Migration Between Nations

From refugees fleeing wars or natural disasters to economic migrants pursuing better paid
jobs abroad, international migration is an inescapable part of the modern world. Migration
Between Nations: A Global Introduction provides a succinct and accessible overview of the
varied types of migrants who cross national boundaries.
Drawing upon a wide-ranging selection of case studies and the latest research findings,
migration patterns and recent trends throughout the world are surveyed and summarized,
with particular attention to movement from the global south to the global north. In a
highly inter-disciplinary analysis, the social, cultural and economic integration of migrants
and of their offspring in their new homelands are also explored. Employing approaches
from a number of disciplines, the methods and techniques that researchers use to study
various aspects of migration and integration are also explained.
Migration Between Nations: A Global Introduction will be essential reading for students in
a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, including sociology,
anthropology, ethnic studies, geography, global studies, history, and political science.

Mark Abrahamson is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut,

USA. His former positions include Executive Director of the Roper Center for Public
Opinion Research; Program Director at the National Science Foundation; and Professor
of Sociology at Syracuse University, USA. He is the author of more than 20 books and
monographs, and numerous research articles in major social science journals. Among his
recent books are Globalizing Cities: A Brief Introduction (Routledge, 2019); Studying Cities
and City Life: An Introduction to Methods of Research (Routledge, 2016); Urban Sociology: A
Global Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2014), and Classical Theory and Modern
Studies: Introduction to Sociological Theory (Pearson, 2010).
Migration Between Nations
A Global Introduction

Mark Abrahamson
First published 2023
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
© 2023 Mark Abrahamson
The right of Mark Abrahamson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted
by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
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and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-367-74541-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-74542-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-15840-0 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003158400

Typeset in Bembo
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
Contents

List of Figures ix
List of Tables x
List of Boxes xi
Preface xii

1 Globalization and Migration 1

Globalization 1
Globalization and Migration 2
Types of Migrants 4
Migrant Workers 4
High-Skill Workers 6
Transnational Professionals 7
Low-Skill Workers 8
Refugees 8
Trafficked Migrants 11
Exiles 12
Foreign Students 14
Family Migration 15
Marriage Migration 16
Tourism and Migration 19
International Tourism 19
Immigrant Immersion Tourism 20
Medical Tourism 21
Notes 22

2 The Economic Driver 26

Macro Perspectives 26
From Push Pull to Neoclassical Macro 27
Leaving Venezuela 28
Micro Perspectives 29
Neoclassical Micro Theory 29
Aspirations Versus Capability 31
vi Contents
Aspirations and the Inverted U 32
New Economics of Labor Migration STET 34
Meso Analysis 34
Household Risk Avoidance 34
Relative Deprivation 34
Conclusions 35
Actual Economic Returns 35
The Welfare Magnet Thesis 37
Migrant Selectivity 38
Methodological Issues 39
Socioeconomic Status Selectivity 40
Socioeconomic Selectivity and Downward Mobility 43
Personality Selectivity 44
Notes 46

3 Environmental Drivers: Climate Change and Natural Disasters 48

The Status of Environmental Migrants 49
Methodological Issues 51
Measuring the Environmental Event 51
Measuring Migration as a Response 52
Conclusion 53
The Empirical Research 53
In the Global South 54
In the Global North 58
Conclusion 60
Proximate Drivers 61
Economic 61
Types of Entrapment 63
Civil Conflict 64
Adaptation 65
Notes 67

4 Connections Between Origins and Destinations 70

Cultural and Linguistic Distance 70
Culture and Its Measurement 70
Language as Culture 71
Language and Its Measurement 72
Cultural Distance and Migration 73
Linguistic Distance and Migration 74
Chain Migration 75
Migration Chains as Stimuli 77
The Chain Multiplier 78
Cumulative Causation 78
Family as Compensation 80
 Contents vii
Stepwise Migration 80
Transnational Families 82
Men Left Behind 82
Women Left Behind 84
Remittances 85
Return Migration 87
Aspirations and Plans 87
Generational Differences 89
Drivers of Return 90
Reintegration 91
Notes 92

5 Undocumented Migrants 95
Estimating Undocumented Populations 96
Undocumented Migrants in Leading Destination Nations 98
The U.S. 99
Germany 100
Australia 101
Surreptitious Border Crossing 103
Unaccompanied Minors From Central America 104
Smugglers 105
Distinguishing Between Smuggling and Trafficking 107
Trafficking 108
Sexual Exploitation 109
Sex Workers 111
Agency? 111
Visa Overstays 111
Enforcement and Detention 112
Deportation 114
Notes 115

6 The Social Integration of Migrants and Their Offspring 118

Conceptualizing Integration 118
Dimensions of Integration 120
Socioeconomic Standing 120
The “Immigrant Optimism Paradox” 122
Place Effects 124
Gender and Motive 125
Race, Skin Tone and Gender: The New Immigrant Survey 126
Time and Place Generalizations 127
Spatial Integration 128
The Chicago School 128
New Immigration Patterns 128
Intermarriage 131
viii Contents
Marriage Markets 132
Linguistic and Cultural Proximity 132
Marital Dissolution 134
Marital Opportunities 135
Education and Gender 136
Asian Americans 137
Assimilability as a Criterion 138
Transnationalism 140
Notes 141

7 Migrant Settlements 144

Refugee Camps 144
Ghettos 146
Summary 149
Ghettos in European Cities 149
Dispersal Policies 150
Enclaves 151
Leave or Stay? 153
Tourism 154
Summary 155
Becoming Cross-National 155
Ethnoburbs 156
Los Angeles and Monterey Park 158
Cross-National Enterprises 158
Comparing Settlement Types 159
Notes 160

8 Immigrants’ Contributions and Natives’ Perceptions 162

Misperceptions About Immigrants 162
Fear of Crime 163
Crime in Sanctuary Cities 165
Welfare Benefits 166
Economic Impact: Low-Skill Workers 167
Economic Impact: High-Skill Workers 168
Community Effects 170
To Change Misconceptions 171
Perceptions of Size 171
Changing Attitudes 173
Notes 174

Glossary 176
Index 179
Figures

1.1 The Voluntary-Forced Migration Continuum 9

4.1 Linguistic Similarity Scoring 72
Tables

1.1 Global Refugees 9

1.2 International Tourism 20
5.1 Estimates of the Undocumented Migrant Population in the U.S.
2010–2019 99
5.2 Smugglers’ Routes and Fees 106
6.1 Education Across Generations 122
6.2 Native-Immigrant Dissimilarity Indexes for Selected European Countries 130
8.1 Foreign Students in Graduate Programs 169
Boxes

