Protection by ones government is not seen an
  alternative
• The government may be the persecutor.
• Could be incapable of protecting its citizens
  from persecution.

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Definition

• Environmental and economic refugees
• People who can no longer gain a secure livelihood
  in their homelands because of what are primarily
  environmental or economic factors of unusual
  scope.
• Sources
• Natural disaster.
• Human alterations to the environment climate
  change.
• Contamination (pollution) of the environment.
• Lack of development and opportunities.
• Render continued residence in that particular
  location unsustainable.
• Mozambique, February 2000
• Floods made 1 million people homeless.
• Destroyed agricultural land and cattle.

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Contemporary Evolution

• Origins
• The first recorded refugees were the Protestant
  Huguenots who left France to avoid religious
  persecution.
• About 200,000 at the end of the 17th century.
• Went to England, Germany, the Netherlands,
  Switzerland, and the English colonies in North
  America.
• Pre-WW II and during WW II
• Primarily political elites
• Fleeing repression from the new government, which
  overthrew them.
• Usually small in number and often had substantial
  resources available to them.
• War-driven refugees
• About 12 of the European population displaced.
• Usually could be expected to repatriate after the
  war ended.

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Contemporary Evolution

• Post WW II
• Change in the patterns of refugee flows
• The majority of refugees are now coming from the
  developing world.
• De-colonization in Asia, Africa, and the
  Caribbean
• Political unrest in many newly independent
  states.
• Multi-ethnic nature of those states.
• The result of the drawing of colonial boundary
  lines by Europeans.
• The Cold War also increased political instability
  in a number of countries.
• Political instability in Latin America increased
  due to the vast social inequalities existing in
  that region.
• New kind of refugee flow
• Large and of long (or permanent) duration.

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Contemporary Evolution

• Current issues
• Refugees are a controversial issue
• Especially in the developed world.
• Only a small share of the asylum seekers are
  granted the refugee status.
• Less than 20 for the European Union.
• Increasingly, refugees are no longer accepted.
• Economic refugees resorting to asylum as the only
  way to get a legal status.
• 1996 amendment to US immigration law
• Enforcing detention for all refugees entering the
  United States.
• INS can summarily deport those who arrive without
  valid travel documents.
• 4,000 detained on any given day.

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Origins and Destinations of Refugees, 2003
Red Origin Green Destination