Development and International Migration: The Effect of Income on Regular and Irregular Migration Intentions to Europe

In recent years, the development-migration debate has re-gained popularity in policy circles, especially after the so-called “migration crisis” in Europe and the following approval of the European Agenda on Migration. Much of the empirical literature supports the idea that the relationship between international migration and incomes at origin follows hump-shaped patterns. A growing number of studies find that increasing economic development and financial resources in developing countries would allow a greater number of individuals to afford the costs of emigrating. However, this evidence heavily relies on measures of regular migration only. Using nationally representative data from 12 Middle East and North Africa countries, this study adopts a multinomial logit model to frame migration intentions, distinguishing between regular and irregular routes. The main finding is that the level of household income is associated negatively with the demand for irregular migration to Europe. Predictive margins clearly show that higher household incomes increase the probability of planning only regular migration, while decreasing that of considering also irregular migration. The policy implications are not negligible: improving economic conditions in countries of origin may be effective at deflecting migrants from irregular to regular routes.     

Paul Fauchille on the Rights of Emigration and Immigration

International migration is squarely on the present‐day agenda of the international community, as attested by the newly released report of the Global Commission on International Migration (see the Documents section of this issue) and by recurrent controversy over proposals to establish a migration analogue to the World Trade Organization. Conventional assumptions about the prerogatives of national sovereignty come up against universalist views of human rights, the logic of globalization, and, in some measure, the regulative ambitions of international organizations. The last period in which this subject aroused comparable ferment was in the 1920s. At that time the main sources of migrants were not countries of the global “South” but self‐described overpopulated countries in Europe. In May 1924 one such country, Italy, convened what became known as the First International Emigration and Immigration Conference. Held in Rome, the meeting was attended by delegates from 57 countries and the League of Nations. Among its resolutions was an “Emigrants' Charter,” recognizing rights to emigrate and immigrate but with strong provisos. Thus the right to immigrate was subject to restrictions “imposed for economic and social reasons based in particular on the state of the labour market and the necessity of safeguarding the hygienic and moral interests of the country of immigration” (see the Notes on Migration section in Industrial and Labour Information [Geneva], Vol. XI, July‐Sept. 1924, pp. 54–68). A more systematic discussion of these putative rights appeared in an article published a few months earlier by a prominent French jurist, Paul Fauchille, which is excerpted below. The rights to emigrate and to immigrate are seen as broad and fairly symmetrical, able to be limited by a state only by appeal to its own right of self‐preservation. Circumscribing the right to emigrate may seem dated in the light of the blanket provision in Article 13 of the (1948) Universal Declaration of Human Rights that “everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” (In Fauchille's extreme case, a state can seek to prohibit the wholesale flight of its population.) However, on immigration, about which the Universal Declaration is silent, “self‐preservation” yields a longer list of grounds for restriction. An issue with contemporary resonance is whether those grounds can include the wish by a state “to prevent a fusion of races which might alter its ethnic character or obliterate its national culture.” Restriction on such a basis would be justified, says Fauchille, only where the intending migrants “belonged to an absolutely different civilisation” and were large in number. Paul Fauchille (1858–1926) was an expert in international law, author of the four‐volume Traité de Droit International Public (8th ed., Paris, 1921–26). He was the founding editor of Revue générale du droit international public and founding director (from 1921) of the Institut des Hautes Études Internationales within the University of Paris. The excerpt below is the major part (subtitled “State and Individual Rights in Theory”) of Fauchille's article “The rights of emigration and immigration,” which appeared in the International Labour Review (Geneva), vol. IX, no. 3 (March 1924), pp. 317–333.     