1.1 Micronesian Migrants in a U.S. Meatpacking Plant 5

1.2 Syrian Refugees in Turkey 10
1.3 Student Hostesses in Koreatown 15
1.4 Danish Wives and Cuban Husbands 18
1.5 Somali Medical Tourists From Britain 22
2.1 Leaving Children Behind in Venezuela 28
2.2 Remittances and Household Risk Avoidance 30
2.3 The Real Cost of a Big Mac to McDonald’s Workers 36
2.4 New Zealand’s Migration Lottery 42
2.5 Status Loss for Positively Selected Migrants 43
3.1 Trying to Obtain Refugee Rights in Bosnia 50
3.2 The Effects of Hurricanes in Guatemala 57
3.3 Leaving the Gulf of Guinea 61
3.4 A Missouri Town Adapts to the Loss of Geese 66
4.1 Chain Migration From Bangladesh to Italy 75
4.2 Chain Migration of Mexican Gay Men 76
4.3 Stepwise Migration of Multinational Maids 81
4.4 Husbands Left Behind in Ghana 83
4.5 Conflict Over Remittances in Nepal 86
4.6 Deciding Whether to Return to Liberia 88
5.1 Churning Among Jobs in New York 100
5.2 Undocumented Workers in Australia 102
5.3 Unaccompanied Minors in U.S. Detention 104
5.4 Trafficking Afghan Women for Forced Marriages in Pakistan 110
5.5 An Overstayer’s Detention in Japan 113
6.1 Educational Frustration and Suicide in South Korea 123
6.2 The Index of Dissimilarity 130
6.3 Asian American-White Intermarriage 137
6.4 Palestinian Women in Iceland 139
7.1 Treating Patients in a Greece Refugee Camp 145
7.2 Grocery Stores in Toronto’s Chinese Enclave 152
7.3 Diversity in Melbourne’s Suburbs 157
8.1 Consequences of Criminal Convictions for Noncitizens 164
8.2 Refugees in Small Cities 170
8.3 The U.S.’s Fact-Free Immigration Policy 172
8.4 Egyptian Soccer Player in Liverpool Changes Attitudes 174
Preface

There has been an outpouring of research on migration during the past couple of
decades, and it has resulted in many specialized books and the emergence of journals that
prominently feature research on migration. The growth in this literature provided the
impetus to write this book. I thought that students would benefit from a relatively small
book that provided an overview of the important issues associated with migration, and
that is the book I have attempted to write. It is intended to both provide a survey of
trends and an analysis of patterns.
The first organizational decision I made was to focus solely upon migration across
nations. More people move within than between nations, of course, and much of the
migration within nations is temporary and involves relatively short distances. The
dynamics of internal migration are often different and I wanted to keep the focus upon
moves that involve crossing national borders.
I have assumed that there are substantial similarities among the leading immigration
destination nations of the global north with respect to migration patterns. I further
assumed that the results of studies conducted in different destination nations could be
conjoined in working toward generalizations about many aspects of migrants’ travel
trajectories and adjustments. In addition, I wanted to try to generalize about migration
throughout the world rather than between any two specific nations; hence the subtitle of
the book, A Global Introduction.
I have tried consistently to minimize jargon, and present the material in the most
straightforward and readable way possible. I recognize that it is important, at the same
time, to introduce students to major concepts in the literature, and I have endeavored to
do so, including a Glossary at the back of the book that I hope will prove to be very
useful. In every chapter, the reader will also encounter boxed materials which illustrate
and clarify major themes in the text. I hope they will be read as integral parts of the book.
(A listing of all the boxed material follows the table of contents.)
The editorial staff that I have worked with at Routledge have been extremely helpful
and supportive. I want explicitly to thank Rebecca Brennan, the editor who helped to
oversee this project from its inception, and Chris Ford for helping me to improve the
looks and form of this book.
1 Globalization and Migration

Moving across most of the nations in the world, one finds the same products (e.g. cell
phones) and the same corporations (e.g. H&M). There is also great similarity in people’s
ideas and values (e.g. the desirability of travel) and in fads and fashions (from jeans to
popular music). Within these almost interchangeable nations, the people of the world are
also very much in motion: as tourists, foreign study students, transferred executives, refugees
and so on. And they are moving across national boundaries, sometimes effortlessly and
sometimes with great difficulty, but they are in motion; and inter-governmental agreements
and cross-national agencies have followed the movement of people and products.
It is the increased interconnection among economies, cultures and governments of the
world that is at the core of globalization. While our focus in this book is specifically upon
migration, it is important to begin the discussion by placing current patterns of migration
into a broader global context. This entails recognizing that migration – along with trade,
finance, culture and international government – are all interconnected and collectively
comprise the key components of globalization.1

Globalization
Over time there have been dramatic increases in the amount of economic activity that has
crossed national boundaries. The amount of world trade grew larger and became an in­
creasingly important part of the economies of the world’s nations. The flow of investments
across nations also rose, especially involving firms in one nation purchasing firms (from
restaurants to manufacturing plants) in other nations. Global supply chains expanded as
more nations became involved in the integrated, inter-nation manufacturing, distribution
and sale of the component parts of products, from computers to automobiles.2
Transnational corporations (TNCs), also referred to as multinational corporations
(MNCs), have played an especially important role in globalization.3 They are defined
as enterprises that have facilities in at least one country other than the one in which
they are headquartered. Some definitions also stipulate that at least one-quarter of a
firm’s revenue must be obtained outside of the nation in which it is headquartered.
That criterion is designed to exclude firms, located near national borders, that in­
cidentally sell a few products in the neighboring nation. Because there are few such
firms, most definitions of TNCs do not include this requirement. In fact, the larger
TNCs actually tend to have principal offices in many nations and over one-half of
their revenue is typically derived from foreign locales. And they have huge global
workforces. TNCs currently employ slightly over one-fourth of the world’s labor
force. According to recent figures, Wal-Mart, for example, had over two million
DOI: 10.4324/9781003158400-1
2 Globalization and Migration
employees, with 750,000 working outside of its U.S. home. To illustrate further,
Siemens, the German-based electronics company, employed over 400,000 people,
with approximately 70% working outside of Germany.4 By transferring managers and
executives across disparate locations, TNCs move people, along with their products,
around the entire world.
The growth of TNCs, along with all forms of global economic activity, fluctuated
during the first two decades of the 21st century as a global recession, between 2007 and
2009, depressed economic activity. By 2016 global economic activity again began to in­
crease, more slowly than in the preceding century, though by 2019 the pace of economic
globalization had substantially increased.5 But then the COVID-19 pandemic struck the
world, primarily in 2020, depressing every nation’s economy, closing national borders both
to people and capital flows, and disrupting global supply chains.
As this is written, at the onset of 2021, some forecasters predict that the globalization of
economies will be set back for the foreseeable future. However, there is more evidence to
suggest that the long-term trend toward increasing globalization will continue, after the
interruption. This prediction is based upon the resilience that globalization has shown in
the face of setbacks in the past. For example, many forms of cross-national activity – from
trade agreements to the confederation of governments – have in recent decades been
unpopular as nationalism has been emphasized in many state elections. Some multi-nation
trade agreements have been nullified as a result, but they have almost always been replaced
by new agreements. Some cross-nation governing arrangements have lost members; but
even where that has happened, strong cross-nation ties have remained. To illustrate, in the
years after Britain voted in 2016 to leave the European Union (E.U.), there was actually a
substantial increase in cross-border investments among the remaining Eurozone nations,
and even an increase in British investment in Europe.6
Furthermore, when confronted by a common threat – such as Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine in 2022 – the E.U. and Britain closely aligned their activities to each other’s.
Their coordination and cooperation was so intense that one British daily newspaper ran
the headline, “U.K. back in Brussels.”7 (Brussels is the headquarters of the EU.)
Finally, we note that the same cultural industries involving television shows, recorded
music, and so on, span the globe, generating similar clothing preferences and slang
expressions, similar ways of interacting and viewing relationships, careers, families, and
so on. While a pandemic or government action can halt the global tour of a concert or
close local venues of global theme parks, any such pause is very likely to be temporary.
Meanwhile, the mass media and the Internet continue to promote shared values and
ways of life across the entire world. Zachary Karabell has concluded that with respect to
globalization, including correspondingly high rates of migration, “the sheer scale of what
has been created over the past several decades … will preclude a lasting reversal.”8

