Migration distances: An international comparison

Comparing the level or amount of migration within different countries has been a longstanding problem because the local administrative areas commonly used as the basis for measuring migration vary greatly in size and significance within and between countries. Distance moved is a critical aspect of most concepts of migration, and measuring it would facilitate cross-national comparisons. Apparently only the United States, Great Britain, and Sweden have measured migration distances for the country as a whole, and this information is used as the basis for comparative analysis of spatial mobility.     

An international comparison of excessive adult mortality

Abstract Empirical expressions derived by Coale and Demeny accurately characterized the relationships among death rates of different age groups for each sex during an extended period of time in Western nations. However, the relationships have changed in recent years, as the mortality of older persons has increasingly exceeded the level expected on the basis of these expressions. The recent disruption is relatively small for females and may be due to very rapid declines in maternal mortality. Among males, the change has been quite pronounced, and it is suggested that increases in cigarette consumption are largely responsible.     

Recent studies on place-utility and intention to migrate: An international comparison

Findings from five recent studies carried out in different cultural and social-economic contexts (Egypt, Kenya, Philippines, Thailand, and U.S.A.) show significant support for certain features of a "placeutility/migration intentions" model of migration decisions. These findings also suggest that there may be substantial variation in the migration decision process from one setting to another, and that the behavioral models which have been generally used to advance hypotheses in this field need to be revised to take into account empirical findings.Subjective assessments of place-utility are at best partial predictors of actual migration, as measured in follow-up surveys in four of the five studies. Intentions to move are strong predictors of subsequent migration in some settings but weak predictors in others. The findings point to the need to give greater weight to personal and structural constraints on migration (financial resources, help from friends, etc.) which, in the decision making process, may override place-utility consideration in the determination of intentions and actual migration decisions. Overall, the five studies add significantly to knowledge on how migration decisions are made in different settings and point to a number of challenging hypotheses and gaps in research design which need to be addressed in future research.This paper constitutes a revised version of my Discussant's Comments for the session on "Migration strategies, migration intentions, and migration decisions," organized by James T. Fawcett at the Population Association of American Annual Meetings, Minneapolis, April 1984. The revisions take into account modifications in the content and authorship of the papers prior to appearing in this issue or elsewhere in final printed form. I am indebted to Jean Turner for her comments on the draft of this paper.     

An international labour migration to developing countries in Asia: a case study of Korea

This study is based on a random sample of 431 temporary migrant workers from developing countries in Korea. Interviews were conducted from mid-October 1995 to mid-March 1996 with 105 Pakistanis, 77 Filipinos, 71 Sri Lankans, 67 Bangladeshi, 40 Indonesians, 26 individuals from Myanmar, 22 Chinese, 16 Nepalese, 2 Iranians, 2 Kazakstanians, 1 Malaysian, 1 Vietnamese, and 1 Ghanaian. Migration follows legal and illegal patterns. Legal trainee migrants leave before their contract time due to low pay, inadequate living conditions, forced overtime work, and lack of freedom. Trainees tend to be ethnic Koreans born in China and Chinese nationals. The number of illegal migrants is increasing. Foreign workers gain entry illegally through smuggling networks and legally through industrial work or tourist visas. Sample data reveal that the average age ranged from 26 to 32 years. Almost 70% were unmarried, and most were males. Filipinos tended to be older and show gender and marital balance. Age, marital status, religion, and education varied widely by ethnic group. Indonesians and Sri Lankans had lower household income than Pakistanis and Filipinos. Pakistanis tended to come from larger families. Total travel costs ranged from $3000 to $5000. Korea is one of four rapidly developing countries that shifted from being a major exporter of labor to a major importer of workers. Shortages of workers accompanied the shift. This case study illustrates that the traditional structural paradigm does not explain some unique features of international labor migration (ILM) in Asia, including the encouragement of illegal migration. The clandestine networks are different from those in developed countries. State policies mediate the flow of ILM.     

Age patterns of marriage

Abstract In different populations there is a common curve describing first-marriage frequency (first marriages per woman) as a function of age for each cohort. To fit the variety of patterns of human nuptiality it suffices to choose the age that serves as origin for a standard curve of first-marriage frequency, and to choose appropriate horizontal and vertical scales for the curve. The prevalence of a standard form for first-marriage frequency implies that the proportion ever-married in any cohort also rises along a standard curve, subject to choice of origin (the earliest age of first marriage), vertical scale (the proportion ever-marrying by the end of life), and horizontal scale (the pace at which the proportion ever-married increases with age). A mathematical expression (a double exponential) is found to fit the risk offirst marriage (among those who ever marry), and some of the implications of uniform features of nuptiality in different populations are discussed.     