Report of the Global Commission on International Migration

In December 2003, “acting on the encouragement of UN Secretary‐General Kofi Annan,” the Global Commission on International Migration was established as an independent body, consisting of 19 Commissioners co‐chaired by Jan O. Carlsson, former Minister for Migration and Development, Sweden, and Mamphela Ramphele, formerly the World Bank's Managing Director, from South Africa. The mandate of the Commission was to “provide the framework for the formulation of a coherent, comprehensive and global response to the issue of international migration.” The work of the Commission was assisted by a Geneva‐based Secretariat and a “Core Group of States,” eventually including 32 governments from all world regions, that acted as an informal consultative body to the Commission. (The United States, the most important host country to immigrants, was not among the 32.) In October 2005, in New York, the Commission presented its Report to Kofi Annan, the UN member states, and other interested bodies. The Report is also intended as an input to intergovernmental discussion of international migration issues at the UN General Assembly in the Fall of 2006. The Report, an 88‐page document, is accessible at « http://www.gcim.org ». That web site also provides access to extensive background materials on selected topics concerning international migration, regional studies of international migration prepared for the Commission, and reports of the regional hearings, consultations with “stakeholders,” and expert meetings held by the Commission. Reproduced below are three sections of the Report: its Introduction (titled “Dimensions and dynamics of international migration”) and two of its four Annexes: “Principles for Action and Recommendations,” and a compendium of data: “Migration at a glance.” Under the impact of globalization, international migration, long an important element of demographic change as experienced by individual states, has acquired increasing salience in international relations and in domestic politics. National sovereignty in deciding about immigration policy (probably the key determinant of contemporary international migration flows) remains an established principle in international law, subject only to treaty obligations to admit bonafide refugees. Increasingly in recent years, however, demands have surfaced to treat such policies as matters to be decided bilaterally between sending and receiving countries, or even to be regulated by an international or supranational body. (For earlier voices discussing this topic see the Archives section of this issue and the Archives section of the December 1983 issue of PDR:“On the international control of migration.”) Unexpectedly to some observers, the Report of the Global Commission fell short of recommending establishment of a new, WTO‐like, international organization within the UN system with responsibility for international migration. It recommends, instead, steps to be taken toward an Inter‐agency Global Migration Facility. Whether or not such arrangements will materialize and be influential, the Commission clearly sees international migration flows, primarily from less developed to more developed countries, as increasing in the future. While not quantified, this vision contrasts with the assumptions incorporated in the often‐cited projections of the UN Population Division, which envisage future net migratory flows as either constant in size or even decreasing. The Report's argument rests primarily on the perceived economic benefits of migration to both receiving and sending countries, fueled by persisting income differentials and by contrasting demographic configurations between migrants' places of origin and destination. It gives short shrift to arguments that question the economic gains of mass migration to receiving countries, or that see such gains at best as minor and likely to be counterbalanced by noneconomic considerations. Nor does the Report gauge the likelihood that heeding its strictures for a more welcoming treatment of migrants would increase the incentives to migrate.     

The United Nations on Levels and Trends of International Migration and Related Policies

Issues of international migration are drawing increasing attention not only from governments and their national constituencies but also from international organizations, notably from various components of the United Nations system. Better understanding of the causes of the flows of international migration and their relationship with development and answers to policy questions arising therefrom are, however, hampered by scarcity of up‐to‐date and reliable quantitative information concerning international migration. As a step toward remedying this gap, in March 2003 the Population Division of the United Nations issued a report, presumably the first of a series, titled International Migration Report 2002. A review essay by David Coleman discussing this publication appears in the book review section of the present issue of PDR. The bulk of this 323‐page document presents statistical profiles for more than 200 countries and territories and also for various regional aggregates. These summaries provide data or estimates (when available or feasible) on population, migrant stock, refugees, and remittances by migrant workers for 1990 and 2000, and on average annual net migration flows for 1990–95 and 1995–2000. These profiles also offer characterization of government views on policies relating to levels of immigration and emigration. According to the report, the total number of international migrants—those residing in a country other than where they were born—was 175 million in 2000, or about 3 percent of the world population. In absolute terms, this global number is about twice as large as it was in 1970, and exceeds the 1990 estimate by some 21 million. The introductory chapters of the report discuss problems in measuring international migration and summarize major trends in international migration policies since the mid‐1970s. An additional chapter reproduces a recent report of the Secretary‐General to the United Nations General Assembly on international migration. Reproduced below is much of the “Overview” section of the report (pp. 1–5). In addition to its published form (New York: United Nations, 2002, ST/ESA/SER.A/220), the full report is accessible on the Internet: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/ittmig2002/ittmigrep2002.htm     