Globalization and Migration

As we have noted, increased migration is an integral component of globalization. To
further clarify their connection, consider how marriages have changed. In the past, in
most nations, marriages were typically negotiated by people in a local market; how local
varied, from villages to cities, but it was usually a geographically quite constrained area.
With greater global connectedness of all sorts, more people are selecting marriage
partners from across substantial distances, and from different nations. The couples in
some cases meet without assistance, through an online site or while one of the future
 Globalization and Migration 3
partners is traveling abroad. Many other marriages are arranged through international
marriage brokers, or by extended families whose members live in different parts of the
world. In many nations, migration for marriage or family reunification now rivals jobs as
a reason for requesting visas.
To illustrate further, note how increased migration has impacted higher education.
For students, greater global connectivity means more information about educational
opportunities in other nations. Students have the same impersonal sources of information
that have long been available, in books, newspapers and so on; but they are also in­
creasingly able to access personal information directly. Few people of typical student age
do not know someone who has lived and studied in a foreign place. From the accounts
of returning students, as well as educational marketing campaigns, collective ideas
concerning what it means to study in another nation have been formed, and people all
over the world find it increasingly easy to imagine themselves as foreign students.9 As we
will describe later in this chapter, student enrollment in foreign programs has steadily
increased in recent decades.
The United Nations defines international migrants as people who change the country
in which they have usually resided. It includes all people who moved to a different
nation and remained for at least three months, regardless of their reason for moving.
Therefore, it combines a few groups that are sometimes treated separately: refugees,
people transferred to a job in another country, students in foreign study degree programs,
etc. UN statistics also distinguish between short-term and long-term migrations, defining
short-term as moves which last for at least three months but less than one year. In other
words, if people return to their origin nation in less than three months, they are not
considered to have been global migrants. Long-term is defined as a change in nation of
residence that lasts for one year or longer. These are UN recommendations and while
many nations follow them, all do not.10
The UN figures provide the most complete data set, but they are dependent upon raw
data compiled separately by individual nations whose practices and criteria vary. For
example, many nations count the number of people who enter but make no effort to
count emigration or out-flow, that is the number of former residents who exit the
nation. And among those nations that do try to count emigres, some depend upon
inferences, relying upon indicators such as non-renewal of insurance, withdrawal of a
residence permit, etc. Finally, record keeping in some nations does not carefully dis­
tinguish between migrants, as defined by the UN, and such non-migrants as tourists and
people attending a business meeting.11 In consequence, small differences among nations
in their “official” migration rates should not be given much weight.
With the above caveats in mind, let us turn to the data. Combining short and long
lengths of stay and focusing upon the total number of migrants shows a clear, unbroken
trend in which the number of people designated as migrants has increased each decade
over the past 50 years. The raw numbers increased from 84 million migrants in 1970
(which was then 2.3% of the world’s population) to 272 million in 2019 (then com­
prising 3.5% of the world’s population). In 2019, the latest figures available at this
writing, according to the UN figures about three-fourths of all migrants were between
the ages of 20 and 64 (i.e. peak labor force participation age). Males comprised 52% of
the migrant population and females 48%.12
With respect to the number of in-migrants, the U.S., home to approximately
50 million migrants in 2019, was the leading destination nation, by a substantial margin.
The U.S. was followed by Germany, Saudi Arabia and the Russian Federation, in that
4 Globalization and Migration
order, but each of them was home to fewer than 20 million migrants. The U.S. was so
far ahead of any other nation with respect to in-migration that it is not likely the dif­
ference was an artifact of measurement. However, one should be cautious in inferring
any ranking among the three nations that followed the U.S. because the differences
among them are small.
As a proportion of its total population, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had the
largest migrant body. (It held that place since 2000.) In UAE and most of the other
Gulf nations, migrants comprised an absolute majority of the population. Asia has, for
many years, been the region with the largest migration out-flow, and the specific
nation with the largest emigration in 2020 was India. It was substantially ahead of a
second grouping of nations – including Mexico, China and the Russian Federation –
that followed it in emigration.13 To connect the nation with the largest migration
out-flow (India) to the nation with the largest proportion of in-migrants (UAE), we
can note that by the spring of 2020 there were approximately three and one-half
million Indian emigres working in the UAE as construction laborers, waiting tables,
cleaning homes, etc. And the Indian emigres comprised roughly 30% of the UAE’s
total population.14
We should note that all of the migration statistics presented by the UN are, unless
otherwise noted, based upon the migrants who are counted by government officials as
they exit and/or enter. Those migrants that cross national borders surreptitiously – via
human smugglers, traffickers or the like – or whose legal status changes while they are in
a foreign nation are generally referred to as “undocumented.” They are also sometimes
referred to as migrants in “irregular status.” The UN, the European Parliament, the
Associated Press and other media outlets all avoid the term “illegal” because of its ne­
gative connotations.15 Undocumented migrants will be discussed throughout this book,
but in detail in Chapter 5.

