Rural-Urban Migration and Social Mobility in Third World Metropolises: a Cross-National Study*

Two implicit models have provided the major frameworks for rural-urban migration research in developing societies: one model, the underprivilege model, predicts that rural migrants enter the bottom rungs of the urban occupational structure and suffer inequality in status attainment in the city; the other model, the push up model, suggests that the influx of rural migrants provides a structural impetus to upward social mobility for the urban natives. This study synthesizes relevant findings from several major Asian and Latin American metropolises and thereby provides a cross-national test of the two models. The paper rejects both models and explicates structural reasons why the models do not hold true in Third World cities.     

Class Structure and Intergenerational Mobility from a Marxian Perspective*

Four mobility and attainment propositions are extracted from a theoretical discussion relating class mobility and attainment processes to the development of capitalism. These propositions are evaluated empirically using United States Labor Statistics, General Social Survey data, and primary data collected from a SMSA. The first proposition maintains that paralleling the development of capitalism will be a structural decrease in the relative size of the capital-owning classes resulting in mobility. In the second proposition, it is asserted that with the development of capitalism, the likelihood of downward mobility will be significantly greater than the probability of upward mobility. The third proposition stated that in advanced capitalist societies, circulation class mobility will be substantially constrained by structural change. Lastly, it is proposed that in advanced capitalist societies, attained class positions will depend significantly on an unmediated (by educational attainment) origin class effect. Empirical support is uncovered for all propositions.     

First Nations and community economic development: a case study

A training project in a northern Canadian community providedan opportunity to examine participatory planning approachesand the meaning of work in First Nations communities. Focusgroups conducted three years after the unsuccessful interventionof a community economic development (CED) project suggest thatcomplex factors such as lack of support from community leadersand rate of pay for workers determine whether CED is alwaysappropriate in northern, First Nations contexts.     

Towards a Theoretical Ethnography of Migration

Ethnographers' long-standing interest in migration has taken on new significance as researchers grapple with globalization on the ground. Building on the transnationalism literature, I explore how recent appeals to use local archival work and revisits to achieve historical depth can be applied fruitfully to ethnographies of migration. I argue for multi-sited fieldwork in countries of migrants' origin and destination and the removal of national blinders so that both domestic and international migrations are brought into the same frame for comparison. Finally, I amend the extended case method by arguing for the engagement of case studies with theoretical research programs in ways that attend to the representativeness of the case. The utility of these strategies is demonstrated with examples from the migration literature and five years of ethnographic fieldwork among Mexican migrants.

The Migration of Professionals: Theories and Typologies

In an historical context, highly skilled migration typically involved the forced movement of professionals as a result of political conflicts, followed by the emergence of the "brain drain" in the 1960s.
In the current situation, highly skilled migration represents an increasingly large component of global migration streams. The current state of theory in relation to highly skilled migration is far from adequate in terms of explaining what is occurring at the high skill end of the migration spectrum.
Continuing growth of temporary skilled migration is heralding changes in the operation of professions. Formal procedures for recognizing the skills of permanent immigrant professionals are breaking down as "fast-track" processes for assessing the skills of temporary professional migrants are put in place. The increasing globalization of firms and the internationalization of higher education are encouraging professions to internationalize.
In this article, four professions are cited as case studies to show that professional inclusion/exclusion is no longer defined by national professional bodies alone. The operation of professions has become a transnational matter although the extent of internationalization varies with professions.
Typologies for analysing professional migration flows are discussed and a sixth means of categorization, by profession or industry, is introduced to allow for the nature of interactions between the market, the state and the profession/industry. The question whether states should continue to be concerned about self-sufficiency in national professional labour markets in an increasingly globalized environment is also addressed.     

The Mobility of Entrepreneurs and Capital: Taiwanese Capital-Linked Migration

Much of the literature concerning international investment focuses on the movement of capital or trade flows and does not cover the persons who migrate with the capital, even though in a globalizing economic system new conditions emerge for the international migration of capitalists. On the one hand, capital owners have been recruited directly by business migration programmes in countries such as Canada, Australia, and the US. On the other hand, global economic restructuring, one part of which entails increasing foreign direct investment from a wider range of countries, has induced the migration of an entrepreneurial/managerial class. This article analyses the relation between the mobility of capital and of entrepreneurs by investigating Taiwan's capital-linked migrations. It aims to show that people can integrate migration and capital investment as a strategy to best serve their interests. Although their moves are mediated and constrained by different migration channels (governmental policies, recruitment agencies, transnational corporations, etc.), capital-linked migrants are not passive players in international migration systems. They actively position themselves with regard to migration channels and select active strategies that best suit their objectives. Sometimes immigration serves capitalists' interest in capital accumulation, at other times capital investment serves as the means for securing a second nationality. In this way, Taiwanese capitalist mobility has been incorporated into the open-ended logic of flexible capitalism itself. Such understanding of the processes of capital-linked migration and its implications contribute to new theories of the relationship between international flows of capital and international migration.     

