On the Determinants of International Migration in the Philippines: An Empirical Analysis1

This article explores the roles of population, average earnings and employment rates in the sending and host countries on international migration. Using a model designed by Schultz (1982) for rural‐urban migration, it also tests the validity of two hypotheses, namely, 1) the Harris‐Todaro expected earnings hypothesis and 2) the symmetry hypothesis of effects of sending and host area variables on migration. The empirical analysis examines international migration from the Philippines to 26 non‐Middle Eastern countries in the period 1981–1995. It uses fixed effects panel data regression method to determine the impact of the economic variables in the sending and host countries. Finally, it looks into the influence of economic transformations in the Philippines and the host countries, as well as the relaxation of migration policies by the host countries on the actual migration of Filipinos in the period 1987–1995.     

Estimation of International Migration in Post‐Soviet Republics

When annual migration data lack reliability, scholars apply alternative methods for estimating international migration. Yet, researchers note that alternative approaches have primarily been tested on developed countries, rather than developing countries that usually have dramatic migration shifts. I close this research gap. I use the example of 15 former Soviet republics to demonstrate several conclusions. First, I show that such alternative approaches as immigration‐by‐origin data of receiving countries do not result in reliable and valid estimates of post‐Soviet migration, given the large variation that exists in how former Soviet republics define “migrant”. Second, I demonstrate that population censuses, while a more superior alternative, fail to capture temporary migrants. In developing countries, the international emigration is mainly due to temporary (undocumented labour) migration. Third, I suggest that scholars and policy‐makers should apply household surveys as a possible alternative. However, while this method seems promising, given the limited use of household surveys in migration measurement in the post‐Soviet republics, future research by both scholars and applied researchers should explore the advantages and limitations of household surveys as an alternative source for estimation of migration. Finally, I outline methodological guidelines that researchers and scholars can advance on migration issues in the post‐Soviet region.     

Recent Trends of Emigration from China: 1982–2000

Using data from several Chinese censuses and surveys, we provide a new perspective for the study of international migration. Focusing on the trends of international migration from China and Fujian province between 1982 and 2000, several findings emerge. First, Fujian and Yunnan provinces became the leading immigrant‐sending provinces in China by 2000. Second, changes in socio‐economic selectivity among emigrants from Fujian province from 1990 to 1995 are also clearly revealed in our analysis. The shift from urbanites to rural peasants among the emigrant population is particularly noteworthy. Third, in the context of Fujian province, factors such as age, education, rural/urban status, and occupation (especially the service sector) are the most important predictors of emigration. The paper ends with a discussion of the prospects of assimilation of Fujianese immigrants in destination societies.     

International labour migration and tacit knowledge transactions: a multi‐level perspective

Abstract There has been limited research on the role of international migration in the transfer of tacit knowledge, as opposed to skills and capital. In part, this results from lack of engagement between research on migration and that on knowledge and learning, even in debates concerning the relative importance of distanciated versus localized knowledge transfers. However, positioning international migration in relation to the literature on knowledge management opens up new perspectives on its role in the overall transfer of knowledge in the economy. Starting from the premise that all tacit knowledge transactions are socially situated, in this article I set out a multi‐level approach to understanding the role of migrants in knowledge exchanges. The national, the urban and the firm constitute key levels in this study, although these are understood as interfolded rather than as discrete sites of analysis.     

Human Rights,Income and International Migration

This study contributes to the literature of migration studies by addressing the question: why does international migration persist despite welfare improvements in migrant‐sending countries? We propose that the human rights condition of the origin countries is an important determinant of global migration. Although the human rights issue is not new to researchers in migration studies, the concern is primarily about the rights of migrants, refugees, asylum seekers or migrant workers in a host country. We undertake a bilateral panel data analysis to examine the pattern of global bilateral migration between 1995 and 2010. We find that international migration is positively associated with human rights conditions and income. Similar results are also obtained when we control for multilateral resistance and possible sample selection biases in a panel context. Our study implies that efforts to promote human rights may also be assessed in relation to their contribution to migration flows.     