Types of Migrants
Our attention turns now to a discussion of the major categories of people who migrate.
The typologies, most of which follow United Nations designations, are based primarily
upon what appear to be the main reasons people emigrate, for example, for a job, to unify a
family, etc. However, it is important to recognize that many of these reasons overlap. Thus,
refugees – migrants who are forced by threats to flee their home country – are often
seeking work, as well; but they are not counted twice in estimating the total number of
migrants. Most of the categories of migrant workers introduced in this section will be
further discussed in the chapters that follow.

Migrant Workers
The International Labour Organization (ILO), a specialized agency of the UN, defines
migrant workers as people who have emigrated from their country of citizenship and are
currently employed in their new nation – or unemployed but seeking employment. The
United Nations Statistics Division further clarifies that they are foreigners admitted to a
country for work-related purposes and that both their length of stay and type of em­
ployment are usually restricted. Some UN data also include the accompanying families in
their tabulations of the size of the migrant worker category, but the statistics presented
here will follow the narrower definition of the ILO.
 Globalization and Migration 5
Approximately 60% of the world’s international migrant population consists of mi­
grant workers because searching for employment is one of the major reasons that people
cross national borders. ILO classifies the movement of emigres in relation to their
country of citizenship. So, for example, a person who was born in Germany, and was
working in Germany, but did not hold German citizenship would be counted by ILO as
a migrant worker. On the other hand, a French citizen returning to France after working
abroad would not be considered a migrant worker.16
According to the ILO delineation, in 2017 (the latest figures available) there were
164 million migrant workers. Europe (with 32% of the total) and North America (23%)
were the regions with the largest numbers of foreign workers followed by the Arab States
(14%) and Asia (13%). Migrant workers comprised less than 20% of every region’s total
labor force except in the Arab States where they comprised 41% of the total. The age,
sex and other demographic characteristics of migrant workers followed distributions very
similar to those of all migrants. Specifically, about 90% of the migrant workers were
between the ages of 25 and 64, prime labor force ages, and they were 42% female and
58% male.
The types of employment that are taken by migrant workers are highly diverse, but
they can be divided into two very different categories. First, there is a high skill-high
wage grouping which includes such positions as: managers and executives, lawyers and
accountants, scientists and engineers. Second, there is a low skill-low wage category
which includes jobs such as: restaurant and hotel kitchen staff and maids, domestic
workers, farm and construction laborers.
In recent years most of the nations considered most desirable by would-be migrant
workers have made it more difficult for foreign workers to enter. Visas or work permits
are severely limited and in many cases largely confined to people with advanced degrees
and demonstrable skills. As a result, workers in the low-skilled category typically have
very limited opportunities and that makes them vulnerable to being exploited. A more-
or-less typical example is provided by the situation of migrant workers from Micronesia
who have moved to small towns in the U.S. to take jobs in meat packing plants. Their
situation is described in Box 1.1.

Box 1.1 Micronesian Migrants in a U.S. Meatpacking Plant

Micronesia encompasses a cluster of small islands in the Pacific Ocean, between

Hawaii and the Philippines. The 112,000 people living on the islands are generally
poor, working at service jobs in the tourist industry, subsistence farming and
fishing. Good-paying jobs are hard to find. In 2018, a recruiter for a U.S. pork
processing plant offered people jobs paying $15.95 an hour; ten times what they
were earning in Micronesia. Plus the offer included free transportation and free
meals. Hundreds happily accepted and made the 7,000-mile journey across the
ocean and then through the cornfields of Western Iowa. Two days later they
arrived, many with little more than their shorts and flip-flops. 17
The plane rides were long, the airport guide that was promised when they
changed planes never arrived, and most lacked money to buy food or water during
their journey. Tired, hungry and confused when they finally arrived in the town
where the plant was located, they met with the recruiter who began by collecting
6 Globalization and Migration
their passports in order to limit their mobility within the country. He told them
that if they became ill or missed their shifts they would be deported, and he then
explained that their first $1800 in earnings would be docked in order to repay their
plane tickets that were supposed to be free. They were placed in a hotel, and the
next morning they were crowded into the company’s shuttle that took them
between the hotel and the pork plant where they worked 10-hour shifts. 18
An anthropologist’s fieldwork conducted in an almost identical meatpacking
plant, a few miles down the road, provided a detailed description of the harsh
conditions under which migrants worked in meat packing companies. Some of
them were assigned to a hot, humid and smelly “kill room” where they
slaughtered and cut up the hogs. Others picked up the trash and shoveled the
meat that fell as the hogs bodies moved down the line on which they were being
butchered. Some carried heavy hog parts to the downstairs cooler that was so cold
there was often ice on the floor. 19
To make matters worse, the Micronesian migrants did not like living in the
hotel that was initially free but then required $1500 a month for a small space with
three occupants. Lacking passports, however, they had no ID with which to cash a
check and pay the security deposit that would have been required for an apartment
in town. It did not take long for many of the migrants to become disillusioned and
unhappy, and wish they could just return to Micronesia. “How can I go back?”
one of the migrants asked. “I’m stuck. I don’t have money.” 20

Government officials in Iowa, the U.S. state in which the meat packing plant was
located, kept promising to look into the abuses alleged by the Micronesian workers.
Corporate officials also said they would investigate the allegations, but most of the
migrants complained that no one ever came to interview them or to inspect their
working and living conditions.21
Migrant workers in various industries, in nations across the world, very often find that
basic rights are absent from the workplace. Interrupted employment is also common­
place because migrant workers tend to be the first casualties of economic downturns. For
example, when in 2020 the COVID-19 virus forced store, farm and factory closings
around the world, in just one day in April: 30,000 migrant workers were sent out of
Thailand and crossed the border to return back to Myanmar; 15,000 migrant laborers left
Iran and returned across the border to Afghanistan, etc.22

