Does Environmental Degradation Influence Migration? Emigration to Developed Countries in the Late 1980s and 1990s*

Objective. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that climate change will intensify during the 21st century. The exact distribution of impacts will likely be complex in nature. Although some areas may exhibit benefits, many areas will likely experience environmental decline. The objective of this article is to answer the following question: What are the potential implications of deteriorating environmental conditions for human migration? This is not an easy question to answer because the full effects of climate change are not yet completely evident. Yet by studying the impact of environmental forces on migration in recent decades, we can offer some insight to this question. Methods. In implementing this approach, we employ theoretical and empirical methods. Our theoretical model suggests that environmental degradation should promote out‐migration from affected areas, all other things being equal. To test this prediction empirically, we conduct a large‐N statistical analysis focusing on the role of several environmental factors in emigration to developed countries. Our empirical sample covers the late 1980s and the 1990s. Results. The empirical results suggest that environmental decline plays a statistically significant role in out‐migration, pushing people to leave their homes and move to other countries. Conclusions. In the conclusions section of this article, we evaluate the policy implications of these findings for developed countries in the context of climate change and national security.     

Zakat as a Poverty Reduction Mechanism Among the Muslim Community: Case Study of Bangladesh,Malaysia, and Indonesia

Poverty reduction remains the most important challenge for policy makers in Islamic communities. The World Bank (2010: Poverty profile in Muslim world, from http://www.worldbank.org ) estimates that approximately 3 billion people are living in poverty and 46 million more people will come under the income level of US$1.25 a day due to the recent global economic meltdown and slow economic growth rates. Thirty‐five percent of these people are Muslims from Islamic countries. The global Muslim community has an essential role to play in addressing the injustice of global poverty through zakat. Zakat is an Islamic faith‐based institution and is being underutilized for poverty reduction in many of these poor Muslim countries. Since zakat constitutes one of the pillars of Islam, it is logical to assume that policy makers among Muslims should pay serious attention to it. However, that is not the case for many Muslim countries and this paper will show that not all Muslim countries are seriously applying zakat in its strategy of combating poverty. This paper will specifically examine the role and effect of zakat in three Muslim countries (Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia) providing the facts of countries that practise zakat in comparison with those that do not.     

Well‐being of migrant and left‐behind children in China: Education,health, parenting,and personal values

Over the last several decades of urbanization and industrialization, China has encountered mass labor force migration from rural to urban areas. As a result, two‐child populations have dramatically increased in number: so‐called left‐behind children and migrant children. Using data from the 2006 and 2009 China Nutrition and Health Surveys, this study examined the effects of parental migration and residency status on the education, health, parenting, and personal values of children, with particular focus on left‐behind and migrant children. The findings suggest that parental migration and residency status play important roles in the educational and health outcomes, parental supervision, and personal values of children. Through analyzing the differences and possible reasons for disparate outcomes among child populations, this study aimed to improve public understanding of migrant and left‐behind children's well‐being in China, and explore implications for future studies and welfare policy making. Key Practitioner Message: ● Help to identify the impact of migration on individual, family, and the society domestically and internationally; ● Provide implications for welfare policy making, program design, and service delivery for migrant populations; ● Explore the approaches to addressing migration‐related issues in different countries with internal and transnational migrant populations.     

A Sledgehammer to Crack a Nut: Deportation, Detention and Dispersal in Europe

Since the increase in the numbers of asylum‐seekers arriving in Europe in the early 1990s, European countries of asylum have been implementing new and increased controls over entry and making conditions more difficult for asylum‐seekers while they are waiting for a decision on their case. This paper explores the ways in which four European asylum regimes use the deportation, detention and dispersal of asylum‐seekers in an attempt to control and exclude them from national societies and territories. Germany, France, Italy and the UK have different migration histories and have introduced different asylum policies at different times; but all have in common the increasingly draconian response to asylum‐seekers since the 1990s. The paper looks at the stated rationale for introducing and extending dispersal, deportation and detention. EU governments have introduced these measures, arguing that they will deter “fraudulent” asylum claims. While the number of claims has fallen in the last five years to the lowest level since 1988, there is no evidence that this is due to such policies. It is clear, however, that these policies penalize all asylum‐seekers, breach their human rights, damage the receiving societies as a whole, and as such should be abandoned.     