Long-term effects of international migration: Lessons from Israel

The paper shows that characteristics of immigrants at the time of immigration affect both long-term occupational achievements and income at the end of the labor force career, after age 59. Data representing 174,000 Jewish males 60 and older from a 1985 survey by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics are analyzed to show how the timing of immigration, the number of years in the country, age at immigration, country of origin, and educational resources at time of immigration are related to years in the labor force in the host country, occupational achievement, pension entitlement and income after age 59. Both direct and indirect effects are analyzed. The results show the importance of immigration characteristics on long-term socioeconomic adjustment, and the necessity of considering social status over the life course as an indicator of long-term immigrant adjustment. Decomposition of the effect of country of origin pinpoints what characteristics at time of immigration influence social status differences in ethnic groups at older ages. The discussion includes a number of methodological implications for future studies in immigration.Abbreviations AA Asian-African - CBS Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics - EA European-American This article is based on a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, New York, March 1993. It was written while the authors were on leave from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.     

Altruism and international labour migration

This paper investigates the effect of altruism on the pattern of labour migration in a two-country overlapping generations model. We show that differences in degrees of altruism across countries lead to bilateral migration flows. Starting from the autarkic steady-state equilibrium, restrictions on labour migration are relaxed. In temporary post-migration equilibrium factor prices are equal across countries. We then characterize the unique stable steady-state equilibrium: both countries are populated and this equilibrium is not a Pareto improvement. Some individuals prefer to live in autarky, others in an integrated world economy. Received: 6 July 1998/Accepted: 11 February 1999     

Prospects for international migration: Globalization and its discontents

The paper challenges the view that the late twentieth century is the ‘age of migration’. For developing countries, flows of out-migrants are small compared with population growth, although in developed countries the stock of immigrants increased in proportion to the total population between 1965 and 1990. Despite the importance of refugee movement, the main force for international migration is economic. Why do not more people migrate (internally and internationally) to take advantage of potential economic gains? For international migration, one deterrent is institutional barriers against uncontrolled immigration. Different interest groups stand to gain or lose from increased migration. The income-enhancing effects of unhindered international labour migration, measured jointly for sending and receiving countries and by extension globally, should be very large. Even partial liberalization of immigration to industrialized countries would serve developing countries well. In industrialized countries, however, there is concern about the effect of massive labour inflows on the ethnic, religious and cultural composition of the population and its social cohesion. In some countries, migration is leading to greater ethnic mingling; in others there is a recrudescence of nationalistic aspirations for independent statehood with ethnically homogeneous populations, or to preserve the advantages of economically successful subregions.     

Measurement of social development: an international comparison

PQLI and HDI are the two most popular measures of development, besides per capita income. Over the years, PQLI appears to be not much in use for regional comparisons, especially after the introduction of HDI. While PQLI considers only the physical variables—adult literacy, life expectancy at birth and infant survival rate, HDI has life expectancy at birth, educational attainment and real GDP per capita (PPP$). PQLI and HDI are similar, the main difference between the two being the inclusion of income in HDI and exclusion of the same from PQLI. In a sense, HDI represents both physical and financial attributes of development and PQLI has only the physical aspects of life. The present author took the lines of PQLI to express development in terms of physical variables and considering development as a multidimensional phenomenon, Ray (1989) [Ray, A. K. (1989). On the measurement of certain aspects of social development, Social Indicators Research (Vol. 21, pp. 35–92). The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.] included as many as 13 physical variables to represent social development across 40 countries; no financial variable was included in the construction of composite index, termed as the Social Development Index, SDI. Incidentally, like PQLI, SDI was introduced before HDI. Unlike PQLI and HDI, SDI considers (i) a large number of indicators representing various concern areas and (ii) a set of objective methods for combining the development indicators as a composite index. Ray (1989) has been restated and updated in this article with newer cross-country information. In the present study, SDI has been constructed for over 102 countries, including 21 OECD countries, using 10 development indicators, instead of 13 indicators in the past. Apart from presenting objective methods for combining indicators into SDI, the present study asserts that SDI works better than HDI as a measure of development for an international comparison. The views expressed in the article are those of the author and not of the institution he serves.     