The State Connection in China's Rural‐Urban Migration1

This study explores the role of China's rural local state‐owned and urban state‐owned units in its rural‐urban migration process. Most studies on Chinese migration have focused on migrants moving from rural to urban areas through informal mechanisms outside of the state's control. They therefore treat the Chinese state as an obstructionist force and dismiss its facilitative role in the migration process. By documenting rural local states' “labor export” strategies and urban state units' employment of millions of peasants, this article provides a corrective to the existing literature. It highlights and explains the state connection in China's rural‐urban migration.

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Does International Migration Affect Labor Supply,Non‐farm Diversification and Welfare of Households? Evidence from Egypt

This study examines the effect of international migration in Egypt using fixed‐effect regressions and panel data from Egypt Labour Market Panel Surveys in 2006 and 2012. We find that men and people with higher education are more likely to migrate than women and people with lower education. Middle‐aged people are also more likely to migrate than young or old people. International migration does not seem to affect the overall employment of remaining members of migrant‐sending households. However, it tends to increase the self‐employed work of members of migrant‐sending households. Finally, international migration also helps migrant‐sending households increase their wealth index. Remittances are used to improve living conditions (housing) and purchase more assets and durables. This finding supports the theory as well as the policy to increase migration as a way to stabilize consumption and reduce poverty in low income countries.     

Swept Out: Measuring Rurality and Migration Intentions on the Upper Great Plains

Rural America has long been conceptualized as a place of out‐migration, a process that is the subject of many popular sociological works and remains a dominating narrative that describes rural life in the United States today. Population trends demonstrate this migration pattern for nearly the past century; however, emerging data paint a complex picture of migration behavior and intentions in rural areas. In this article, we utilize several measures of rurality to analyze the results of a 2012 mail survey (n = 2487) that describe the migration intentions of both rural and urban South Dakotans. Our findings show that urban residents are more likely to have intentions to migrate than rural residents, and that drivers of migration intentions appear similar in both urban and rural contexts. The survey also sheds light on the influence of community attachment, community satisfaction, quality of life, and other community strengths and weaknesses that rural and urban residents perceive in their communities. Supporting recent research on rural migration intentions, these results do not suggest high rates of out‐migration in rural areas. We discuss rural America's recent identity as a place of out‐migration, share our survey results, and discuss implications for future rural migration research.     

New Patterns of Internal Migration in Emigrant‐Sending Communities: the Case of China

Despite the large number of migrants at both international and internal scales in developing countries, literature on building the links between the two migration processes is still lacking. Using survey data from China's Fujian Province, we elaborate a novel link between international and internal migration processes by examining the response of internal migration to international migration in the migrant origins. Our findings suggest that emigration of one individual initially deterred the internal migration of other family members. Yet, over time individuals from emigrant‐related households had an increasing propensity to migrate internally. During the internal migration process, emigrants’ family members received greater financial returns and had reached farther destinations than other internal migrants. Those emigrant‐related internal migrants with enhanced economic profiles would benefit their domestic destinations in a variety of ways. These benefits support a more optimistic view on the impact of international migration on the development of migrant‐sending countries.     

The Education‐Migration Industry: International Students,Migration Policy and the Question of Skills

This special section specifically focuses on student‐migrants and the way they are being catered to by an emerging education‐migration industry. The articles included build upon the observation that especially within the Asia‐Pacific region there is an increasing conflation and entanglement between categories of international students and skilled migrants. This has led to an emerging “industry” that facilitates study‐abroad trajectories and acts as broker for two‐step migration pathways. This Introduction aims to situate the research presented here within the broader context of a burgeoning field of research which examines the growing popularity of international education across the Asia‐Pacific region; the way its emergence is increasingly entangled with specific ambitions that skilled migration programmes cater to; and the way highly regulated skilled migration programmes have given rise to a migration industry in general.     