The US National Intelligence Council on the Changing Geopolitical Landscape

The National Intelligence Council, a body reporting to the Director of National Intelligence, draws on expertise from within and outside the US intelligence community to assess strategic developments bearing on national security. In addition to its classified reports (notably the National Intelligence Estimates) the Council also issues unclassified versions of some of its work. In December 2004 it released a report, Mapping the Global Future, the outcome of a year‐long study known as the 2020 Project, looking at geopolitical trends in the world over the medium term. Robert L. Hutchings, the NIC's then chairman, writes in a preface that this report “offers a range of possibilities and potential discontinuities, as a way of opening our minds to developments we might otherwise miss.” It differs from a preceding NIC exercise, Global Trends 2015 (2000), in the wider range of experts consulted—preparatory workshops were conducted in a number of countries—and in the heavier store it places on formal scenario development. While the underlying scenario‐building techniques employed are not spelled out in the document (some are described elsewhere on the NIC's website), four specific “fictional scenarios” are selected to enliven the report: Davos World—illustrating “how robust economic growth, led by China and India, … could reshape the globalization process”; Pax Americana—“how US predominance may survive the radical changes to the global political landscape and serve to fashion a new and inclusive global order”; A New Caliphate—“how a global movement fueled by radical religious identity politics could constitute a challenge to Western norms and values as the foundation of the global system”; and Cycle of Fear—proliferation of weaponry and terrorism “to the point that large‐scale intrusive security measures are taken to prevent outbreaks of deadly attacks, possibly introducing an Orwellian world.” (The quotes are from the report's executive summary.) The excerpt reproduced below comprises the section of the report headed “Rising Powers: The Changing Geopolitical Landscape,” omitting text boxes and charts. The summary table appended is taken from the beginning of the document. The full report is available at http://www.cia.gov/nic/NIC_globaltrend2020.html .     

Multiple Migration Flows of Romanians

Abstract

Most studies on international migration examine population movement between a country of origin and a destination. This article aims to show that migrants often change destinations, a less studied pattern of ‘multiple migrations’. This article explores how such migration occurs and analyses the variables accounting for it. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork research amongst Romanian migrants in Portugal, the article concludes that the growth in multiple migrations of Romanian migrants throughout Europe can be explained by a combination of migration policies and social networks, mediated by migrants’ level of education and type of occupation at the destination.     

Selectivity Of Migrants To A Metropolis In A Developing Country: A Mexican Case Study

A proper evaluation of native-migrant differences requires information on migrant selectivity. Are migrants positively or negatively selective or are they representative of the populations from which they originate? This question was posed for a sample of male migrants to Monterrey, Mexico, a rapidly growing metropolis in a developing country. A comparison was made between the characteristics of migrants and census information for the origin populations for 1940 and 1960. Overall, in terms of education and occupational position, migrants are positively selective. However, using three time-of-arrival cohorts, it is shown that migrants have become less selective over time. There has been a shift from a “pioneer” to a “mass” pattern of migration, with the latter group more closely approximating the characteristics of the origin population. Besides having lower educational and skill levels, the “mass” migrants are more likely to be made up of married men and their families. To the extent that the Monterrey pattern will be encountered in other large and fast-growing urban areas in Latin America, it suggests that the assimilation of migrants in these places will become more rather than less difficult.     

“Population Invasion” versus Urban Exclusion in the Tibetan Areas of Western China

This article examines the confluence of local population transitions (demographic transition and urbanization) with non‐local in‐migration in the Tibetan areas of western China. The objective is to assess the validity of Tibetan perceptions of “population invasion” by Han Chinese and Chinese Muslims. The article argues that migration to Tibet from other regions in China has been concentrated in urban areas and has been counterbalanced by more rapid rates of natural increase in the Tibetan rural areas—among the highest rates in China. Overall, it is not clear whether there is any risk of population invasion in the Tibetan areas. However, given that non‐Tibetan migration to Tibet has been concentrated in urban areas, Tibetans have probably become a minority in many of their strategic cities and towns, and non‐Tibetan migrants definitely dominate urban employment. Therefore, while the Tibetan notion of population invasion may be a misperception, it reflects a legitimate concern that in‐migration may be exacerbating the economic exclusion of Tibetan locals in the context of rapid urban‐centered development.     