High-Skill Workers
For workers in the high-skill category, such as scientists and engineers (S&E), it is usually
easier to obtain work visas and to move between nations. In fact, in those nations that
have a great deal of employment in high-skill occupations, such as the U.S., Canada and
Western Europe, the foreign-born have come to comprise a large percentage of the
workforce in these occupational categories, even though they are a small percentage of
the migrant labor force. In the U.S., for example, in 2015, about 30% of all workers in
S&E were foreign-born; and among all those holding doctorates, the foreign-born
percentage was about 45%. Just between 1993 and 2015 all of the foreign-born per­
centages presented above nearly doubled.23
 Globalization and Migration 7
In any given year there are thousands of managers, executives and professionals em­
ployed by TNCs that are transferred to an office in a nation other than the one in which
they are currently employed, though precise data are lacking. In most instances, the
relocation is technically voluntary, though refusal to accept a relocation assignment is
likely in most firms to have adverse effects upon future career mobility.
In some organizations, inter-nation transfers are almost part of the job descriptions of
high-level staff. United Nation’s agencies, for example, tend to have mandatory rotation
schedules so that employees can anticipate the timing of future transfers and their
probable locations. In one large sample of UN employees, over one-quarter were found
to have been relocated more than ten times in their careers, and over 80% had been
relocated more than five times. By contrast, for the employees of nongovernmental
TNCs, such as global banks, three or four lifetime transfers seem more typical.24 The
timing and location of transfers in the private sector also tend to be less predictable.
Decisions effecting large groups of employees are usually made in the headquarters of
TNCs, but local conditions often modify how these decisions are actually im­
plemented.25 In addition, the timing and location of transfers are difficult to anticipate in
the private sector because relocation decisions depend, at least partially, upon happen­
stance: whether local business is increasing or decreasing, whether there is executive
turnover in one of the corporate offices, etc.
There are limited descriptive data concerning the intra-firm, cross-national labor pool
other than the fact that it tends very disproportionately to involve high-level positions.
Some information can be gleaned from a yearly survey conducted by KPMG. Their
sample includes hundreds of organizations that volunteer to participate in a web-based
survey. Whether its results can be generalized to a larger population is unknown, though
the sample is very over-represented by U.S. firms; in most years they comprised nearly
one-half of the total KPMG sample while their share of the world’s TNCs is estimated at
just under 40%.26 According to the most recent survey, conducted in 2018, the U.S. and
the UK were both the leading origin and destination locations for inter-nation transfers.
The largest proportion of relocation assignments (46%) was long-term, i.e. between one
and five years in length. An additional 19% of the transfers were permanent and 16%
were short-term, less than one year in duration.27

Transnational Professionals
There are also large groups of diverse professionals – lawyers, accountants, public health
experts, software engineers and so on – who move frequently across national borders but
do not typically remain as employees of any one TNC. In that sense they resemble the
traditional “free professionals,” such as autonomous physicians and lawyers, who his­
torically were not employees of any organization. The contemporary transnational
professionals may be licensed within one nation and may be members of a nation-based
professional association, but their expertise is applicable across national boundaries rather
than confined to any “home” nation. For example, a group of University of Chicago-
trained economists went on to transform the economies of Chile, Brazil and Mexico.28
To be a transnational professional requires that one possess specific knowledge and
skills (e.g. language facility) and master a body of applicable knowledge (e.g. how to
combat infectious diseases). The identities of these professionals are usually tied to their
expertise and not to a corporation or a nation. Detailed observations of and interviews
with one group of transnational professionals, international start-up entrepreneurs,
8 Globalization and Migration
reported that they did not think the term migrant applied to them because their spe­
cialties did not have a territorial locus. They saw themselves as “global people” who
worked out of the leading global cities and moved rapidly between places and projects.29

Low-Skill Workers
Several studies conducted in a number of nations have reported that lower-level posi­
tions in TNCs, unlike those at the higher level, are typically filled from a local labor pool
rather than from transfers.30 The janitors, temporary office help and other local hires
often receive very low wages and work under very difficult conditions. The situation
faced by women in the ranks of low-level TNC employees tends to be still worse.
Especially in developing areas of Asia, Africa and Latin America, the female employees
are usually paid even less than men, are more likely to be laid off, and have almost no
opportunity to experience upward mobility.31
The major exception to a firm’s local hiring of low-level employees occurs when
TNCs outsource positions to subcontractors who recruit migrant workers (often de­
scribed as “posted” workers) from low-wage nations. The length of the relocation as­
signments for these employees varies greatly, from as little as about three months to as
long as several years. Wages and working conditions for such workers are typically very
poor. For example, firms in Germany have hired subcontractors to recruit workers from
Poland and Romania. These posted workers are paid low wages and frequently work
under conditions that violate German and European Union standards, but the sub­
contractors are typically able to evade detection. These migrant workers fall into the
cracks between the importing and exporting nations, and subcontractors benefit from the
ambiguity surrounding which nation has enforcement responsibility.32

Refugees
Refugees are legally defined as migrants who have been forced to flee from the nation in
which they were residing. The most complete data on forced migration is assembled every
year by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR), often referred
to simply as the UN Refugee Agency.33 Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, its ob­
jective is to provide a variety of services to displaced people who the agency puts into
one of two categories based upon where they move: “Internally Displaced Persons” (IDP)
flee an immediate threat, but do not cross a border, remaining elsewhere within the same
nation. “Refugees” are similarly in peril and flee, but they cross a national border. In any
given year the number of IDPs tends to far exceed the number of refugees. In 2018, for
example, a total of 13.6 million people were newly displaced. Of that total, 10.8 million were
classified as IDPs. Our interest in this book, however, is in the refugees.
A coercive circumstance is involved in the official definition of both groups, that is,
UNCHR considers them as having a “well founded” fear that forced them to flee their
homes in order to escape persecution, war or violence. Agencies can confront a degree
of ambiguity in inferring whether people have been forced, though. In some instances
virtually everyone would agree that for a group of people to have remained in place they
would almost surely have faced death or imprisonment, hence it is reasonable to con­
clude they were forced to leave. On the other hand, what if the people who flee the
country are part of a group confronted with the possibility of restricted opportunities,
loss of income, or greater prejudice? Could they have stayed under those conditions?
 Globalization and Migration 9
Deciding whether any group of people should be designated as forced to flee, based
upon the circumstances they faced, and therefore be considered refugees, has to be made
on a case by case basis, and can involve uncertainties.
Deciding whether a group of migrants are refugees has important political and legal
implications. The 1951 Refugee Convention Act, administered by UNCHR, grants
certain rights and protections to migrants designated as refugees in the 145 nations that are
signatories of the Act. In addition, many nations utilized refugee criteria in bureaucratically
processing people’s requests to enter. Looking primarily at migrants’ external circum­
stances, officials make these consequential labeling decisions. To social scientists, who tend
to pay more attention to the perceptions of migrants, themselves, a rigid forced-voluntary
dichotomy often makes little sense. From extensive interviews with migrants, many
analysts have concluded that it is not possible to describe most people’s decision to migrate
as simply voluntary or forced. Empirically, it often appears to involve a mixture of both.34
This conceptualization is illustrated in Figure 1.1.
Where along the above continuum should a line be drawn officially to identify mi­
grants who were forced, and therefore are entitled to refugee status? Anywhere above
the 50-50 point? At 75-25? Only if the migration is entirely forced? If we are to proceed
based upon migrants’ self-reported experiences and attitudes, it is not clear where along
the continuum illustrated in figure one a cut-off should be imposed. However, because
the most comprehensive data on refugees is compiled by UNCHR, a complete statistical
description of refugees requires following their imposed dichotomy, but the reader
should bear in mind the reservations noted above. (The voluntariness of migration
decisions is further discussed in later chapters.)
Between 1995 and 2010 there were yearly fluctuations in the number of refugees,
as designated by UNCHR, but the annual variations were very small, and there was
no overall trend. After 2010, however, there was a dramatic global increase in the
total number of people considered to be refugees, from approximately 10 million in
2010 to over 20 million by 2018.35 At the time that number was projected to
continue to increase, though the effects of possible pandemics in the future are
difficult to estimate.
In both 2017 and 2018, nearly 70% of the world’s refugees came from the same five
nations. They are displayed in Table 1.1 which also shows the number of refugees from

Entirely 50-50 Entirely

Voluntary Forced

Figure 1.1 The Voluntary-Forced Migration Continuum.

