Best Practices to Reduce Migration Pressures

Are there best practices to foster economic development, reduce population growth, and protect the environment in source countries of unauthorized migration, in a manner that reduces emigration pressures and redirects migration towards legal channels? This paper outlines cooperative actions that can be undertaken by both source and receiving countries to better manage the movements of people over national borders. There are two broad approaches to foster wanted migration and to reduce unwanted migration. First, maximize migration’s payoffs by ensuring that the 3 Rs of recruitment, remittances, and returns foster economic and job growth in emigration areas. Second, make emigration unnecessary by adapting trade, investment and aid policies, and programmes that accelerate economic development and thus make it unnecessary for people to emigrate for jobs and wages. Most of the changes needed for stay–at–home development must occur in emigration areas, but immigration areas can cooperate in the management of immigration, guest workers, and students, as well as in promoting freer trade and investment, and in targeting aid funds. In a globalizing world, selective immigration policies may have important development impacts, as with immigration country policies toward students, and workers in particular occupations, such as nurses and computer programmers, as well as with mutual recognition of occupational licenses and professional credentials. Trade policies affecting migration are also important, such as trade in services and laws regulating contracts between firms in different countries that allow the entry of lower wage workers as part of the contract. opening channels for legal migration can deter irregular migration.     

Subnational Migration States and the New Politics of Immigration

Using Catherine Dauvergne's The New Politics of Immigration and the End of Settler Society (2016) as a starting point, this article explores subnational policy dynamics in Canada, Australia and the United States. It considers whether the trends associated with legalization, two-step programmes, rapid policy changes and economic discourses are present in Canadian provinces as well as in U.S. and Australian states. It shows that the forces described by Dauvergne contribute to a further rescaling of policymaking and to the emergence of subnational migration states. However, this article also demonstrates that this common movement varies in its consequences and identifies two central subnational policy responses typical of the new politics of immigration: 1) the “economic subnational migration state” (Canada and Australia) and 2) the “access subnational migration state” (United States). The models and the global trends described in this article have implications for immigration policymaking in federations.     

Analysing US State Legislative Resolutions on Immigrants and Immigration: The Role of Immigration Federalism***

Immigration in the United States is traditionally thought of as a federal‐level policy, but in recent years, states have been exceedingly active in this domain. We analyse the context and discourse of immigration‐related legislative resolutions from Southern border‐states, recipients of the heaviest immigration flows, and find that states do not respond in the same way to immigration challenges, and these differences occur over time and space. Some states seek to federalize the issue and push Congress to take action, while others are slowly incorporating immigrants into domestic politics and have begun to treat them as yet another state constituency. These findings have significant implications both for federal‐state relations in the immigration realm, and for immigrants themselves.     

Migration and Human Rights on the Mexico-Guatemala Border

This paper identifies the protections in place for irregular migrants on the Mexico‐Guatemala border and analyzes Mexican government immigration enforcement policies and levels of compliance with international standards and national law. The history of the Mexico‐Guatemala border region and different types of migration flows into and through the area are also explored, as well as the linkages between migration, trade, security, and US immigration policy. It is argued that the Mexican government has partially complied with international conventions and national laws to protect the human rights of transmigrants in the Guatemalan border region, but that compliance is not complete and that an international response is required to ensure that human rights standards are upheld.     

Sending countries and the politics of emigration and destination

This article examines available means and activities of sending countries in their efforts to exert control over the "long-term temporary" emigration process. In the European case, the structure of migration has provided sending countries with ongoing channels for promoting their interests. In this picture the political dimensions of immigration are analyzed as epiphenomenal, dependent, or inconsequential. It is assumed that 1) state power directly correlates with economic power, and 2) economic and strategic power differences between states necessarily imply inequality in social and cultural terms. Although emigration may not serve the long-term "objective" interests of senders, it does provide a short-term safety value from the point of view of political managers. Both sending and receiving countries' interests are best served by a system of temporary labor migration, not permanent immigration. The receivers' ability to act according to narrow economic self-interest is restricted by a host of multilateral agreements that regulate and define the obligations and rights of the participants in international migration. Bilateral agreements not only specify the conditions of recruitment, employment, and family migration, they also provide a continuing basis for sending country influence throughout the migration process. Sending states that have a long history of emigration tend to have more developed and articulated emigration policies and commensurate institutional structures to channel and control the migration process in all stages--leaving, working abroad, and returning. The reluctance of Europe's immigrants to serve their social and political ties to their countries of origin is reinforced by the sending countries' activities aimed at insuring the continued long-term but temporary nature of migration.     