Empirical research on international environmental migration: a systematic review

This paper presents the findings of a systematic review of scholarly publications that report empirical findings from studies of environmentally-related international migration. There exists a small, but growing accumulation of empirical studies that consider environmentally-linked migration that spans international borders. These studies provide useful evidence for scholars and policymakers in understanding how environmental factors interact with political, economic and social factors to influence migration behavior and outcomes that are specific to international movements of people, in highlighting promising future research directions, and in raising important considerations for international policymaking. Our review identifies countries of migrant origin and destination that have so far been the subject of empirical research, the environmental factors believed to have influenced these migrations, the interactions of environmental and non-environmental factors as well as the role of context in influencing migration behavior, and the types of methods used by researchers. In reporting our findings, we identify the strengths and challenges associated with the main empirical approaches, highlight significant gaps and future opportunities for empirical work, and contribute to advancing understanding of environmental influences on international migration more generally. Specifically, we propose an exploratory framework to take into account the role of context in shaping environmental migration across borders, including the dynamic and complex interactions between environmental and non-environmental factors at a range of scales.     

Long-term multivariate prediction of migration patterns

In- and out-migration rates of 56 Israeli cities with a population of over 5000 were predicted for a five-year period (1977–1981), on the basis of four 1976 social indicators: crime rate, percent unemployment, population size and distance from a major metropolitan center. Rather than employ independent correlation coefficients, the four indicators were entered as predictors into regression equations with in- and out-migration rates serving as the dependent variable. The analytic methods are compared and the clear advantages of the regression method emerge. None of the indicators reliably predicted in-migration. Crime consistently predicted out-migration. Distance and unemployment each entered into three of the prediction models.     

Relative deprivation and international migration oded stark

This article provides theoretical reasoning and empirical evidence that international migration decisions are influenced by relative as well as absolute income considerations. Potential gains in absolute income through migration are likely to play an important role in households' migration decisions, but international migration by household members who hold promise for success as labor migrants can also be an effective strategy to improve a household's income position relative to others in the household's reference group. The findings reported in this article provide empirical support for the hypothesis that relative deprivation plays a significant role in Mexico-to-U.S. migration decisions. The findings also suggest that this migration is an effective mechanism for achieving income gains in households that send migrants to the U.S. and that households wisely choose as migrants those of their members who are most likely to provide net income gains.     

A temporary equilibrium model for international migration

This paper is concerned with the existence of temporary equilibria of migration with an overlapping generation structure and analyzes some of its properties. In the first part of the paper sufficient conditions for the existence of a temporary equilibrium of migration (in a given period) are given. In the second part some interesting properties of migration equilibria are analyzed. In particular the effects of differing degrees of information of the individuals on migration equilibria are investigated. Furthermore, it is shown that incomplete information alone suffices to induce migration flows even between countries that can be regarded as identical from an economic point of view.The paper was partly written during a research stay at the Sonderforschungsbereich 178 (University of Konstanz). Financial support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft is gratefully acknowledged. We wish to thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments.     

Globalization and changes in Australian international migration

Australian international migration has undergone a massive transformation in the last decade, in part as a result of globalization. Although Australia has long been a country of immigration with a relatively high proportion of its residents foreign-born, the nature of international migration shaping the country has undergone profound change in the era of globalization. This paper outlines some of the major dimensions of this change in international migration. The links between globalization and migration are complex and two-way but there can be no doubt that processes which have accelerated international exchanges of goods, information, ideas, trade and finance and led to an internationalization of labour markets have been associated with shifts in Australian migration. This change has had a number of components which have increased the complexity of the international migration influencing Australia. The changes examined include the increasing significance of skill-related migration compared with other forms, increasing non-permanent migration, the increasing nexus between temporary and permanent migration, the increasing movement of Australians out of the country, the significance of student migration and the increasing significance of migration in influencing Australia’s relationship with its Asia-Pacific neighbours. These changes have profound implications for Australia’s contemporary and future demography.     

Linkages between internal and international migration: the Ilocos Norte experience

This paper reviews the arguments concerning whether internal and international migration can or should be incorporated in the same migration theories or models and examines the ways in which the 2 processes are linked in a variety of contexts. To provide some illustrative empirical results, reference is made to the Philippine Migration Study (PMS), a research project which incorporates both internal and international migration in its research design. The study examined migration from Ilocos Norte to the principal internal destination, Manila, and the principal international destination, Honolulu. Ilocos Norte is a largely rural, resource poor province with a long history of outmigration that is attributable primarily to population pressure in the region. Due to the fact that 1 of the principal migration streams from the Ilocos is within the Philippines and the other is outside the country, the Ilocos presents an ideal situation for a comparative analysis of internal and international migration. The study consists of 7 different surveys conducted in Ilocos Norte, Manila, and Honolulu between 1980-83. More than 5000 interviews were conducted in the 3 locations. The initial baseline survey in Ilocos Norte was conducted in 1980. After 2-1/2 years, the initial 830 households in the Ilocos Baseline Survey were recontacted to determine the migration behavior of the household members since the 1st survey. Those who had moved to either Manila or Hawaii during this period were traced to the destination and interviewed there. The PMS uses a single integrated model (the value-expectancy or VE framework) to explore migration decision making for both internal and external migration. Despite the complexity of the VE questions, respondents were able to distinguish different locations as being relatively good places or bad places to realize their different goals. Manila was not highly regarded by Ilocanos in most respects, and there was not a single value on which Manila ranked higher than both alternative locations. Relative to the other values, however, Manila is seen as being a good place for educational opportunities and entertainment. Hawaii rated very well on items having to do with wealth and status, but was regarded as a relatively poor place to satisfy one's desire for affiliation. Comfort, affiliation, and morality were viewed as being most easily achieved in the present barangay. Based upon the value-expectancy framework, the findings of the Philippine Migration Study confirm that a global model of migration decision making is feasible and that other important concepts in migration equally apply well in the case of both internal and international population movements.     