Migration,gender and economic integration: international scholarship (2006–09) and an Aotearoa New Zealand research agenda

Abstract

This paper follows from the findings of the 2006 review of research on women, gender and migration published in International Migration Review. We begin by discussing three international trends in contemporary migration flows: diversification, bifurcation and feminisation; and examine their significance for New Zealand. We then review the research on gender and economic integration of migrants in developed countries in relation to three aspects: the characteristics of migrants; the strategies migrants use during settlement; and the contexts of reception in receiving communities. We identify insights and omissions in this scholarship relevant to New Zealand policy-oriented migration research. We argue that the gendered nature of migration cannot be ignored, and that while human capital approaches to economic integration are important, they are insufficient for understanding complex migrant outcomes. Rather, comprehensive, integrated and local research is required to understand migrant experience and outcomes and to assess the effectiveness of immigration policy settings.     

Emigration from Zimbabwe: Migrant Perspectives

This article explores migration from Zimbabwe to the UK and South Africa and the experiences of the receiving countries from the perspective of the migrants. It provides a critical examination of the impact of structural barriers in both the UK and South Africa on the economic experiences of migrants. The effects of immigration status, due to the exclusion of asylum‐seekers in the UK and the presence of undocumented migrants in the UK and South Africa, is explored in relation to employment and remittance activities. The clear evidence of the deskilling taking place among the majority of Zimbabwean migrants – and its impact on remittances and other forms of transnational support – is also examined. The article concludes that any real commitment to alleviating global poverty on the part of the world's migrant receiving countries must include a re‐examination of barriers to employment, education and the use of skills, since these barriers not only have a short‐term impact on remittances to the sending country and fiscal capacity to contribute in the receiving country, but will also impact on longer‐term development should the migrants return to their country of origin.     

The Multicultural Welfare State: International Experience and North American Narratives

Contemporary debates are increasingly pessimistic about the impact of ethnic diversity on support for the welfare state. A growing number of analysts argue that greater ethnic diversity in Western democracies is weakening public support for redistribution, and that this underlying tension is exacerbated by the adoption of robust multiculturalism policies. The purpose of this essay is to summarize early findings from several studies that bear on the questions at the heart of such debates. These studies analyse the implications of immigration and multiculturalism policies for the welfare state across OECD countries, and also focus more closely on the experience of two distinctively multicultural countries, the United States and Canada. The evidence points to more complex relationships than often assumed. OECD countries with large foreign‐born populations have not had more difficulty in sustaining their welfare states than other countries. The extent of change does seem to matter, however, as countries in which immigrant communities grew rapidly between 1970 and the late 1990s did experience lower rates of growth in social spending. But despite the warnings of some critics, robust multiculturalism policies do not systematically exacerbate this tension. Moreover, the United States and Canada reflect different patterns. In the US racial diversity does weaken support for redistribution; but Canadian experience suggests that immigration, multiculturalism policies and redistribution can represent a stable political equilibrium. These contrasting narratives from North America stand as a warning against premature conclusions based on the US experience alone. There is no inevitability at work, and policy choices do seem to matter.     

Swimming against the tide: why Sweden supports increased labour mobility within and from outside the EU

While the free movement of labour in the EU is generally depicted as a positive feature of the single market, it was also controversial in the debate on EU enlargement. Actors opposing enlargement argued that large waves of migrants from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) would ‘swamp’ Western labour markets, leading to so-called social tourism and increasing xenophobia. Contrary to the developments in other countries, Sweden was one of the only three Member States to immediately open its doors to citizens from the EU accession countries of 2004 and 2007. Sweden has also been one of the few EU countries to actively promote greater liberalisation of labour migration policy for third-country nationals (TCNs) within the EU, and the new Swedish Immigration Law of 2008 dramatically liberalised the TCN labour migration policy and made it more employer-driven. We argue that in order to understand why Sweden has supported increased labour mobility within and from outside of the EU, we need to complement existing explanations by analysing the preferences of the political parties. A two-dimensional analysis focusing on economy and culture provides an understanding of why so-called unholy coalitions of parties in support of liberal labour policies have emerged in Sweden during the 2000s. The article ends with a discussion of lessons learned from the Swedish case and wider implications for rights-based mobility in the EU.     

