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Migration Analysis: Basic Information: Alfred Otieno Population Studies and Research Institute University of Nairobi
Migration Analysis: Basic Information: Alfred Otieno Population Studies and Research Institute University of Nairobi
Basic Information
Alfred Otieno
Population Studies and Research Institute
University of Nairobi
Migration Issues
■ 1. Types of Migration
• What are the major forms of migration?
■ 2. Selective Migration
• Why migration can be considered as a selective process?
■ 3. Brain Drain
• What is the extent of movements of skilled labor?
Types of Migration
■ Gross migration
Gross migration
• Total number of people coming in
and out of an area.
• Level of population turnover.
Immigration
■ Net Migration
Emigration • Difference between immigration (in-
migration) and emigration (out-
migration).
• Positive value:
• More people coming in.
• Population growth (44% of North
America and 88% of Europe).
• Negative value:
• More people coming out.
• Population decline.
Net migration
Types of Migration
■ International Migration
• Emigration is an indicator of economic and/or social failures of a
society.
• Crossing of a national boundary.
• Easier to control and monitor.
• Laws to control / inhibit these movements.
• Between 2 million and 3 million people emigrate each year.
• Between 1965 and 2000, 175 million people have migrated:
• 3% of the global population.
1 Types of Migration
■ Internal Migration
• Within one country.
• Crossing domestic jurisdictional
boundaries.
• Movements between states or
provinces.
• Little government control.
• Factors:
• Employment-based.
• Retirement-based.
• Education-based.
• Civil conflicts (internally
displaced population).
Types of Migration
■ Local Migration
• No state boundaries are crossed.
• Buying a new house in the same
town or city.
• Difficult to research since they
are usually missed in census
Central City data.
• Based on change of income or
lifestyle.
• Often very high levels of local
Suburb
migration.
• Americans change residence
every 5 to 7 years.
1 Types of Migration
■ Voluntary migration
• The migrant makes the decision to move.
• Most migration is voluntary.
■ Involuntary
• Forced migration in which the mover has no role in the decision-
making process.
• Slavery:
• About 11 million African slaves were brought to the Americas between
1519 and 1867.
• In 1860, there were close to 4 million slaves in the United States.
• Refugees.
• Military conscription.
• Children of migrants.
• Situations of divorce or separation.
Types of Migration
Type Characteristics
■ Context
• Many migrations are selective.
• Do not represent a cross section of the source population.
• Differences:
• Age.
• Sex.
• Level of education.
■ Age-specific migrations
• One age group is dominant in a particular migration.
• International migration tends to involve younger people.
• The dominant group is between 25 and 45:
• Peak age of immigrants is 26.
• Studies and retirement are also age-specific migrations:
• Emergence of international retirement migration.
Population Pyramid of Native and Foreign Born
Population, United States, 2000 (in %)
8 6 4 2 0 2 4 6 8 8 6 4 2 0 2 4 6 8
Pe rce n t Pe rce nt
2 Selective Migration
■ Sex-specific migrations
• Males:
• Often dominant international migrations.
• Once established, try to bring in a wife.
• Females:
• Often dominate rural to urban migrations.
• Find jobs as domestic help or in new factories.
• Send remittances back home.
• Filipino females 17-30 to Hong Kong and Japan.
• “Mail-order bride”:
• 100,000 – 150,000 women a year advertise themselves for marriage.
• About 10,000 available on the Internet at any time.
• Mainly from Southeast Asia and Russia.
• Come from places in which jobs and educational opportunities for women
are scarce and wages are low.
Selective Migration
■ Education-specific migrations
• May characterize some migrations (having or lacking of).
• Educational differences:
• 21% of all legal immigrants have at least 17 years of education.
• 8% for native-born Americans.
• 20% of all immigrants do not have 9 years of schooling.
• Foreign students:
• Often do not return to their home countries after their education.
• Often cannot utilize what they have learned.
• Since 1978 some 130,000 Chinese overseas students have returned
while some 250,000 have remained abroad.
• Most research-oriented graduate institutions have around 40% foreign
students.
Selective Migration
■ Definition
• Relates to educationally specific selective migrations.
• Some countries are losing the most educated segment of their
population.
• Can be both a benefit for the receiving country and a problem to
the country of origin.
■ Receiving country
• Getting highly qualified labor contributing to the economy right
away.
• Promotes economic growth in strategic sectors: science and
technology.
