Net Migration as a Target for Migration Policies: A Review and Appraisal of the UK Experience

The impact of migration on population growth has become a ubiquitous argument in UK immigration debates, leading to the introduction of immigration restrictions to reduce net migration and prevent the UK population from reaching 70 million. Taking the UK as a case study, this article assesses the rationale for setting a national net migration target as a pivotal point for migration policies and the feasibility of limiting net migration using immigration controls. A framework for analysing the effects of migration policies on net migration is proposed and applied to UK official migration data. The results show that, due to various policy constraints, competing objectives and unintended feedbacks, it is neither optimal nor entirely feasible to prioritize a reduction of net migration as a target for migration policies. Nevertheless, factoring net migration into the migration policy debate provides useful insights on the long‐term implications of migration policies in the context of broader demographic changes.     

Affecting Lives: How Winning the US Diversity Visa Lottery Impacts DV Migrants Pre‐ and Post‐Migration

Usual debates about the diversity visa (DV) programme revolve around the impact of DV initiated mass migration on African countries’ development, on whether the programme sufficiently diversifies U.S. immigrant streams, and on whether there is a tradeoff in immigrant quality for diversity. This article seeks to extend the focus of these debates by examining the impact of the diversity visa programme on DV migrants at the micro‐level pre‐ and post‐migration. Based on in‐depth interviews with sixty‐one diversity visa lottery winners from Ghana and Nigeria, the article examines how this immigration policy has become a contextual determinant of immigrant incorporation. It argues that an account of the impact of immigration policies on immigrants pre‐ and post‐migration must be added to theorization of state agency in shaping migration flows. It concludes with a discussion on ways the diversity visa programme can be modified to facilitate incorporation of DV migrants in the United States.     

How to Reverse the Italian Brain Drain: A Master Class from Australia

This article discusses the limits of Italian immigration policies and their effects on the Italian market of highly skilled individuals. Italian statutory provisions aimed at regulating immigration focus on limiting immigration without a reasoned distinction being made between skilled and unskilled immigrants. The first part of the article argues that a combination of historical and sociological factors makes Italy uncompetitive in the global market of highly skilled individuals. The second part suggests two pilot schemes for policies that might help in addressing the issue. First, the introduction of a medium‐/long‐term visa for highly skilled individuals, and second, the establishment of private multinational universities modelled on the European Institute (EI) in Florence. These new institutions would open up the academic job market to overseas researchers and, at the same time, would provide a more solid base for the retrieval of Italian academics working abroad.     

Immigration and the Czech Republic (with a Special Focus on the Foreign Labor Force)1

This article presents an overview of international migration in the Czech Republic, with a special focus on labor immigration. Currently, the Czech Republic is an immigration and transit country. The most important immigratory segment — economic immigrants — create a colorfulmosaic of various ethnicities (80% of them from Europe), each group with their own different economic strategy and niche. After sketching historical patterns and data problems, the focus is on the current situation of labor migrants in the country. A number of issues are addressed: e.g., the relationship between immigrant inflows and the economic situation of the country; immigrants' regional concentration/deconcentration processes; the popularity of the capital city of Prague and western regions vis‐á‐vis eastern ones; and the different structural backgrounds of immigrants coming from the East versus the West. Special attention is placed on undocumentedlillegal immigration, mainly in relation to the misuse and evasion of immigration legislation. Finally, the immature Czech migration policies and practices are discussed, as are needed policy improvements and the need for new immigration legislation. It is clear that the major trend over time leads to more restrictive migratory policies, in line with efforts to harmonize Czech migratory policies and practices with those of the European Union (EU).     

When the State Becomes Part of the Exploitation: Migrants’ Agency within the Institutional Constraints in Australia

Studies have shown the unequal treatments temporary migrants face in the processes of immigration. In Australia for a short period of time and not citizens, they face conditions that allow for employer exploitation. This article is interested in exploring how institutional structures shape and normalize the choices that migrants make to work in the cash economy or other exploitative conditions. To do this, we take PRC‐Chinese, Taiwanese, and Hong Kongese temporary migrants who hold either a student or Working Holiday visa in Australia as an example. Focusing on the policymaking process, we argue that the policy outcomes produced by visa restrictions placed on international students and Working Holiday Makers sometimes do not reach an ideal outcome and at times even exacerbate problems identified in the input stage of the policy process. Such institutional effects result in a more vulnerable and exploitable situation for temporary migrants in Australia's labour market.     

The Influence of Attitudes toward Immigrants on International Migration

We investigate whether anti‐immigrant attitudes affect migrant inflows in Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries. Using longitudinal exhaustive data, we find that natives’ hostility, particularly natives’ propensity to discriminate on the labor market, reduces immigration. This effect is comparable to more conventional migration factors. We obtain robust results when we, for example, capture hostility with far‐right parties’ popularity instead and control for tighter immigration policies or multilateral resistance to migration. We find a stronger effect for EU‐to‐EU migrants, migrants from developed countries and linguistically close countries. Our results raise a challenge for policy makers when the demand for foreign workers and anti‐immigrant sentiment are present.     