Social security pensionable ages in OECD countries: 1949-2035

This paper examines the pensionable or early retirement age in social security in 23 OECD countries over the years 1949‐2035. The policies for future years are those in current law, with some not being fully effective until 2035. The paper documents a pattern of decreasing pensionable ages that reversed in the 1990s, with many countries raising pensionable ages since the beginning of that decade, though generally with future effective dates. Pensionable‐age policy provides insight into broader issues in social policy, such as whether social policies across countries have converged over time. The paper also examines the time pattern in the movement toward gender equality in social programmes.     

Towards a modern gender gap in Europe?: A comparative analysis of voting behavior in 12 countries

This article examines electoral gender differences in Western Europe. It describes the electoral gender gap in a longitudinal cross-national design (1974–2000, 12 countries) with EuroBarometer data. The analysis shows that gender differences in voting in Europe follow a similar movement to what has been described for the USA. Women tended to vote more for conservative parties in the 1970s, while in the new millennium they have given higher support to left parties. The speed of this development differs cross-nationally and not all countries reached the state of a modern gender gap (where women lean left).At the national level the driving force for the emergence of a modern gender gap is mainly increased levels of female labor participation. At the individual level structural variables explain traditional gender differences in voting, but fail to account for the gender gap in recent years.     

‘It's always a battle against time’. Experiencing and handling temporal conditions in homecare work

In most Western countries, the eldercare sector has undergone transformations to obtain cost containment and more efficient service provision, changing the temporal framing of homecare. Time pressure is a salient issue in homecare, but little is known about how homecare workers experience the temporal conditions of their work. Based on 13 group interviews with homecare workers in Sweden, this study examined how the staff experience temporal conditions and handle time pressure in their everyday work in a context of marketisation and increased use of ‘information and communication technology’. The analysis showed that the workers attributed their experiences of time pressure to the compression of time, the control of time and the unpredictability of time. Strategies adopted to handle time pressure included working unpaid hours, maximising efficiency and reallocating time. It is concluded that the homecare workers primarily adopted individual short-term strategies to deal with structural and organisational temporal issues.     

Class, Attitudes and the Welfare State: Sweden in Comparative Perspective

One of the most important arenas for contemporary class politics is the welfare state. In this article, attitudes towards welfare policies among different classes in Sweden are compared with other Western countries and over time. In the first part of the article, attitudes towards state intervention among different classes are compared across four Western countries: Sweden, Germany, Britain and the USA. The data come from the 1996 survey on “The Role of Government” conducted within the International Social Survey Programme. In the second part of the article, more detailed national data sets are used in order to track developments within Sweden from the early 1980s until 2002. Attitudes towards welfare spending, financing of welfare policies and service delivery are used to track developments of class differences in attitudes over time. It is concluded (a) that class differences are particularly large in Sweden, and (b) that changes over time indicate stability in overall class differences, combined with changes in attitudes among non‐manual employees. The implications of the results for recent arguments about the restructuring of class relations and the impact of welfare policies on stratification are discussed.     

Ending poverty in Mongolia: From socialism to social development

While recent literature on social welfare has included Asian countries, less is known about low‐income and former socialist countries in Central Asia. This article combines a documentary‐historical method with a value‐critical approach to analyze Mongolia's social policy response to poverty. Mongolia is unique in Asia because it transformed from nomadic pastoralism to socialism without a phase of capitalist industrial development. The case study found that Mongolia lost social welfare when it transitioned from socialism, a statist model, to market liberalism and multiparty democracy. In the 21st century, Mongolia has been aspiring to promote social development by redirecting mining revenues to a human development fund. Mongolia is potentially an exemplar of social development strategies affirmed at the United Nations Conference for Social Development (Rio+20) regarding a green economy for inclusive growth and poverty elimination. Future social welfare research should consider the importance of sustainability. Key Practitioner Message: ● Global standards for tracking poverty alleviation will be integrated with sustainability measures beginning in 2015; ● Mongolia hopes to foster social development and sustainable livelihoods by reinvesting revenues from mining into human capital and health care; ● To sustain future generations, social policy needs to consider the relationship between natural capital, social capital, and financial capital.     