Spatial Differentiation and Driving Forces of Migrants’ Socio-Economic Integration in Urban China: Evidence from CMDS

Migrants’ socio-economic integration is a major theme in migration research, which can provide economic and cultural benefits. And it will contribute to social stability. The investigation from the spatial perspective should also be considered. This paper aims to examine the spatial differentiation of the socio-economic integration of migrants and identify its driving forces to provide crucial evidence and policy recommendations to urban policymakers and further improve migrants’ socio-economic integration. Based on the latest China Migrants Dynamic Survey, this paper uses global Moran’s I index, hot spot analysis and GWR model to explore spatial differentiation and driving forces of the socio-economic integration of 155,789 migrants in 291 cities at prefecture level and above in China. The results show that: (1) The socio-economic integration of migrants consists of five dimensions, which are economic integration, cultural integration, social security, social relation and psychological integration. Among them, psychological integration is the highest (73.16) and economic integration is the lowest (13.38). (2) The socio-economic integration of migrants is mainly influenced by their own characteristics instead of the destination characteristics. Four factors (age, education, length of stay and population growth rate) positively affect migrants’ socio-economic integration, while three factors (inter-provincial mobility, proportion of tertiary industry in GDP, and ratio of teacher to student in middle school) negatively impact the socio-economic integration of migrants. (3) The socio-economic integration of migrants shows the distribution pattern of agglomeration. And the integration also presents a significant spatial heterogeneity. The driving forces of the socio-economic integration exhibit various zonal spatial differentiation patterns, including “E–W”, “SE–NW”, “NE–SW”, and “S–N”. Finally, some useful recommendations are given for improving migrants’ socio-economic integration.

     

Out of Africa: what drives the pressure to emigrate?

Who intends to leave Africa and what drives people to emigrate? For the cases of Ghana, Senegal, Morocco and Egypt, we examined peoples' stated intentions to emigrate. The large majority wants to move “out of Africa”, and the typical potential migrant was found to be young, male, displaying relatively modern values and optimistic about the net benefits of emigration. Signs of positive self-selection were clearly evident in Ghana and Egypt, particularly among women. However, negative self-selection was apparent among Moroccan men. The network effects of potential migrants were found to be fairly important in Ghana and Egypt, but in Senegal and Morocco, such ties play no role in triggering emigration intentions.     

The European Commission on Factors Influencing Labor Migration

A controversial issue in discussions on enlargement of the European Union beyond its existing membership of 15 countries is the migration flows that admission of new members could generate. Given major differences in income and wage levels between the EU states and the candidates for membership, casual theorizing suggests that the potential for massive international migration is very high. The fact that such migration has thus far been of modest size by most plausible criteria is attributed to the restrictive policies of the potential destination countries, policies that reflect national interests, in particular protection of labor markets, as perceived by voting majorities. With accession to membership in the EU this factor is removed: a cardinal principle of the Union, established by treaty, is the free movement of persons, including persons seeking gainful employment. The factors governing migratory movements between member states then come to resemble those that shape internal migration. This should facilitate analysis and forecasting. A clear sorting‐out of the relevant forces affecting such “internal” migration remains of course an essential precondition for success in that task. An “Information note,” entitled The Free Movement of Workers in the Context of Enlargement, issued by the European Commission, the EU's Executive Body, on 6 March 2001, presents extensive discussion of relevant information, opinion, and policy options concerning its topic. (The document is available at « http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlarge‐ment/docs/pdf/migration_enl.pdf ».) An Annex to the document. Factors Influencing Labour Movement, is a lucid enumeration of the factors migration theory considers operative in determining the migration of workers and, by extension, of people at large, that is likely to ensue upon EU enlargement. This annex is reproduced below. As is evident from the catalog of factors and their likely complex interactions, making quantitative forecasts of future migration flows, envisaged primarily as originating from countries to be newly admitted to the EU and destined for the countries of the current EU15, is exceedingly difficult. This is reflected in disparities among the existing studies that have made such forecasts. Yet there appears to be a fair degree of agreement that major increases in migration are unlikely, suggesting that the overall effect on the EU15 labor market should be limited. Typical forecasts (detailed in the Information note cited above) anticipate that in the initial year after admission, taken to be 2003, total migration from the eight prime candidate countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania: the “CC8”) might amount to around 200,000 persons, roughly one‐third of which would be labor migration. According to these forecasts, the annual flow will gradually diminish in subsequent years. After 10 to 15 years the stock of CC8 migrants in the EU15 might be on the order of 1.8 to 2.7 million. The longer‐run migration potential from the candidate countries would be on the order of 1 percent of the present EU population, currently some 375 million. (The combined current population of the CC8 is 74 million.) Such predictions are in line with the relatively minor migratory movements that followed earlier admissions to the EU of countries with then markedly lower per capita incomes, such as Spain and Portugal. The geographic impact of migration ensuing from enlargement would, however, be highly uneven, with Germany and Austria absorbing a disproportionately large share. Accordingly, and reflecting a prevailing expectation in these two countries that enlargement would have some short‐run disruptive effects on labor markets, some of the policy options discussed envisage a period of transition following enlargement—perhaps five to seven years—during which migration would remain subject to agreed‐upon restrictions.     