Table 1.1 Global Refugees

Country of Origin Number (in millions) Leading Destination Nations

Syria 6.7 Turkey, Lebanon

Afghanistan 2.7 Pakistan, Iran
South Sudan 2.3 Sudan, Uganda
Myanmar 1.1 Bangladesh, Malaysia
Somalia 0.95 Ethiopia, Kenya
10 Globalization and Migration
which each nation was the country of origin and the two countries that became the
leading destination nations for refugees from that country of origin. See the figures in
Table 1.1.
Turkey, by virtue of the large influx from Syria, had the largest refugee population in
2018. Of a total of 3.7 million refugees, 98% were from Syria. Turkey hosted the largest
number of refugees every year between 2014 and 2018, due largely to the Syrian influx.
Pakistan was home to the second largest refugee population, the majority having come
from Afghanistan.
The exodus from Syria was due to a civil war in which Syrian army forces, with
Russian assistance, attacked rebel-held lands, bombing and burning homes, schools,
stores and hospitals. Millions of Syrians fled their homes and headed northwest to cross
the border into Turkey, but in 2019 Turkey closed its border to block additional Syrian
refugees from entering. This resulted in hundreds of thousands of Syrian families re­
maining as IDPs in northwest Syria, across the border from Turkey, living in flimsy tents
or packed together under stadiums.36 Initially, conditions were generally better for the
Syrians who entered Turkey before the border was closed, as described in the following
case study in Box 1.2.

Box 1.2 Syrian Refugees in Turkey

As the conflict among warring factions within Syria began to escalate (in 2012),
Syrians in large numbers began to seek refuge across the border in Turkey. They
were initially welcomed, for the most part, and the Turkish government built
camps which provided sanitary conditions and pre-fabricated housing. Only about
one-half of the earliest refugees required these accommodations. The rest either
found apartments or had friends or relatives with whom they could live. As the
exodus out of Syria continued, the vast majority of refugees moved to Turkey’s
major cities. The largest concentration was in Istanbul which in 2019 had an
estimated one million Syrian residents (some registered and some not.) Three
other large Turkish cities, located near the Syrian border, each had nearly one-half
million Syrian refugees. In all of these cities, most of the refugees lacked work
permits which forced them to seek employment in the “informal economy,” as
maids, street vendors, etc. The informal economy is defined by an absence of
official records. Workers in the informal economy are usually paid in cash, off the
books, but are paid poorly. 37 As a result, almost two-thirds of Syrian refugees lived
at or below the poverty line. 38
Providing schools, hospitals and administrative services to support the growing
refugee population became increasingly expensive, and public sentiment toward
the Syrians became less welcoming. The refugees reported becoming targets of
xenophobic hostility and employment discrimination. Particularly in Istanbul,
the situation of the Syrians became critical by the summer of 2019 as Turkish
authorities conducted widespread identity checks in Syrian neighborhoods and
then removed an estimated 100,000 unregistered Syrians. Some were sent to
refugee camps outside Istanbul and – although the government denied it –
agencies reported that many were deported back across the Syrian border into an
active war zone. 39
 Globalization and Migration 11
The problems faced by Syrian refugees in Turkey were further exacerbated by
an agreement between Turkey and the European Union (EU). The EU agreed to
provide some financial assistance to help resettle the Syrian refugees but insisted in
return that the majority of Syrians that crossed through Turkey to reach other EU
nations would have to be returned to Turkey. Along with migrants from other
nations, many Syrian refugees used Turkey as a first stop, then traveled to Greece,
and some continued across the Balkans to Europe, and Germany in particular. This
series of moves describes “stepwise migration” in which there are intermediate
stops before migrants reach a final destination. 40 Turkey feared being further
overwhelmed by migrants and offered to pay to airlift refugees to other nations
willing to take them in, but as of this writing (in mid-2020) could find few nations
that were willing to take in Syrian refugees.

As this book was going into production there was also a huge movement of refugees
who gathered whatever belongings they could carry and walked, ran, jumped on trains
in order to escape from Ukraine following Russia’s invasion in 2022. In just the first two
weeks following the invasion, it was estimated that about two million people, mostly
women and children, fled from the country. Over one-half of them crossed the border
into Poland.41 What lied ahead for them, as this was written, was unclear.

Trafficked Migrants
A second type of forced migrant involves people who are trafficked. In this case, it is not
widespread turmoil that prompts a large segment of the population to flee, but a specific
group that tricks or forces selected people to migrate. The International Organization for
Migration (IOM) defines trafficking as entailing the recruitment and transfer of people that
relies upon threat, abduction or fraud to control people for the purpose of exploiting them.
If any coercion or deception is involved, then even if the person consents to the move it is
still considered to be trafficking. Not all trafficking involves crossing national boundaries.
In fact, over one-half of the victims do not leave their nation. Our interest is in the
estimated 42% who are trafficked across national boundaries.42 (The IOM is an inter-
government agency affiliated with the U.N. that compiles migration statistics and provides
a variety of services to migrant communities.43)
There is a clear connection between refugees and trafficking because people who are
desperate to escape from war or persecution are in a vulnerable situation. They may be
easily fooled into making an unwise migration decision and/or in the turmoil that is
causing people to flee, institutional safeguards that could protect people in normal times
may be weakened. A clear example of the connection between refugees and trafficking is
provided by the consequences of the civil war in Syria, described in the preceding case
study. It resulted in both an increased number of Syrian refugees and an increase in the
number of Syrians who were trafficked.44
Data on both the perpetrators and victims of trafficking are necessarily incomplete
because they rely primarily upon information obtained when people are caught, and all
types of trafficking may not be equally likely to result in detention. If some types of
trafficking have higher arrest rates than others, then the overall picture would be skewed.
12 Globalization and Migration
Field workers can sometimes add estimates to adjust the figures, but data on human
trafficking remain reliant mostly on apprehensions.
According to the latest report on trafficking compiled by IOM in 2016, females,
including both women and girls, comprised about three-quarters of the victims.
Compulsory sexual activity was frequently the criminal objective as they were coerced
into sexual slavery or prostitution, and sometimes into forced (underage) marriages. The
percentage of males who were trafficked, though still well below that of females, in­
creased steadily after 2006. The males were trafficked mostly to be used for forced labor.
The children, both male and female, comprised just over one-fourth of all of those who
were trafficked. Many were sold or given over by their families or relatives. What then
happened to the young victims varied; some were forced to become beggars, others were
conscripted into militias and became child soldiers, others were re-sold.45 (Trafficking is
further discussed in Chapter 5.)