• Not having to pay education and health costs.
• It costs about $300,000 to educate an average American.
• 30% of Mexicans with a PhD are in the US.
Brain Drain
■ Country of origin
• Education and health costs not paid back.
• Losing potential leaders and talent:
• Developing countries lose 15% of their graduates.
• Between 15 and 40% of a graduating class in Canada will move to the
US.
• 50% of Caribbean graduates leave.
• Long term impact on economic growth.
• Possibility of remittances.
• Many brain drain migrants have skills which they can’t use at
home:
• The resources and technology may not be available there.
• The specific labor market is not big enough.
Brain Drain
■ Context
• Migrations as the response of individual decision-makers.
• Negative or push factors in his current area of residence:
• High unemployment and little opportunity.
• Great poverty.
• High crime.
• Repression or a recent disaster (e.g., drought or earthquake).
• Positive or pull factors in the potential destination:
• High job availability and higher wages.
• More exciting lifestyle.
• Political freedom, greater safety and security, etc.
1 Push - Pull
■ Intervening obstacles
• Migration costs / transportation.
• Immigration laws and policies of the destination country.
■ The problem of perception
• Assumes rational behavior on the part of the migrant:
• Not necessarily true since a migrant cannot be truly informed.
• The key word is perception of the pull factors.
• Information is never complete.
• Decisions are made based upon perceptions of reality at the destination
relative to the known reality at the source.
• When the migrant’s information is highly inaccurate, a return
migration may be one possible outcome.
Economic Approaches
■ Labor mobility
• The primary issue behind migration.
Labor shortages • Notably the case at the national level.
High wages • Equilibrate the geographical differences in
labor supply and demand.
• Accelerated with the globalization of the
economy.
Migration ■ Remittances
• Capital sent by workers working abroad to
their family / relatives at home.
• $126 billion in 2004:
• $16 billion each year goes out of Saudi Arabia
Surplus labor
as remittances.
Low wages • 2nd most important most important source of
income for Mexico (after oil and before
tourism); $22 billion in 2005.
Economic Approaches
Loss of mobility
Behavioral Explanations of Migration
■ Migrants as risk-takers
• Why, among a population in the same environment (the same
push factors), some leave and some stay?
• Migrants tend to be greater risk-takers, more motivated, more
innovative and more adaptable.
• Non-migrants tend to be more cautious and conservative.
• Can be used to explain the relative dynamism in some societies,
like the USA since the 1800s.
■ Summary
• No one theory of migration can adequately explain this huge
worldwide phenomenon.
• Each brings a contribution to the understanding of why people
move.
Refugees
■ 1. Definition
• What is a refugee and how one qualifies for this status?
■ 2. Contemporary Evolution
• How the refugee situation has evolved in time?
Definition
■ Origins
• The first recorded refugees were the Protestant Huguenots who
left France to avoid religious persecution.
• About 200,000 at the end of the 17th century.
• Went to England, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and
the English colonies in North America.
■ Pre-WW II and during WW II
• Primarily political elites:
• Fleeing repression from the new government, which overthrew them.
• Usually small in number and often had substantial resources available to
them.
• War-driven refugees:
• About 12% of the European population displaced.
• Usually could be expected to repatriate after the war ended.
Contemporary Evolution
■ Post WW II
• Change in the patterns of refugee flows:
• The majority of refugees are now coming from the developing world.
• De-colonization in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean:
• Political unrest in many newly independent states.
• Multi-ethnic nature of those states.
• The result of the drawing of colonial boundary lines by Europeans.
• The Cold War also increased political instability in a number of
countries.
• Political instability in Latin America increased due to the vast
social inequalities existing in that region.
• New kind of refugee flow:
• Large and of long (or permanent) duration.
Contemporary Evolution
■ Current issues
• Refugees are a controversial issue:
• Especially in the developed world.
• Only a small share of the asylum seekers are granted the refugee status.
• Less than 20% for the European Union.
• Increasingly, refugees are no longer accepted.
• Economic refugees resorting to asylum as the only way to get a legal
status.
• 1996 amendment to US immigration law:
• Enforcing detention for all refugees entering the United States.
• INS can summarily deport those who arrive without valid travel
documents.
• 4,000 detained on any given day.
Origins and Destinations of Refugees, 2003
10,000
100,000
1,000,000
Red = Origin
Green = Destination