China's Floating Population: New Evidence from the 2000 Census

This article uses tabulations from the 2000 Population Census of China along with a micro‐level data sample from the census to provide a picture of China's floating population: migrants without local household registration (hukou), a status resulting in significant social and economic disadvantages. By 2000, the size of China's floating population had grown to nearly 79 million, if that category is defined as migrants who moved between provinces or counties and resided at their destinations for six months or more. Intra‐county floating migration is similarly large, contributing another 66 million to the size of the floating population. The article also discusses the geographic pattern of the floating population and the reasons for moving as reported by migrants. Policy implications are noted.     

Environmental Refugees? Classifying Human Migrations Caused by Environmental Change

What distinguishes environmental refugees from other refugees—or other migrants? Are all environmental refugees alike? This essay develops a classification to begin to answer these questions and facilitate future policies and research on environmental refugees. Environmental refugees may have considerable control over the decision to migrate, but this varies by the type of environmental disruption. The origin, intention, and duration of environmental disruptions shape the type of refugee. Refugees from disasters and expropriations have limited control over whether environmental changes will produce migration. Gradual degradation allows “environmental emigrants” to determine how they will respond to environmental change.     

Oswald Spengler on Cosmopolis and Depopulation

Historians are professionally averse to grand civilizational themes, especially where predictions may be entailed. The German historian Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), whose membership in the academic fraternity of his discipline has often been questioned, was an exception. His two‐volume magnum opus. The Decline of the West, published in 1918 and 1922 (English translation, 1928), in its time attracted much public and professional attention. (It remains in print.) It presents an enormously ambitious tableau of universal history seen as the unfolding of the fates of eight cultures, with a focus on four main strands: Indian, Classical, Arabian, and Western. In Spengler's interpretation, imbued with cultural and historical pessimism, the West was exhibiting symptoms found in earlier civilizations in decline. “Civilization,” in Spengler's vision, was a stage that follows cultural flowering—creative manifestations of the culture's unique soul expressed in art and thought. Civilization's preoccupation is with the enjoyment of material comforts; the sequence from “culture” to “civilization” represents the very antithesis of progress. Spengler saw the West as having entered that latter phase in the nineteenth century: a phase in which, in the words of the synoptic chart appended to Volume 1 of The Decline of the West, “The body of the people, now essentially urban in constitution, dissolves into formless mass.” Urbanism, the emergence of “megalopolis,” or “cosmopolis“—the world city—is a distinguishing and crucial feature of that declining civilization. A passage (section V, including some translator's notes) from the chapter titled The Soul of the City in Vol. II of The Decline of the West, which has the subtitle Perspectives of World History, is reproduced below. It offers arresting characterizations of the morphology of urban forms and of the rise of the world city. As longer‐term consequences (for the West “between 2000 and 2200”) Spengler foresaw the “formation ofCeasarism”; “victory of force‐politics over money”; “increasing primi‐tiveness of political forms”; and “inward decline of the nations into a formless population, and constitution thereof as an Imperium of gradually increasing crudity and despotism.” As to demographic consequences, Spengler highlights the emerging “sterility of civilized man“—“an essentially metaphysical turn toward death.”“Children do not happen, not because children have become impossible, but principally because intelligence at the peak of intensity can no longer find any reason for their existence.”“Prudent limitation of the number of births” eventually leads to a “stage, which lasts for centuries, of appalling depopulation.” Immigration apart, the time scale specified by Spengler for depopulation—“for centuries”—may be seen today as relatively cautious. Should Europe's current period fertility level—slightly below a TFR of 1.4—be translated into cohort performance, it would yield an intrinsic annual rate of population growth of roughly ‐1.5 percent. Within 200 years, such a growth rate would reduce a population to 5 percent of its original size. From The Decline of the West: Volume 2 by Oswald Spengler, translated by C. F. Atkinson, copyright 1928 and renewed 1956 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.     