Cross‐Border Marriages in South Korea and the Challenges of Rising Multiculturalism

This study explores trends in international marriage migration, determinants of international marriage, and factors that affect employment and poverty status of marriage migrant females in Korea. The results suggest that the number of cross‐border marriages increased rapidly in the early 2000s but has declined since the mid‐2000s, perhaps because of the Korean government's strict regulations and of saturation in the demand for foreign wives. The analysis also indicated that rural males with a graduate degree have a similar probability to urban males with a high‐school education. Employment opportunities vary substantially by the foreign wife's country of origin, implying that social policies for addressing the difficulties of multicultural families should be tailored toward specific ethnic groups. Those who participated in work training programmes were significantly more likely to be employed than non‐participants, and the size of social support network significantly reduced the odds of living in poverty.     

The Factors that Make and Unmake Migration Policies1

Migration policies often fail to achieve their declared objectives or have unintended consequences. This article discusses three sets of reasons for this: factors arising from the social dynamics of the migratory process; factors linked to globalization and transnationalism; and factors within political systems. Effective policies are often hampered by the one‐sided explanatory models used to explain migration, as well as by interest conflicts in both domestic and international politics. In many cases this leads to migration policies with contradictory objectives or hidden agendas. The article goes on to discuss some elements of a conceptual framework for improving policy formation and possible components of fairer and more effective migration policies at the national, regional and global levels.     

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.     

Education of Children Left Behind in Rural China

Despite China's substantial internal migration, long‐standing rural–urban bifurcation has prompted many migrants to leave their children behind in rural areas. This study examined the consequences of out‐migration for children's education using longitudinal data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (N = 885). This study took into account the complex family migration strategies and distinguished various types of migration in China, including different forms of parental migration as well as sibling migration. The results showed that migration of siblings generates benefits for children's education, which is particularly pronounced for girls and children at middle‐school levels. But parental migration has not given children left behind a significant advantage in educational prospects as their parents had hoped. Younger children seem to be especially susceptible to the disruptive effect of parental out‐migration.     

Land Ownership as a Determinant of International and Internal Migration in Mexico and Internal Migration in Thailand1

This study focuses on the effect of land ownership on internal and international out‐migration in Mexico and on internal out‐migration in Thailand. Land can impact migration in four ways: as wealth; as employment; as an investment opportunity; and through inequality in ownership. Discrete time event history models of individual migration, using data from the Mexican Migration Project (covering Western Mexico) and data from the Nang Rong Project (covering one district in Northeast Thailand), show the effects of size of landholdings on internal out‐migration of men. They also estimate the independent effects of relative deprivation in land ownership on migration. Results show that the size of landholdings has a negative effect on out‐migration for smaller landholders (the majority of landholders). The size of landholdings has a positive effect on out‐migration for larger landholders. Results suggest that the purchase and improvement of land are opportunities for investing the proceeds of migration.     

Ideological Orientation and the PRC Academic Migration: A Theoretical and Longitudinal Analysis*

Since the end of the Cold War era, Western capitalist countries have experienced increased immigration of highly trained professionals from former socialist Eastern European countries and from socialist countries such as China and Cuba. In studies of the determinants of international migration, the focus has repeatedly been on demographic, economic, social network, and political explanations. This study addresses the migration of highly trained professionals from the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the United States of America (USA). Logistic regression analyses of longitudinal data collected between mid‐1988 and the beginning of 1992 show that, in addition to the explanatory power of the above predictors, transvaluation—the shift emphases from the socialist collectivist and interdependent ideological orientations to individualistic, independent, and competitive ideological orientations contribute to the migration decisions of the Chinese intellectuals. The results of field interviews and longitudinal comparisons suggest that the academics who come from an oppressed bourgeois‐class origin, and who experience more independent and competitive lifestyles in China, are more likely to acquire individualistic and independent ideologies than those who come from privileged and working‐class origins in China. The transvaluation is thus argued as a determinant of international migration, rather than as the post facto justification or the assimilation effect that was argued in previous migration studies. The modest erosion of the socialist‐collectivist and interdependent orientations among Chinese academics in the 1988 to 1992 three‐and‐half‐year time frame further enhanced their migration decisions. The longitudinal analyses suggest that the modifications of the individual ideological orientations among the Chinese academics may have occurred before the migration movement, rather than after. This finding thus challenges previous research regarding the determinants of international migration.     