Comparing unemployment protection and social assistance in 14 European countries. Four worlds of protection for people of working age

Pfeifer, M. Comparing unemployment protection and social assistance in 14 European countries. Four worlds of protection for people of working age This article aims to show which policy responses 14 Western European countries have adopted to deal with rising unemployment levels and increased need for benefits during working age. In contrast to earlier studies, both components of unemployment benefits (UB), i.e. unemployment insurance and unemployment assistance, were taken into account in a social rights indicator that depicts the legal entitlements of the unemployed. In total, there were eight indicators of both UB and social assistance representing expenditure, generosity, problem pressure and benefit entitlements. The following cluster analysis groups countries using these indicators. The resulting typology consisted of four ways of protecting the working‐aged: an extensive safety nets type operating well with functioning labour markets; a liberal protection type dealing with low levels of unemployment; a targeted protection type combined with an insider–outsider divide on the labour market; and lastly, a patchy safety nets type facing high unemployment levels.     

Restructuring Long-Term Care in Spain: The Impact of The Economic Crisis on Social Policies and Social Work Practice

ABSTRACT

Care needs of the aging population are increasing in Southern European countries. The purpose of this article is to explore the implications of meeting these needs while taking into account the recent economic crisis, which has deeply affected countries such as Spain. This study is part of a European project (ISCH COST Action IS1102) and is based mainly on qualitative information that focuses on in-depth interviews with social service workers (n = 19) who provide the service and program recipients or their caregivers (n = 14). In addition, two discussion groups were conducted with professionals (n = 9) and program volunteers (n = 5), as well as a workshop/discussion group (n = 28) with politicians, service providers, and participants. Six thematic premises were identified with differing views being highlighted relevant to the participants' roles in the program. Future research should explore social service strategies to deal with the increase in care needs as well as community-based responses.     

The State and its Welfare State: How do Welfare State Changes Affect the Make‐up of the Nation State?

With respect to changes in the welfare states of OECD countries, scholars most of the time are looking for common trends; that is, they look for similar movements in different states, such as welfare state retrenchment, recalibration, etc. As we show in this article, data on welfare state spending and financing do not, however, support such stark tendencies like retrenchment. We therefore suggest looking for corridor effects rather than level effects, i.e. analysing changes in the dispersion of welfare state regimes rather than shifts in the mean values. Our analysis suggests that convergence, i.e. decreasing diversity among states in spending, financing and regulation patterns, may have been the most important pattern of welfare state change in the last three decades – a pattern easily overlooked in past and current research. Convergence of welfare state regimes also affects our views on the modern nation state itself since the varieties of welfare capitalism in the twentieth century are themselves an expression of the sovereignty and autonomy of the nation state. If nation states are forced to surrender national particularities, to mellow their characteristic differences and to move incrementally towards a one‐size‐fits‐all common model via ‘shrinking corridors’, such a blurring of welfare regimes, such a beclouding of difference, should also be regarded as a significant change taking place in the centre of the Western nation state's make‐up.     

Networking Enforced – Comparing Social Services' Collaborative Rationales across Different Welfare Regimes

Collaboration and networking are ubiquitous, versatile features of social service provision in most Western countries. However, it is an open question whether networking means and entails the same across countries. Comparing regulatory frameworks in three jurisdictions representing distinctive ‘worlds of welfare services’ – Germany, Norway and Quebec – this article aims at eliciting the normative rationales that underpin and inform local service networks in child welfare and protection (CWP) systems. In Norway, where services are little diversified and largely insular, networking appears as a way of opening up for greater organizational plurality, within and beyond the public sector realm. In Germany in contrast, where services are highly pluralized and fragmented, networks are seen as an instrument for streamlining complexity. As for Quebec – an intermediate case in some respects – networking is envisioned as a catalyst for aligning two co‐existing service streams and mitigating the child protection–family support divide. Interestingly, in all three places, networking is now being enforced through similar highly formalized, top‐down regulatory provisions, even though the intended directions of change differ markedly. This has implications for CWP policy as well as research on networks at large.     