The political consequences of contemporary immigration

This article synthesizes research on political outcomes associated with increasing immigration, with an emphasis on cross‐national studies of European countries, where immigration is a relatively newer phenomenon compared to the United States and other traditional immigrant destinations. We begin with explanations of and research on anti‐immigrant sentiment, not a political phenomenon in itself but considered an important precursor to other relevant political attitudes. Next, we review scholarship on the relationship between immigration and support for the welfare state, as well as exclusionary attitudes regarding immigrants' rights to welfare benefits. Then, we review research on immigration and political party preferences, in particular radical right parties, whose platforms often combine anti‐immigration and welfare chauvinistic positions. We conclude by discussing how these processes may ultimately shape social policies, which may in turn influence immigration itself.     

Navigating Globalization: Immigration Policy in Canada and Australia, 1945–20071

Scholarship on immigration and globalization has failed to adequately analyze the nation‐state’s regulatory capacities, insisting instead that contemporary patterns of migration jeopardize national sovereignty and territoriality. While recognized that states possess the legitimate authority to control their territorial and membership boundaries, recent transformations of these capacities remain largely unanalyzed. This article’s historical analysis of Australia and Canada’s postwar immigration policies demonstrates that the contours of state regulation are intimately connected to the exigencies of state administration and nation building and—in contrast to the expectations of dominant theories—have intensified and expanded within the globalization context. The literature’s inattention to the fundamentally political nature of immigration has obscured the critical effects of national policies within both the migratory and globalization process. Australia’s and Canada’s contemporary policies constitute a unique model of migration control and reflect attempts by both countries to strategically position their societies within the global system and resolve a number of economic, political, cultural, and demographic transitions associated with globalization.     

American Attitudes toward Guest Worker Policies

In this study we use data from a 2004 New York Times/CBS News national survey to analyze public opinion toward a guest worker program and to compare predictors of support for guest worker and general immigration policies. In general, Americans tend to be divided in their attitudes toward a guest worker program, although support for temporary worker policies is stronger when legalization for unauthorized immigrants is conditioned on certain requirements, and when the program is coupled with enhanced border security. The results of the bivariate probit analysis indicate that individuals who favor reducing the immigration level also tend to oppose instituting a guest worker program. Perceptions of the “costs” of immigration emerged as the most important determinant of individuals’ attitudes toward immigration policies; such beliefs contributed to opposition to a guest worker policy and support for reducing the immigration level. We also found that residents of high‐immigration states and Latinos were more likely to support a temporary worker program. However, these characteristics do not appear to influence individuals’ judgments about the number of immigrants who should be admitted to the United States. Findings regarding the impact of political partisanship and ideology on attitudes toward the two policies were more ambiguous.     