International Economic Assistance and Migration: The Case of Sub‐Saharan Countries

Development aid is commonly advocated as one of the most effective instruments to reduce international migration. Nevertheless, empirical evidence shows that push factors do not automatically result in massive migrations and that aid policies systematically fail to meet their stated objectives. Recently, several contributions have argued that an increase in sending countries’ wealth may lead to a rise in migration, rather than to a reduction, because it enables people to assume the costs and risks of migrating. However, despite the growing number of studies on this phenomenon, the role played by Official Development Assistance (ODA) has not received attention yet. This paper aims at providing empirical evidence on this specific issue. In particular, we investigate the relation between ODA and international migration rates of sub‐Saharan countries. We argue that ODA may have a positive effect on migration decisions for two reasons. First, ODA improves workers’ ability to cover the costs of migration, by providing new job opportunities and in turn increasing incomes in the recipient country. Second, ODA, which is often associated with development programs in education, communication services, and business opportunities, may also stimulate mobility aspirations of potential migrants. We develop an econometric analysis in order to investigate this hypothesis. Specifically, we perform a three‐stage least square estimation on a sample of 48 sub‐Saharan countries. We build a two‐equation model, so as to allow for endogeneity of ODA, and find that ODA has a positive and statistically significant effect on migration outflows. Thus, as our main contribution, we argue that development aids are not substitute for migration and that the traditional aid policies (such as those of the European Union), aimed at curbing migration by providing international financial aids, might need to be reconsidered.     

Parental Migration and Education of Left‐Behind Children: A Comparison of Two Settings

The out‐migration of parents has become a common childhood experience worldwide. It can confer both economic benefits and social costs on children. Despite a growing literature, the circumstances under which children benefit or suffer from parental out‐migration are not well understood. The present study examined how the relationship between parental out‐migration and children's education varies across migration streams (internal vs. international) and across 2 societies. Data are from the Mexican Family Life Survey (N = 5,719) and the Indonesian Family Life Survey (N = 2,938). The results showed that children left behind by international migrant parents are worse off in educational attainment than those living with both parents. Internal migration of parents plays a negative role in some cases, though often to a lesser degree than international migration. In addition, how the overall relationship between parental migration and education balances out varies by context: It is negative in Mexico but generally small in Indonesia.     

Crossing Boundaries: Internal,Regional and International Migration in Cameroon

Internal and international migration increasingly continues to be of global importance for development policies and programmes, but the dearth of data on migration for African countries and the limited focus on the structural conditions that motivate migration from specific localities within the region remain glaring. In this study, we examine the patterns and drivers of migration in Cameroon, focusing on the dynamics of rural–urban migration, migrant circulation, regional economic migrants and refugees, international migration, brain drain and returns from emigration. Consequent upon regional conflicts and instability, we highlight the refugee problem in Cameroon and significant challenges in addressing it. Finally, we underscore the policy and research challenges necessary to harness the potentials of internal and international migration for national development.     

The multi-scalar embeddedness of support policies for migrant entrepreneurship in Japan

Contextual entrepreneurship and mixed embeddedness approach alike emphasize the importance of the political-institutional embeddedness next to social embeddedness along with further contexts for migrant entrepreneurship, yet the aspect of international migration policies as an important institutional framework has been somewhat neglected. This paper introduces the case of political-institutional embeddedness of migrant entrepreneurship in Japan from an international migration policy perspective, discussing embeddedness of migrant entrepreneurs and their support institutions from a multi-scalar perspective. By analysing the migration policy context of migrant entrepreneurship at different policy levels, that is, national, regional and urban scales, it demonstrates the analytical value of differentiating policies along these scales and also their inter-connectedness, conceptually proposing the inter- and trans-scalarity of these policy contexts. By bringing issues of migration regimes and particularly the East Asian developmental state as a lens to analyse migrant entrepreneurship, it brings further approaches in comparatively analysing different entrepreneurial contexts for future research.