Translating Nations: Actor-Network Theory in/and Canada*

Dans l'examen des problématiques de l«identité nationale» au Canada, la sociologie critique est de plus en plus tournée vers l'analyse discursive, aboutissant à des conclusions nuancées et complexes. Or, une telle approche risque d'escamoter d'autres analyses, tout aussi utiles, qui attribuent à la technologie un rôle central dans le processus de «nation-building» au Canada. Cet article explore la sociologie de la traduction, aussi appelée théorie d'acteur-réseau, et suggère que l'emprunt d'une telle approche se prêterait à une analyse plus complète des «questions nationales» du Canada et du Québec - analyse qui intégrerait les catégories du social et de la technique. Canadian critical sociology draws increasingly from discourse analysis to work out questions of national identity in Canada, yielding complex and nuanced results, but not sufficiently engaging with other work privileging technology as a central question in Canadian nation-building. This paper explores the sociology of translation, also known as actor-network theory, and suggests that such an approach might usefully be taken up in order to provide a more complete analysis of the “national questions” of Canada and Québec that integrates both social and technological categories.     

Migration as a Family Business: The Role of Personal Networks in the Mobility Phase of Migration

Formulée pour la première fois par John Salt et Jeremy Stein dans International Migration en 1997, la conception de la migration en tant qu'activité commerciale a transformé la perception de ce phénomène aussi bien auprès des spécialistes que des médias grand public. Cependant, bien que ce modèle propose un nouvel outil utile pour étudier les déplacements des individus dans le monde, sa popularité en tant que métaphore a eu pour conséquence d'occulter d'autres aspects du sujet qu'il n'arrivait pas à intégrer. Comme l'auteur cherche à le démontrer par l'analyse d'entretiens avec des migrants du Maroc et du Sénégal en Espagne et d'Egypte et du Ghana en Italie ainsi que par les profils de divers migrants aux Pays-Bas, la métaphore de l'activité commerciale n'apporte qu'une réponse partielle. Elle ne permet pas d'expliquer l'importance primordiale que revêtent pour la plupart des migrants les réseaux d'amis, de parents et de connaissances au moment d'entreprendre leur voyage.     

Urban Aboriginal and First Nations perspectives on casinos and the First Nations gaming industry in Alberta,Canada

There is a surprising paucity of information about urban Aboriginal gambling behaviours and practices, considering that the urban Aboriginal community is the fastest-growing demographic group in Canada and that indigenous people have some of the highest rates of gambling and problem gambling. Interpreting the focus group findings from First Nations and urban Aboriginal participants in Alberta, this study provides insights into urban Aboriginal and rural First Nations attitudes to gambling and the perceived value of the provincial First Nations gaming industry. Although the First Nations focus groups were aware of gambling's associated positive and negative outcomes, they were generally supportive of their communities' decision to pursue casinos. The urban Aboriginal focus group, however, identified little positive about the casinos, even if its participants supported the First Nations' capacity to pursue casino development. These tensions demand policymakers' attention.     

The essential role of cultural safety in developing culturally-relevant prevention programming in First Nations communities: Lessons learned from a national evaluation of Mental Health First Aid First Nations

Mental Health First Aid is a population health approach that educates people to recognize and respond to mental health challenges. Since 2012, the Mental Health Commission of Canada has worked with six First Nations communities to develop a culturally-relevant version of the program called Mental Health First Aid First Nations (MHFAFN). This paper presents mixed methods, multi-informant data from a national evaluation to assess the extent to which the course was experienced as culturally safe by Indigenous participants, factors that contributed to these experiences, and ways in which cultural relevancy of MHFAFN can be improved. Our evaluation team conducted participant interviews and surveys, as well as facilitator interviews. Nearly all Indigenous participants (94.6%) experienced the course as safe. Participants and facilitators identified a range of factors that promoted cultural safety, including the knowledge and skills of the facilitators and the cultural components of the course. Participants that did not experience safety identified trauma-related factors and facilitation style. The findings suggest that MHFAFN may be situated in a way where shared cultural backgrounds are imperative to the success of the course. Further evaluation of the MHFAFN curriculum, with the goal of continual improvement, may help to further enhance participants’ experiences in taking the course.     

Mobility in urban social events: Towards organizational transvergence

The paper explores the emergence of territories that are constituted through spontaneous assembling of self-organized communities resulting in what we term urban social events. A concrete event is employed, namely Embros, an open occupation of an abandoned public building in the center of Athens, to highlight the dynamics that make urban social events transformative urban phenomena. By focusing upon the entangled mobilities of diverse agents, we explain how through differential, dis-continual assembling and creative collaborations, such urban social interactions institute unbounded and immanent modes of organizing. The paper contributes to organizational territoriality studies proposing that urban social events are mobile entanglements that institute practices of creative transactions with formal or informal communities. By doing that, it places the Arts, creativity and community participation at the center of transformative organizing.     