Managing Migration: The Role of Economic Instruments

This paper reviews economic policies and instruments available to the developed countries to reduce unwanted migration from developing countries, not all of which is irregular migration. Countries generally welcome legal immigrants and visitors, try to make it unnecessary for people to become refugees and asylum seekers, and try to discourage, detect, and remove irregular foreigners. There are three major themes: 1. There are as many reasons for migration as there are migrants, and the distinction between migrants motivated by economic and non–economic considerations is often blurred. Perhaps the best analogy is to a river – what begins as one channel that can be managed with a dam can become a series of rivulets forming a delta, making migration far more difficult to manage. 2. The keys to reducing unwanted migration lie mostly in emigration countries, but trade and investment fostered by immigration countries can accelerate economic and job growth in both emigration and immigration countries, and make trading in goods a substitute for economically motivated migration. Trade and economic integration had the effect of slowing emigration from Europe to the Americas, between southern Europe and northern Europe, and in Asian Tiger countries such as South Korea and Malaysia. However, the process of moving toward freer trade and economic integration can also increase migration in the short term, producing a migration hump, and requiring cooperation between emigration and immigration destinations so that the threat of more migration does not slow economic integration and growth. 3. Aid, intervention, and remittances can help reduce unwanted migration, but experience shows that there are no assurances that such aid, intervention, and remittances would, in fact, lead migrants to stay at home. The better use of remittances to promote development, which at US$65 billion in 1999 exceeded the US$56 billion in official development assistance (ODA), is a promising area for cooperation between migrants and their areas of origin, as well as emigration and immigration countries. There are two ways that differences between countries can be narrowed: migration alone in a world without free trade, or migration and trade in an open economy. Migration will eventually diminish in both cases, but there is an important difference between reducing migration pressures in a closed or open world economy. In a closed economy, economic differences can narrow as wages fall in the immigration country, a sure recipe for an anti–immigrant backlash. By contrast, in an open economy, economic differences can be narrowed as wages rise faster in the emigration country. Areas for additional research and exploration of policy options include: (1) how to phase in freer trade, investment, and economic integration to minimize unwanted migration; (2) strategies to increase the job–creating impacts of remittances, perhaps by using aid to match remittances that are invested in job–creating ways.     

Politics and ideology in migration policy formulation: the case of Kuwait

In 1716, 3 prominent families of the original Kuwaitis agreed that 1 family would control finance and commerce, another seafaring activities, and the 3rd the government. This continued allegiance has been instrumental in shaping migration policy in Kuwait. Migration to Kuwait began in the 1930s-1940s to meet labor needs of the oil industry and the social infrastructure. This began a steady increase, with several setbacks in the early 1970s, of the migrant population. Between (1959-1964), Kuwait had to determine how it would exist and operate as an independent state. The new state established migration policy based on a need for national identity and on weighing the interests of 4 political groups: the ruling family; the wealthy merchants; the Arab Nationalist Movement; and Kuwaiti Nationalists. 3 migration laws emerged which satisfied the 4 groups and in some form continued into the 1980s. These laws basically allowed the continuation of free immigration of labor with the government controlling entry, movement, rights, and employment of the migrants while stressing neutrality and reciprocity with other states, especially Arab states. 1 law greatly limited the number of citizenships to nonKuwaitis and guaranteed economic control and major share of profits to Kuwaitis. Between 1965-1984, many changes to migration policy occurred for political, demographic, and economic reasons. 1 such change was an amendment restricting naturalization to Muslims, thereby not allowing naturalization of the growing Asian migration population, to preserve their cultural authenticity. By 1984, following 1 rebalance of the distribution of Kuwaitis and nonKuwaitis, economic declines, and security threats, migration policy shifted back to population balance. Kuwaiti history shows, however, that experimenting with migration policy and population balance cannot establish internal political and social cohesion. This is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the 1987 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America (see Population Index, Vol. 53, No. 3, Fall 1987, p. 409).     

Immigration Policies and the Factors of Migration from Developing Countries to South Korea: An Empirical Analysis

This study examines the impacts of immigration policies adopted by the Korean government, vis‐a‐vis other economic, social, demographic, and political factors, on labour migration from developing countries to South Korea using a modified gravity model. The model is extended to marriage‐related migrants to gain insights on marriage migration. The positive results in three out of the five immigration policies examined affirm that liberal policies are associated with increased migration, especially for preferred groups like ethnic Koreans, marriage migrants, and professionals. The positive effects of “push” factors such as population, unemployment, and inflation are generally similar to their effects on migration to the US, Canada, Germany, and the UK despite its more rapid transition from a migrant‐sending into a migrant‐receiving country. Political terror's non‐significance may be due to South Korea's limited asylum policy. Finally, the results of the extended model imply that marriage migration share plenty of similarities with labour migration.     