Identity,Belonging and Intentions to Leave of First and 1.5 Generation FSU Immigrants in Israel

Recent studies examining immigrant intentions to leave the host country have focused on return migration to the origin country (De Haas and Fokkema in Demogr Res 25:755–782, 2011; De Haas et al. in J Int Migr Integr 16(2):415–429, 2015). The current study examines immigrant intentions to leave the host country, but not necessarily to return to the homeland. The predictive model, which focuses on immigrant subjective identity, was tested through a survey of 338 first and 1.5 generation Former Soviet Union (FSU) immigrants in Israel, who applied to a prominent NGO to obtain proof of their Jewishness. These individuals are from the largest recent immigrant group in Israel, and are highly represented among the young adult (aged 25–40) immigrants leaving Israel. The findings indicate that contrary to our expectations, Israeli local identity did not have a significant effect on the immigrants’ intentions to leave Israel. By contrast, Jewish identity and level of religiosity did play a significant role in attenuating the immigrant’s tendency to leave. This paper highlights the complex relationship between ethnic identities and religiosity among immigrants in general, and in Israel in particular.     

The European Union Constitution on Border Checks,Asylum, and Immigration

The Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe was signed by the heads of government of the 25 European Union member states and three candidate states on 29 October 2004. The Treaty in effect is the proposed constitution, a long and elaborate document comprising 448 Articles (grouped into four Parts, with additional divisions into Titles, Chapters, and Sections, but numbered consecutively throughout) and 29 Protocols—annexes to the Treaty. Five articles and four protocols are concerned with issues of border control, immigration, and asylum policy. The articles are found in the chapter titled Area of Freedom, Security and Justice in Part III of the Treaty (The Policies and Functioning of the Union). These are reproduced below, along with one of the protocols (number 21). (Of the other protocols concerned with migration, one adds to the Treaty the provisions of the Schengen Acquis, the agreement among all EU members except the United Kingdom and Ireland, plus the non-EU states Norway and Iceland, to eliminate border controls at their common frontiers, and requires acceptance of the Acquis by any new member. Two other protocols set out reservations on the part of the UK and Ireland on border control and asylum matters—basically, an “opt-in” stance, allowing their participation in Treaty provisions on a case-by-case basis.) The constitution is highly detailed in scope but often vague in content, merely specifying topics on which policies will be developed or laws enacted. Thus the “common immigration policy” that is signaled in Article III-267 is yet to be shaped, and the Treaty offers few hints of what it may look like. A reluctance on the part of member states to cede sovereignty in the area of immigration is not limited to the British Isles. It is seen also in the retained right of all members to restrict non-EU labor migrants (Article III-267, Para. 5) and to conclude bilateral agreements on border crossing with non-EU states (Protocol 21). It is notable that the Treaty, while stressing that all nationals of member states are citizens of the Union with the right “to move and reside freely” within its territory, does not attempt to harmonize conditions or procedures under which migrants can acquire citizenship: indeed, it says nothing at all on the matter. (A “framework law,” mentioned at various points in the text, is a law that prescribes the result to be achieved but leaves to each member state “the choice of form and methods.”) Actual adoption of the constitution requires ratification by the governments of all EU members. If this demanding hurdle is passed (requiring parliamentary approval or, in some cases, a referendum), the constitution would come into force on 1 November 2006—or after the final ratification, if later. Under Article IV-443, if the treaty is ratified by four-fifths of members within the two years but is rejected by one or more states, “the matter shall be referred to the European Council”—the quarterly summit meeting of heads of government.     

The US National Intelligence Council on Growing Global Migration

The National Intelligence Council, a body reporting to the Director of Central Intelligence, brings together expertise from inside and outside the US government to engage in strategic thinking on national security issues. Some of its reports, known as National Intelligence Estimates, are now issued in unclassified versions. One of these published in December2000, was entitled Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue about the Future with Nongovernment Experts. It discussed what it termed the key drivers of global change and presented a generally bleak set of scenarios of the medium‐term future. (See the short review in PDR 27, no. 2, pp. 385–386.) Demographic factors—in particular, mass migration—were seen as one of the drivers. This topic is investigated further in a subsequent NIC report, Growing Global Migration and Its Implications for the United States, issued this year. The initial section of the report, headed Key Judgments, is reprinted below. The report emphasizes the economic advantages of liberal immigration policies to the advanced economies, “despite some initially higher welfare costs and some downward pressure on wages.” Resistance to liberalization in European countries and Japan is seen as putting them at a competitive disadvantage to the United States. Their levels of illegal immigration, however, will inevitably increase in scale. Expectations for the US are for rises in both legal and illegal immigration. Mentioned as one of the “difficult issues” that are minor offsets to the broad gains offered by immigration is its use as a vehicle for “transnational terrorist, narcotrafficking, and organized crime groups.” The full report is available online at http://www.cia.gov/nic/pubs/index.htm .     