European Union Policy on Asylum and Immigration. Addressing the Root Causes of Forced Migration: A Justice and Home Affairs Policy of Freedom,Security and Justice?

This paper contributes to the debate on the development of the future common European Union Policy on Asylum and Immigration. It seeks to explain the rationale behind the evolution of the Union's policy outlook on asylum and immigration. It then analyses the most recent Union‐wide policy tools available to address asylum and migration issues, arguing that common European asylum policies thus far have focused on containment of migration flows seen as a threat to the European internal security regime and in response to perceived populist pressures. The return and readmission clauses now being implemented, in agreements with countries outside of the Union, serve to illustrate this point, as does the political willingness to extra‐territorialize asylum processing. However, the focus on eliminating the root causes of migration flows is a relatively new paradigm, developed since the 1999 Tampere European Council. Although off to a slow start, the European Union Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument may become an institutional outlet to create a more normative framework for asylum and migration. The success of such a framework is contingent upon breaking with earlier conceptualizations of “asylum” as a security threat. Implicit in such a framework is the need to retain a clear distinction between asylum‐ and labour‐related migration. Partnerships must also be granted a budget sufficient for their establishment in real terms with countries of origin and transit. Lastly, there must be changes in modes of governance, as well as institutional reform, if efforts to elaborate a strategy on asylum and migration are to be executed successfully. Curiously, while the proposed Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe sought to abolish the pillar structure put in place by the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht, it would have retained the institutional inhibitions imposed by long‐existing tensions between national and community administrations and the “inter‐pillar” battles between the foreign policy, humanitarian and development dimensions of the EU apparatus. The current political debate about moving Europe “closer to its people”, following the rejection of the proposed Constitution at national referenda in France and the Netherlands, appears unlikely to solve any of these tensions.     

The impact of infectious diseases on remittances inflows to India

The economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be grimmer when observed from the migration perspective. Remittances play a vital role in economic development of India through promoting output growth, household spending on health and education, poverty alleviation, financial inclusion and entrepreneurship. Given the importance of remittances, it is important to analyse how the current pandemic will influence the remittances inflows to India. Towards this end, the study employs a gravity model approach to the determinants of remittances with special attention to the impact of infectious diseases in the host countries. The present study constructs a dataset on bilateral remittances from 99 destination countries and utilizes the data on prevalence of infectious diseases in the host countries during the period 2000–2018 to assess the impact of the latter on the inflows of remittances to India. The results of the study based on a variety of estimators tackling various econometric issues suggest a statistically significant negative impact of prevalence of infectious diseases in the host country on the inflows of remittances. The negative impact of infectious diseases on remittances suggest that while there are downside risks in the wake of current pandemic, the scenario does not seem to be that bleak as the remittances to India are countercyclical with respect to economic growth in the home country and largely decoupled from host country macroeconomic fundamentals. As the remittances act as shock absorbers during the time of low economic growth in the home country, India must further build up a conducive eco system to nurture these valuable foreign exchange in a well directed manner.     

Rural Movements in Europe: Scandinavia and the Accession States

This paper explores the national rural/village movements now established in some 16 European countries, with special focus on those in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. The aim of the paper is to raise awareness by providing information on the significance of rural social movements, rather than to attempt a detailed analysis. Starting in the 1970s in some Scandinavian and Western European countries, as a local community response to rural decline, the village movements have built into major national forces, and have recently expanded into the EU accession states in Central and Eastern Europe. They were established to address issues of rural decline, agricultural change, migration, centralization and EU accession. They are now also organizing themselves at EU level, to provide a voice for rural communities in Europe. This is a notable example of a structured approach to mobilizing rural communities to become stronger agents of local development and to participate in rural policy‐making at local, regional, national and EU levels. The paper draws on information gained in a recently completed initial investigation of the national village movements in Estonia, Finland, Slovakia and Denmark, together with information from Sweden. The information is based on that gathered from a wide range of interviews and the minimal documentation available from the movements themselves. The experiences of the movements in enabling local structural development, capacity‐building, empowerment and action are documented, as is their work to develop strategic planning and advocacy. The paper identifies the motivating forces, structural and process models, activities and outcomes of the different movements. It takes account of the effects of differing national contexts, and identifies some key elements of experience and learning.