The Path to Asylum in the US and the Determinants for Who Gets In and Why*

The migration of political asylum seekers into the United States has long been a salient political topic; however, social scientists have yet to examine this process in its entirety and in the context of political changes since September 11, 2001. Previous research shows that humanitarian and strategic interests are important for decisions made by asylum officers but that research overlooks the decisions made by immigration judges. Here we examine decisions made by both asylum officers and immigration judges using data from a global set of countries, from 1999 to 2004. We find that the waning importance of human rights is more pronounced for asylum officers than for immigration judges after the attack on the World Trade Center. We also find that language heritage, specifically for asylum seekers from English‐, Spanish‐, and Arabic‐speaking countries, substantially affects acceptance rates made by both decision‐makers between the two time periods of our study.     

Mexican Migration for Dummies: What Social Workers and the Public Need to Know

SUMMARY

Amid the derisive, post-911 political debate about border control, national security, and “illegal aliens,” nobody, not even immigrant advocates and protesters, is articulating the macro-level, global economic root cause of undocumented labor migration to America. In simple terms, this essay describes how the contradictory policies of an open border for trade (i.e., NAFTA) and a closed border for immigration result in a predictable undocumented migration bridge between the U.S. and Mexico that must be sensibly regulated for the good of neighboring countries that now share formally integrated economies, yet informally integrated populations. Implications for policy and immigrant serving social workers and other human service providers are discussed.     

Nigerians in China: A Second State of Immobility

China’s rapid economic development has been accompanied by new forms of immigration. Investors and professionals from developed countries are increasingly joined by a diverse group of immigrants from around the world. While there is a large body of academic literature on Chinese emigration, China’s new role as a country of immigration has received less scholarly attention. This paper addresses the dynamics of South–South migration to China through a study of Nigerians in Guangzhou, a major international trading hub. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews and participant observation among African traders and migrants in Guangzhou. The paper contends that Nigerian immigration to China epitomizes global migration trends towards a diversification of migration flows, commercialization of the migration process and increased policing of foreigners within national borders. China was rarely the preferred destination of this study’s Nigerian informants but, rather, a palatable alternative, as their aspirations to enter Europe and North America were curtailed by restrictive immigration regimes. They escaped a situation of involuntary immobility in Nigeria through short‐term visas obtained with the help of migration brokers. However, opportunities for visa renewals are scant under the current Chinese immigration policy. Undocumented migrants find their mobility severely inhibited: They must carefully assess how, when and with whom they move about in order to avoid police interception. This is a business impediment, as well as a source of personal distress for migrants who engage in trade and the provision of trade‐related services. The situation can be described as a “second state of immobility”: the migrants have succeeded in the difficult project of emigration, but find themselves spatially entrapped in new ways in their destination country.     

Unauthorized Migrants and the (Il)Logic of “Crime Control”: A Human Rights Perspective on US Federal and Local State Immigration Policies

Immigration control, widely regarded the sovereign right of nation states, has often been pursued at the expense of civil and human rights. More than a century ago, nativists legitimated a punitive approach to immigration control that treated migrants’ rights as secondary by branding millions of newcomers to the United States as a “dangerous class”. In many ways, recent policies similarly criminalize immigrants and deploy crime control strategies in response. This article reviews the most significant of these policies at the federal and local state level, including: border security measures, detention and deportation, the 287(g) program, anti‐immigrant city ordinances, and the Arizona law (SB1070). Each initiative has been framed as necessary to protect American citizens from serious crime. We focus on four ways in which these policies violate human rights: first, border security measures that result in migrant deaths violate the right to life; second, detention and deportation violate the right to liberty; third, detention and deportation punish unlawful residents as though they were guilty of criminal rather than civil violations of the law, imposing penalties that are arbitrary and disproportionately harsh; and fourth, local state policies to counter illegal immigration encourage racial profiling, a practice that violates the right to freedom from discrimination.     