An Italian Statement on International Migration

Increasing realization of the implications of persisting below‐replacement fertility in Europe—shrinking absolute numbers combined with a rising proportion of the elderly—is giving new salience to policy considerations regarding immigration in the countries most affected by low fertility. The recent United Nations report on “replacement migration” (see the Documents section in the June 2000 PDR) highlighted the issue through illustrative calculations showing the size of immigrant streams that would be needed for achieving specified demographic targets in selected lowfertility countries, given continuation of present fertility and mortality trends. For example, the UN report suggested that in Italy—which has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world—maintaining a constant population over time would require a net influx of some 12.6 million immigrants during the next 50 years, and maintaining a constant labor forceage population (ages 15–64) would require a net inflow of 18.6 million. Yet immigration policy in Western Europe has become increasingly restrictive during the last quartercentury, and the official policy stance that regulating immigration is strictly within the domain of a country's sovereign right has been assiduously maintained. (International treaty obligations qualify that right in the case of bona fide asylum seekers; however, the definition of that category is also subject to the discretion of the receiving countries.) Thus, although within the European Union national borders are open to EU citizens, the power of regulating immigration from outside the EU is retained by the individual countries rather than subject to EU‐wide decisions. Suggestions coming from the developing countries to follow up the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development with an intergovernmental conference on international migration and development were set aside by the potential immigrant‐receiving countries as overly contentious. A statement by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Italy, Lamberto Dini, delivered at the 55th General Assembly of the United Nations, 13 September 2000, may be a sign of a notable shift in official approaches to immigration policy by at least one EU member state. The statement, in a departure from the practice of touching lightly upon a wide range of issues in international affairs, typical in high‐level ministerial speeches given at that UN forum, is devoted essentially to a single topic: international migration. It characterizes migration “between or within continents” as an international problem and advocates “coordinated and integrated” instruments in seeking a solution. It suggests that “today, with a declining birth rate and an aging population, Europe needs a strategy that embraces the complex process of integrating people from different regions of the world.” The rules for international migration, the statement claims, should be set in a global framework, such as provided by the United Nations. In the “age of globalization,”“a solidarity pact is needed to find the best and most effective way of balancing the supply and demand of labor.” With the omission of opening and closing ceremonial passages and a brief comment on the problem of debt relief, the statement is reproduced below.     

Population in the UN Environment Programme's Global Environment Outlook 2000

Most specialized agencies in the United Nations system have taken to compiling a periodic status report on their field. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) issued the first in a proposed biennial series in 1998, titled Global Environment Outlook‐1 or GEO‐1. The second in the series, Global Environment Outlook 2000, was published in 1999. GEO‐2000 is described by the UNEP's Executive Director, Klaus Töpfer, in the foreword as “a comprehensive integrated assessment of the global environment at the turn of the millennium… [and] a forward‐looking document, providing a vision into the 21st century.” Its status, however, is rendered uncertain by the printed caution that “The contents of this volume do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of UNEP or contributory organizations.” GEO‐2000 paints a generally bleak picture of environmental trends. It evidences a wide array of particulars (“In the Southern Ocean, the Patagonian toothfish is being over‐fished and there is a large accidental mortality of seabirds caught up in fishing equipment”), but perhaps of more import are its statements about the root causes of environmental problems and what must be done. The excerpts below reflect some of these general views as they pertain to population. They are taken from the section entitled “Areas of danger and opportunity” in Chapter 1 of the report, and from the section “Tackling root causes” in Chapter 5. High resource consumption, fueled by affluent, Western lifestyles, is seen as a basic cause of environmental degradation. Cutting back this consumption will be required, freeing up resources for development elsewhere. Materialist values associated with urban living are part of the problem, given the concentration of future population growth in cities. And “genuine globalization” will entail free movement of people as well as capital and goods, thus optimizing “the population to environmental carrying capacity.” Some of these positions are at least questionable: the supposed “innate environmental sensitivity of people raised on the land or close to nature,” or the aim of “globalization of population movements.” The latter does not appear in the recommendations, perhaps because of an implicit assumption that the effect of open borders on environmental trends is unlikely to be favorable. (For an earlier statement of the same sentiment—from 1927—see the comments by Albert Thomas, first director of the ILO, reproduced in the Archives section of PDR 9, no. 4.)     