When nature rebels: international migration, climate change, and inequality

We study climate change and international migration in a two-country overlapping generations model with endogenous climate change. Our main findings are that climate change increases migration; small impacts of climate change have significant impacts on the number of migrants; a laxer immigration policy increases long-run migration, aggravates climate change, and increases north–south inequality if climate change impacts are not too small; and a greener technology reduces emissions, long-run migration, and inequality if the migrants’ impact to overall climate change is large. The preference over the policies depends on whether the policy maker targets inequality, wealth, the environment, or the number of migrants.     

Levels and patterns of internal migration in Europe: A cohort perspective

Europe displays important variations in the level of internal migration, with a clear spatial gradient of high mobility in northern and western Europe but lower mobility in the south and east. However, cross-national variation in levels of internal migration remains poorly understood, because it is analysed almost exclusively using cross-sectional data and period measures. This paper seeks to advance understanding of cross-national variation in migration levels in 14 European countries by drawing on a recently proposed suite of migration cohort measures, coupled with internationally comparable retrospective residential histories. It shows that differences in migration levels are mainly attributable to variation in the extent of repeat movement, which is underpinned by the differences in mean ages at first and last move that together delineate the average length of migration careers. Cohort analysis provides a robust foundation for exploring the demographic mechanisms underpinning variation in migration levels across countries and over time.     

A historical survey of international migration of China population]

Chinese migration trends in various periods of China's history are discussed. From the earliest times to the present, migration patterns seem unique to each period: 1) Early period of emigration (Qin-Tang Dynasties): The earliest recorded instance of emigration occurred during the Qin dynasty when a traveler went to what is now the Philippines. In the following dynasties, even though migration was limited to religious men and merchants who went abroad and returned to China, the process of migrating was established. 2) Tang to Ming Dynasties (Self-initiated migration): Tang Dynasty records show the beginnings of Chinese residence abroad in Arabia. Land and sea travel developed further, and majority of emigres left China for political, religious or economic reasons. 3) Post-Ming Dynasty (Forced migration): This is a period beginning with the Opium War, where 2 groups, indentured servants and those who were able to purchase their own fare, emigrated as laborers because of necessity. The population on the coast, which had risen dramatically by the 1900's, was subject to war, official corruption, poverty and disease. Migration reached a peak between 1851-1875 when 1,280,000 Chinese left the country, settling mostly in Southeast Asia. Between 1847-1873, it is estimated that between 22%-64% perished along the way. 4) WWI-1949 (Motivated migration): The consequences of 2 world wars and the Great Depression were cause for another mass migration from China for political and economic reasons. This time, however, emigres were not limited to the very poor; also, a large number of overseas Chinese eventually returned to the mainland. Between 1930-34, 350,000 more Chinese returned than left. 5) Post-1949 (A new era): In the 1950s large numbers of overseas Chinese returned to the mainland. In 1978-82, over 4000 Chinese returned to Guangdong alone. A new phenomenon has appeared: migration tends to be limited to visits to relatives or to travel for pleasure or education.     

Researching international student migration in Asia: research design and project management issues

In the context of Asia, the changing dynamics of higher education has increased the visibility and significance of the group of intraregional education migrants. There are several methodological issues which need to be addressed in conducting research for this group of migrants. First, how does the particular type of migrant group and Asian context influence the research design? Second, in order to capture the scale and diversity of this migrant group, how should research be conducted across multiple sites? Third, how does a mixed method design allow researchers to learn more about the behaviour, practice and orientations of education migrants? Our paper aims to make contributions to the discussions on the methods of education migration research in Asia through answering these questions. We use research experiences and preliminary data from a multinational project to illustrate the issues involved in the selection of methods, research design and project management.