Preliminary analysis of emigration dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa

Migration is so prominent in African history that several observers have concluded that it is a way of life for many Africans. Considerable migration has occurred historically throughout Africa in response to political, economic, religious and security situations, ethnic tensions, and demographic pressures. Patterns, directions, and motivations of migration have been severely affected by the colonial experience which, in turn, has influenced economic, sociocultural, political, and demographic development. Historical and political links between African and colonial countries initially facilitated migration toward the UK, France, Belgium, and later to the US, Canada, and Germany. Under a lengthy recession, however, these Western economies have severely restricted the flow of immigration. This paper discusses the data situation, the economic regime, the demographic regime, the political regime, the micro-macro context, the cultural regime, the ecological setting, political change and uncertainty in South Africa, the intra-African exchange of skilled manpower, and implementing the IOM/UNFPA project in sub-Saharan Africa.     

Why Is There So Little Migrant Settlement in East Asia?1

Unlike states in Europe, East Asia settles very few migrants and has not developed a European‐style multicultural society. We seek to explain this variation using comparative analysis of two of the most advanced states in East Asia, South Korea and Japan, with several states in Europe. Focusing on family reunification – almost always the precursor to migrant settlement – we examine the effects of several independent variables, including supranational institutions, independent courts, interest groups, political culture, and the perceptions of migrants. We conclude that both Korea and Japan have less migrant settlement because of the lack of regional institutions pushing for family reunification rights, an elite political culture that still maintains the assumptions and repertoires of a “developmental state,” where rights may be sacrificed for economic growth and order, and migrant perceptions of greater immigration control in Asia.     

“He invited me and didn't ask anything in return” Migration and Mobility as Vulnerabilities for Sexual Exploitation among Female Adolescents in Mexico

Although human trafficking is recognized as a major human rights violation, there is limited evidence regarding the vulnerabilities that contribute to female adolescents’ risk of being forced or coerced into the sex trade. Vulnerabilities such as gender‐based violence, economic and social inequalities have been shown to shape the risk of sexual exploitation among adolescents. In‐depth interviews (n=18) with current sex workers who reported being deceived or forced into the sex trade as adolescents (<17 years old) were analysed to explore their experiences of migration and mobility in Mexico. Driven by socio‐economic and vulnerabilities in home communities, adolescents often engaged in internal migration and mobility to other Mexican communities and states. Migration and mobility further predisposed them to social isolation, economic hardship and abuse, which were used as tools to trick them into the sex trade. Policies that support safer migration for adolescents in origin, transit, and destination communities are needed.     

The Significance of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks for United States‐Bound Migration in the Western Hemisphere

The economic and political effects of the September 11 terrorist attacks weakened Latin American and Caribbean economies, reduced employment among Western Hemisphere immigrants living in the United States, and hindered new migrants' access to U.S. territory. Thus, the 9/11 events probably increased long‐term motivations for northward migration in the hemisphere, while discouraging and postponing international population movement in the short run. In addition, the terrorist assaults dealt a sharp setback to a promising dialogue on immigration policies between the United States and Mexico. Those discussions had appeared to herald constructive new policies towards migration into the U.S. from Mexico and possibly other nations in the hemisphere. A series of significant international migrant flows in South and Central America and in the Caribbean, not involving the United States, are unfortunately beyond the scope of this brief essay. I will first describe the consequences of the September 11 assaults for U.S.‐bound migration in the hemisphere, before turning to consider future social, economic and policy paths.     

Local Economic Opportunity and the Competing Risks of Internal and U.S. Migration in Zacatecas,Mexico1

This article uses a competing risks model to examine the effects of origin economic conditions on the probability of temporary U.S. and internal labor migration in the Mexican state of Zacatecas. We measure origin economic conditions with municipal‐level indices of employment and small‐scale investment opportunities that we constructed from population and economic census data. The results of our analysis demonstrate the important influence of local employment and investment opportunities on migration outcomes. Controlling for the prior municipal rate of U.S. return migration and other factors, positive opportunities for small‐scale investment are associated with a higher risk of temporary migration to the United States. This result is consistent with investment oriented migration predicted by the new economics of labor migration theory. We also find comparable social network effects for both internal and U.S. migration. Having social ties to active migrants of one type (U.S. or internal), encourages migration of the same type and discourages migration of the other type.