The UN Population Division on Replacement Migration

The most salient demographic trend pictured by the influential set of population projections prepared by the Population Division of the United Nations (a unit in the UN's Department of Economic and Social Affairs) is the continuing substantial increase—albeit at a declining rate—of the global population during the coming decades. According to the “medium” variant of the most recent (1998) revision of these projections, between 2000 and 2050 the expected net addition to the size of the world population will be some 2.85 billion, a figure larger than that of the total world population as recently as the mid‐1950s. All of this increase will occur in the countries currently classified as less developed; in fact, as a result of their anticipated persistent below‐replacement levels of fertility, the more developed regions as a whole would experience declining population size beginning about 2020, and would register a net population loss of some 33 million between 2000 and 2050. A report prepared by the UN Population Division and released on 21 March 2000 addresses some of the implications of the changes in population size and age structure that low‐fertility countries will be likely to experience. The 143‐page report, issued under the eyecatching title Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?, highlights the expected magnitude of these changes by the imaginative device of answering three hypothetical questions. The answer to each of these questions is predicated on the assumption that some specified demographic feature of various country or regional populations would be maintained at the highest level that feature would exhibit, in the absence of international migration, in the United Nations' medium population projections (as revised in 1998) during the period 1995–2050. The selected demographic features are total population size, the size of the working‐age population (15–64 years), and the so‐called potential support ratio: the ratio of the working‐age population to the old‐age population (65 years and older). The illustrative device chosen for accomplishing the specified feats of preserving the selected demographic parameters (i.e., keeping them unchanged up to 2050 once their highest value is attained) is international migration. Hence the term “replacement migration.” Given the low levels of fertility and mortality now prevailing in the more developed world (and specifically in the eight countries and the two overlapping regions for which the numerical answers to the above questions are presented in the report), and given the expected future evolution of fertility and mortality incorporated in the UN population projections, the results are predictably startling. The magnitudes of the requisite compensatory migration streams tend to be huge relative both to current net inmigration flows and to the size of the receiving populations; least so in the case of the migration needed to maintain total population size and most so in the case of migration needed to counterbalance population aging by maintaining the support ratio. Reflecting its relatively high fertility and its past and current record of receiving a large influx of international migrants, the United States is a partial exception to this rule. But even for the US to maintain the support ratio at its highest—year 1995—level of 5.21 would require increasing net inmigration more than tenfold. The country, the report states, would have to receive 593 million immigrants between 1995 and 2050, or a yearly average of 10.8 million. The extreme case is the Republic of Korea, where the exercise calls for maintaining a support ratio of 12.6. To satisfy this requirement, Korea, with a current population of some 47 million, would need 5.1 billion immigrants between 1995 and 2050, or an average of 94 million immigrants per year. (In the calculations, the age and sex distribution of migrants is assumed to be the same as that observed in the past in the main immigration countries. The fertility and mortality of immigrants are assumed to be identical with those of the receiving population.) The “Executive Summary” of the report is reproduced below, with the permission of the United Nations. Chapters of the full report set out the issues that prompted the exercise; provide a selective review of the literature; explain the methodology and the assumptions underlying the calculations; and present the detailed results for the eight countries and two regions selected for illustrative purposes. A brief discussion of the implications of the findings concludes the report. As is evident even from the figures just cited, immigration is shown to be at best a modest potential palliative to whatever problems declining population size and population aging are likely to pose to low‐fertility countries. The calculations, however, vividly illustrate that demographic changes will profoundly affect society and the economy, and will require adjustments that remain inadequately appreciated and assessed. The criteria specified in the UN calculations—maintenance of particular demographic parameters at a peak value—of course do not necessarily have special normative significance. Past demographic changes, with respect notably to the age distribution as well as population size, have been substantial, yet they have been successfully accommodated under circumstances of growing prosperity in many countries. But the past may be an imperfect guide in confronting the evolving dynamics of low‐fertility populations. As the report convincingly states, the new demographic challenges will require comprehensive reassessments of many established economic and social policies and programs.