Exiles
There is little consistency in how the term “exile” is utilized in the migration literature.
It is not clear exactly what makes an exile different from other types of migrants (e.g.
refugees). In some cases, the terms refugee or migrant are used to describe the people who
have left their native countries, voluntarily or not; and exile (or “in exile”) describes their
separation from that native country. In other words, exile then refers to a separation and is
not used as a label for people. However, in some analyses the term exile is applied to
anyone who is separated from any larger entity to which that person could be regarded as
a member. To illustrate how broadly the term has been applied, Allyson Hobbs has
analyzed the experiences of fair-skinned black people in the U.S. – “racially ambiguous
individuals” based upon their skin color – who at some point in their lives passed
themselves off as white. Her case studies covered a roughly 70-year period from the late
19th to the mid-20th century when being white in the U.S. was especially tied to
multiple advantages.
Some of the black people whose lives Hobbs studied looked white but chose never to
try to pass for white because of their strong racial identity and commitment to the black
community. Those who did choose to pass, according to Hobbs, probably experienced
some loss of self. Rejecting one’s racial identity and the community associated with it
was voluntarily to place oneself into what she termed “exile” because of all the im­
pediments that they would have faced if they had chosen at some point to cross back
over the color line.46
Undocumented Mexican immigrants in the U.S. have similarly been described as
attempting to pass, in this case as mainstream U.S. citizens. Toward that end, dozens of
undocumented migrants that Angela Garcia interviewed told her that they tried to avoid
certain kinds of haircuts, dressed like professional people and practiced walking down
street hurriedly, as though they were late for a meeting. They monitored their use of
slang expressions and worked on eliminating their accents. Passing became part of who
they were and this consuming effort to mask their unauthorized status separated them
from the ethnic group of which they would otherwise be part. The pressures of passing
made them into exiles.47
As most typically used in the migration literature, however, the blacks who passed as
white and undocumented immigrants who passed as citizens would probably not be
described as exiles. They may have fit the term with respect to being separated from
 Globalization and Migration 13
some larger group, but the separation was self-induced. Exiles, on the other hand, like
refugees, usually feel pushed away by external circumstances, and express regret over
their separation from a group with which they continue to identify. For example, there
was a large group of Russian emigres, branded as radicals, who moved to London early
in the 20th century because of fear of imprisonment. They actively followed news of
events leading up to the Russian revolution and sent financial contributions to the re­
volutionaries.48
The term expatriate, or expat, is almost synonymous to the term exile when the latter
is used to describe a category of people rather than the fact of their separation. To be
specific, the term expatriate is used similarly to exiles to describe someone living in a
country other than the one in which the person was born or raised. However, a con­
tinuing commitment to their former country is implied by the fact that expatriates, by
definition, typically retain citizenship in their country of origin.49
The continuing commitment to a former place of residence implies another char­
acteristic of exiles, namely, a disinclination to assimilate. It is common for groups de­
scribed as exiles to exhibit this attitude. To illustrate, many of the older Cubans in
Miami, who left Cuba in the 1980s, continued to insist, more than 25 years later, that
they were exiles which to them meant they were not going to try to integrate in Miami
because they planned to return to Cuba one day. The younger Cubans laughed and said,
“Move on,” knowing that very few of them were ever going back.50
The Cuban experience in Miami raises the question of how long members of a group
must express a commitment to return some day for the group to be considered exiles.
Among some Jews, for example, Israel is regarded as the homeland, and those living
anywhere else are deemed to be exiles, living in diaspora. Some contemporary Jewish
enclaves in Finland, Iran, Tunisia, and elsewhere have survived for hundreds of years by
limiting their contacts with the non-Jewish world around them and continuing to ob­
serve ancient religious traditions. Many view themselves as living in diaspora, hence in
exile, but over hundreds of years very few members of these communities have emi­
grated to Israel and very few plan to do so in the future.51
One additional dimension that is sometimes employed to distinguish exiles from other
types of migrants or refugees concerns their relatively high socioeconomic status in the
countries from which they emigrated. Some of the early waves of Cuban migrants, for
example, were comprised largely of wealthy business owners, successful professionals,
and their families. Most of the later cohorts were predominantly unskilled and poorer.
The term exile (or expatriate) has, in this case, been utilized to describe the earlier Cuban
migrants, but not the later ones.52
In sum, when the term exile is applied to people or groups it tends to distinguish them
from other migrants by their continuing commitment to their country of origin, and
their expressed wish to return, if certain conditions are met. In some cases, it is also used
to differentiate exiles based upon differences in socioeconomic status in their countries of
origin. Thus, migrants are assumed generally to have been poor, and to have migrated in
search of economic opportunities, while exiles were economically secure and left in
search of political, religious or other freedoms. However, the term is not used con­
sistently in the migration literature, and UNCHR utilizes the term more as a verb than a
noun. Specifically, refugees who are separated from their country of origin, but not
resettled to a third country or integrated into the destination nation are defined as being
“in exile.” When the term appears later in this book its exact usage will be specified.
14 Globalization and Migration
Foreign Students
Included within the broad category of people who travel to another nation in order to
pursue some form of study are very diverse groups. At one extreme are short-term, non-
degree students focusing upon a very specific area of inquiry: language acquisition,
painting techniques, or the like. Many do not meet the UN’s minimum length of stay
criterion (i.e. three months) to qualify as migrants. At the other end of the continuum are
students enrolled in multi-year, formal degree programs. And there are a large number of
courses of study that fall between the extremes. Because of this heterogeneity, it can be
difficult to estimate the total number of people who travel to another nation for edu­
cational purposes, and the estimates offered by different organizations can vary sub­
stantially.
Following UN figures again (UNESCO, in particular) the most inclusive category is
an “internationally mobile student” and this category includes anyone who enters a
nation different from her or his country of origin in order to participate in educational
activities. A sub-category, termed “foreign student” is reserved for non-citizens enrolled
in degree courses. Most analyses, ours included, focus upon these two groups.53
Study abroad or exchange students are further differentiated and subsumed under the
term, “credit-mobile students.” While these credit-mobile students are receiving some
form of instruction while in another country, they remain enrolled in institutions located
in their home countries. Most statistics on international students, including UNESCO’s,
do not include those in the credit-mobile category in part because these programs,
usually of several months duration, do not typically require visas; and visa statistics are
important in compiling all of the student estimates.
UNESCO figures indicate that the number of internationally mobile students – that is,
the most inclusive student category – increased almost every year between 2000 and
2017, from two million to well over five million. The U.S. and U.K. have, by a large
amount, been the historically most favored destinations for these foreign students. More
recently their dominance as destinations has declined, though not disappeared, as
Canada, Australia and China have become more popular destinations.54
For many of the internationally mobile students, living and studying in a foreign
nation is a very meaningful experience which many have described by emphasizing how
different it is from the experience of tourists. The disparity begins from the time foreign
study students arrive in the city or town in which their school is located. Most of the
students are relatively immobile, except for brief forays. Tourists, by contrast, tend to
keep moving to new destinations, not staying in one place for very long. As a result,
tourists do not ordinarily become particularly familiar with or comfortable in any locale
while many foreign students come to feel at home in their extended campus sur­
roundings and develop a sense of belonging.55
In addition, foreign students – that is, students in degree programs – often feel that
their study abroad experience will become a credential in their future search for em­
ployment. Given the strong tendency for the nations that attract the most foreign stu­
dents to also be the nations with the strongest labor markets, many of these students may
be able to pursue careers with firms in the nations in which they studied, or with foreign
firms that are connected to that nation. Tourism, on the other hand, rarely leads to any
type of employment.
Data concerning how often foreign students choose to remain as migrant workers in
the nation in which they studied abroad are very sketchy. There have been a number of
 Globalization and Migration 15
small studies conducted among limited types of students enrolled at specific universities.
None provide an overall picture, but from these studies we can tentatively infer that
family ties and perceptions of career opportunities appear to be the major variables in­
fluencing students’ plans to remain or to return home.56 (Whether or not they will be
able to obtain a work permit or appropriate visa is a separate issue.)
As we have noted, statistics on foreign study students are based largely upon visa
records, and are therefore subject to some distortion by occasional abuses of student visa
applications in a number of nations. One example is described in Box 1.3.