The UK National Health Service's migration infrastructure in times of Brexit and COVID-19: Disjunctures,continuities and innovations

The COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit were separate yet inter-related developments which affected the British National Health Service (NHS). The UK's state-funded health sector had historically relied on migrant labour and depended on a migration infrastructure designed to solve its nursing labour shortages. The analysis of primary qualitative and secondary quantitative data shows that the NHS migration infrastructure increased its orientation towards Asia to compensate for the effects of Brexit. The paper reveals how the persistent use of temporary visas along with conditional contractual arrangements has led to various exclusions for migrant nurses and midwives. These data also demonstrate how international travel restrictions associated with COVID-19 created temporary obstacles for nurses' inflows. Alongside Brexit, this has also resulted in an increase in outflows amongst EU health workers. The article identifies the development of migrant support infrastructure amongst Filipino and Indian nurses as a major COVID-19 linked innovation.     

Population Exchange and its Impact on Literacy,Occupation and Gender – Evidence from the Partition of India

How do large scale, involuntary migrations and population exchanges affect sending and receiving communities? We examine the case of the partition of India in which approximately 17 million people moved within four years, resulting in one of the largest and most rapid population exchanges in human history. We find large effects due to the migration on a district's educational, occupational, and gender composition. Due to higher education levels amongst migrants, districts with 10 per cent greater inflows saw their literacy rates increase by 3 percentage points, while a 10 per cent increase in outflows reduced literacy by 1.2 percentage points. Due to disparities in the amount of land vacated by migrants, Indian districts with 10 per cent greater inflows saw a decline of 11 per centin agricultural occupations. Districts that experienced high inflows and outflows also experienced changes in gender composition. While the partition, driven along religious lines, increased religious homogenization within communities, our results suggest that this was accompanied by increased educational and occupational differences within religious groups. We conclude that these compositional effects, in addition to an aggregate population impact, are probably features of involuntary migrations and population exchanges and, as in the case of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, can have important long‐term consequences.     

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.     

CAN MONETARY POLICY INFLUENCE LONG‐TERM INTEREST RATES? IT DEPENDS

Can monetary policy influence long‐term interest rates? Studies that have tackled this question using vector autoregressions (VARs) generally find that monetary policy's influence on long‐term interest rates is small and often statistically insignificant. Other studies, however, using a single‐equation approach, have found a robust relationship. Our study sheds new light on this question by estimating the effect of monetary policy shocks on long‐term interest rates in a VAR with long‐run monetary neutrality restrictions. We find that U.S. monetary policy can strongly influence long‐term interest rates, but only when the Federal Reserve has inflation‐fighting credibility and is able to firmly anchor inflationary expectations. (JEL E43, E51, E52)     

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.     

CAPITAL CONTROLS AND DEVIATIONS FROM PROPOSED INTEREST RATE PARITY; MEXICO 1982

An intervention analysis of the Mexican capital control policy of August 1982 shows the policy to have a negative, but temporary, impact on the Mexican deviation from interest rate parity. Previous studies concerning the impact of capital control inteventions have predicted positive effects of capital control policies. These stem from the effective tax capital controls place on foreign capital inflows. When capital controls are also designed to restrict domestic capital outflows, however, their net effect becomes an empirical, rather than theoretical, question.     

Infrastructure of mobility: navigating borders,cities and markets

In this article, which is based on research conducted in Hong Kong from 2010 to 2013, and again in 2018, I analyse the region‐bound circulation of independent women sex workers from the Philippines across the Asian global cities of Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Macau. Migrating as visa‐free tourists, they maintain a valid immigration status and maximize their income in the informal economy by adopting a step‐down transient mobility pattern characterized by a downward hierarchical circulation to multiple city‐states and country destinations. As I show, their multinational migration is produced and structured through the instrumentalization of a mobility infrastructure constituted by a regime of visa‐free circulation, transportation developments, commercialized migration services, and social networks. In this article, I attempt to extend the contemporary analysis of unauthorized migration by moving away from the prevailing focus on incorporation and settlement and towards an examination of the logics and mechanics of migration flows that occur outside state‐sanctioned channels.     

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.     

To stay or to return? Return migration intentions of Moroccans in Italy

Using data from the Statistics on Income and living conditions of families with migrants carried out by ISTAT in 2009, we empirically examine the effect of micro level determinants on Moroccans’ return migration intentions. Although Moroccans living in Italy do not have a clear aspiration to return, the socio‐economic and work conditions in Italy determine their migration intentions. Furthermore, our research led us to argue that macro‐level determinants should also be considered. In particular, emigration, immigration and integration policies represent key elements in the analysis of the dilemma between to stay or to return. Therefore, the promotion of long‐term immigration policies, which allow the achievement of a permanent residence in the host country, combined with institutional reforms, which make the origin country socially, economically and politically more attractive for migrants are essential to complete the debate about to stay or to return.     