Human Settlements and Urban Life: A United Nations Perspective

Abstract

Since 1978, the United Nations has formally recognized the important role of human settlements in reaching the goals set by the UN Charter. In 1978, following the first HABITAT Conference, held in Vancouver in 1976, the General Assemble established the UN Centre for Human Settlements. With the growing pressure of urbanization, the second and formative conference on Human Settlements was held in Istanbul in 1996. The documents for HABITAT II led, in 2002, to the General Assembly's expansion of UN – HABITAT into the lead UN Agency on issues facing human settlements, both rural and urban, with the clear recognition of the shift from rural to urban life and the increasing number of mega-cities, particularly in developing countries. This article samples the work and transition in the United Nations Centre for Human Settlement (UNCHS) from 1976 to the present.     

The Pursuit of Postsecondary Education: A Comparison of First Nations,African, Asian,and European Canadian Youth*

Utilisant l'Enquête auprès des jeunes en transition (EJET), sondage longitudinal nationalement représentatif, l'auteur examine l'argument voulant que les résultats éducationnels inférieurs de diverses minorités visibles et d'immigrants seraient attribués à leurs désavantages socioéconomiques, tandis que les résultats supérieurs des autres minorités visibles auraient pour cause leur soutien culturel. Les analyses rapportent des inégalités non négligeables dans le parcours pédagogique des Premières nations, des minorités visibles et des immigrants. Cependant, ni leur emplacement structurel ni leurs attributs culturels (ni les deux ensemble) n'expliquent entièrement les différences de leur parcours pédagogique ni ne peuvent être réduits à un simple modèle dans lequel les désavantages structurels détermineraient les résultats inférieurs et les facteurs culturels les supérieurs. Using the nationally representative longitudinal Youth in Transition Survey, this paper examines the argument that inferior educational outcomes of various visible minorities and immigrants can be attributed to their socio‐economic disadvantages, while superior outcomes of other visible minorities is due to their cultural supports. The analyses document sizeable inequalities in educational pathways of First Nations, visible minorities, and immigrants. However, neither structural location nor cultural attributes (nor both in conjunction) totally account for differences in their educational pathways nor can they be reduced to a simple pattern whereby structural disadvantages account for inferior pathways and cultural factors for superior ones.     

Kinship and Economic-Rational Migration: a Comparison of Micro- and Macro-level Analyses*

Social theorists have thought of economic-rational migration as a requisite of modern society which leads to the dispersion of kin and weakening of kin ties. Census data on State Economic Areas and survey data on migration from a small community are used to examine economic and kinship influences on migration at the micro- and macro-levels. The macro-level data show a “rational” pattern of migrant dispersion. However, the microlevel data show an extensive tendency, especially among working-class migrants, to follow the paths of siblings and other kin predominantly because of the information they supply on working and living conditions. Thus, at the micro-level, migration is a blend of rational concerns about work and reliance on kin in finding it. Numerous small kinshipbased chain migration streams flow to a variety of destinations, producing a macro-level pattern of dispersion that appears rational and that meets the migration requisite of modern society.     

Migration patterns of Manitoban rural youth: a follow-up study*

Bien que nous ayons porté beaucoup d'attention sur l'exode rural, notre connaissance de ce phénomène reste encore insuffisante, vu les types de recherches méthodologiques employés. Dans ce mémoire, nous analysons les données dérivées d'une étude longitudinale (1964–1975) de la jeunesse rurale manitobaine afin d'indiquer les types, le nombre de mouvements et la sélection des personnes en migration.
Although much attention has been focused on rural-urban migration, our knowledge of this phenomenon is still inadequate due to the kinds of research methodologies utilized. In this paper data derived from a follow-up study (1964–1975) of rural Manitoban youth are analysed to indicate types and number of movements, and factors related to migration.     

Migration and Development: A Theoretical Perspective1

The debate on migration and development has swung back and forth like a pendulum, from developmentalist optimism in the 1950s and 1960s, to neo-Marxist pessimism over the 1970s and 1980s, towards more optimistic views in the 1990s and 2000s. This paper argues how such discursive shifts in the migration and development debate should be primarily seen as part of more general paradigm shifts in social and development theory. However, the classical opposition between pessimistic and optimistic views is challenged by empirical evidence pointing to the heterogeneity of migration impacts. By integrating and amending insights from the new economics of labor migration, livelihood perspectives in development studies and transnational perspectives in migration studies – which share several though as yet unobserved conceptual parallels – this paper elaborates the contours of a conceptual framework that simultaneously integrates agency and structure perspectives and is therefore able to account for the heterogeneous nature of migration-development interactions. The resulting perspective reveals the naivety of recent views celebrating migration as self-help development “from below”. These views are largely ideologically driven and shift the attention away from structural constraints and the vital role of states in shaping favorable conditions for positive development impacts of migration to occur.