Immigrants' Language Skills and Visa Category1

This article is concerned with the determinants of English language proficiency among immigrants in a longitudinal survey for Australia. It focuses on both visa category and variables derived from an economic model of the determinants of destination‐language proficiency among immigrants. Skills‐tested and economic immigrants have the greatest proficiency shortly after immigration, followed by family‐based visa recipients, with refugees having the lowest proficiency. Other variables the same, these differences disappear by 3.5 years after immigration for speaking skills; and although they diminish, they persist longer for reading and writing skills. The variables generated from the model of destination‐language proficiency (such as schooling and age at migration) are, in part, predictions of visa category, but they are more important statistically for explaining proficiency.     

U.S. Immigration Policy at a Crossroads: Should the U.S. Continue Its Family‐Friendly Policy?

An ongoing debate is whether the U.S. should continue its family‐based admission system, which favors visas for family members of U.S. citizens and residents, or adopt a more skills‐based system, replacing family visas with employment‐based visas. In many ways, this is a false dichotomy: family‐friendly policies attract highly‐skilled immigrants regardless of their own visa path, and there are not strong reasons why a loosening of restrictions on employment migrants need be accompanied by new restrictions on family‐based immigration. Moreover, it is misleading to think that only employment‐based immigrants contribute to the U.S. economy. Recent immigrants, who have mostly entered via kinship ties, are economically productive, a fact hidden by a flawed methodology that underlies most economic analyses of immigrant economic assimilation.     

Canada's Migrants without History: Neoliberal Immigration Regimes and Trinidadian Transnationalism

Temporary migration programmes have re‐emerged as a preferred mechanism for regulating labour migration in many migrant‐receiving countries in the past decade. In this paper, I consider the role of shifting Canadian immigration policies, notably the expanded streams for temporary workers, in the changing flow of migrants from Trinidad to Canada. Temporary programmes can bring workers to Canada relatively quickly, but they limit access to permanent residency and citizenship, in sharp contrast to most of Canada's earlier immigration policies. Ethnographic fieldwork reveals that Trinidadians actively seeking to make the move to Canada have little interest in new temporary work programmes. Rather, they continue to plan futures in Canada that they expect to be years in the making. I consider some reasons for this apparent refusal to submit to the new migration realities. I show that present‐day Trinidadian emigrant desires and practices are deeply connected to individual, familial and national emigration and immigration histories. Trinidadians are declining to participate in new immigration regimes and are restricting their migration practices to those forms that are historically familiar and have been proven successful. I attempt to show how ethnographic approaches that take seriously migrants' agency can assist in developing a fuller understanding of the ways in which migration flows are changing. These approaches reveal what are otherwise the silences and invisibility surrounding those whose previous access to permanent migration streams has been diminished through neoliberal restructuring of migration policy. I argue that temporary worker policies disregard long‐standing histories of migration and engagement with capitalist processes for people in particular regions of the world, rendering them, for policy purposes, effectively “people without history” (Wolf, 1982).     

Flexible and Assembled Bordering Practices for Mexicans travelling to Canada

This article examines a temporary residence visa (TRV) requirement for Mexicans travelling to Canada 2009–2016. The policy was implemented to control the travel of Mexican refugee claimants to Canada, with the explanation that they were making “bogus” claims. Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of news sources, parliamentary debates, and policy documents, I argue that the TRV and subsequent policies and practices enacted during the 2009–2016 period illustrate bordering practices as flexible and assembled, regulating entry and access to secure immigration status. I analyse how bordering practices operated through the enactment of policy, the circulation of anti-immigrant/anti-Mexican discourses, and economic arguments about the cost of lifting the TRV. They were also affected by U.S.-Canada relationships, particularly after the 2016 U.S. election.     

Adjusting for Change of Status in International Migration: Demographic Implications

The calculation of net immigration for the purpose of estimating the resident population in Australia is based on net permanent and long–term (12 months or more) movements into and out of the country. All international movements with duration of stay in Australia or travel abroad of less than 12 months (defined as short–term) are excluded. However, changes between short–term and long–term/permanent status can occur when people extend or shorten their stay or travel. Because net immigration is a significant component of Australia’s population growth (accounting for 40–50 per cent of annual growth), adjusting for these changes in migration status is thought to result in better estimates of net immigration and the resident population. The paper shows that adjusting for change of status can have a large impact on net immigration, particularly when the immigrant intake is small. Failure to adequately adjust for change of status can also lead to misleading conclusions about the relative contributions of net temporary and permanent movements to total net immigration. The effect on the resident population, however, is relatively small, being less than 1 per cent of the total population. The paper also addresses the question of how important it is for countries to adjust for change of migrant status in international migration statistics in the context of increasing international mobility.