Box 1.3 Student Hostesses in Koreatown

There has been a practice for young women in South Korea to use student visas to
emigrate to the U.S. when their actual goal is not primarily educational but to obtain
work as a hostess or escort in bars and nightclubs in the Korean enclave in Los
Angeles (known locally as, “Koreatown”). These young women find immediate and
well-paying employment entertaining, and serving as companions to, local Korean
businessmen. Though the women are paid, their relationships with the businessmen
are more social than sexual.
Brokers in Seoul work with potential recruits to Koreatown’s entertainment
establishments to prepare the documents the women will need to convince officials
in the U.S. embassy of their serious intention to pursue an academic program. To
complete their documentation, the same brokers also make the necessary admin­
istrative arrangements with Los Angeles area schools. Once in Los Angeles, the
women spend most of their time working as hostesses or escorts. Their employers in
the entertainment establishments hire security personnel to provide notice of any
impending raid by customs officials. 57
All of these women are indentured workers, required to work to repay the
brokers who arranged all the details of their emigration. Nevertheless, employment
in Koreatown’s entertainment establishments is attractive to many young Korean
women because its high wages permit them to regularly remit funds to their
families in South Korea. Working in Los Angeles also enables them to improve
their English language skills enough later to obtain other forms of employment
which could qualify them for permanent residency in the U.S. And some of the
women do manage to earn degrees while working in Koreatown and then move
into higher skilled positions in the U.S. or South Korea.

Family Migration
The most complete data on migration driven by family ties are available for the 37 nations
that are members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD). It is a voluntary organization that includes, but is not limited to, most of the
economically most advanced nations. The Asian nations that are the largest exporters of
migrants are not members, and only some of Latin America’s leading export nations are
members (Colombia and Mexico). However, most of the nations that are the leading
destinations of migrants are included, including: Australia, Canada, France, U.S., U.K.
16 Globalization and Migration
None of the Gulf States are members, but it will be recalled that they have large in-
migration relative to their population size, but fewer in-migrants in total than the leading
destination nations that are in OECD. It is important to bear in mind the limitations of the
OECD data sets, but they provide the most complete picture of family migration.
In 2017, around two million new migrants moved to OECD nations for family reasons,
comprising 40% of all permanent migration to these nations. These figures fluctuated only
slightly from year to year between 2011 and 2017. The U.S. received the largest number of
family in-migrants, followed at a distance by Canada, Australia and France, in that order.
The largest migration for family category is termed, Family Reunification. It involves a
person, most often a spouse, seeking to enter a nation to join a family member with prior
citizenship or legal status in that nation. In all of the OECD nations a legal spouse is always
eligible for family reunification, a registered partner is eligible in most of the nations, and a
fiancé is not usually eligible. A dependent child is eligible for family reunification in every
nation, but married adult children and grandchildren, and other adult relatives, are eligible
in about one-half of the nations.58
As noted, the U.S. has for a number of years been the largest recipient of family
migrants. Its family reunification policies have been relatively liberal, permitting citizens
to sponsor a parent, sibling, and adult married child in addition to a spouse/partner
and dependent child. This has resulted in what analysts have termed an “immigration
multiplier.” In the U.S., in recent years, the average immigrant multiplier has been
3.45 meaning the average new immigrant later sponsored almost three and one-half
additional migrant family members.59
The movement of members of an extended family to re-connect with a family
member who previously emigrated is one example of “chain migration.” It is defined as
entailing a stream of migrants from within the same country of origin moving to the
same location in the same destination nation. The chain can involve members of a
family, or friends, or people who lived in the same village, or a combination of all of
them.60 Chain migration is further discussed in Chapter 4.

Marriage Migration
Marriage migration, as the name implies, involves one spouse moving to the country of
residence of the second spouse when that second spouse is a citizen or legal resident of
the destination country. It is more common for the woman to move than the man, and
the most common direction, regardless of who moves, is from the “Global South” to the
“Global North.” Most, but not all, of the nations in the south lie south of Latitude
30 degrees south, but the terms are not primarily employed for geographic referents.
The nations considered south (mostly in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America) are
poorer and politically less stable than those of the north (which are mostly in Europe and
North America). In many cases, the differences emanate from an earlier time when
nations in the global south were colonies of those in the global north. Essentially the
same groupings of nations were previously labeled as more or less developed, or first
world and third world. The World Bank, an independent agency of the UN, considers
the north-south brackets less invidious, and therefore preferable, and this terminology
has been widely followed in recent years.61
How couples from different nations get together in the first place varies. One alternative
involves formal assistance, meaning that the couple had help from someone expected to
play the matchmaker role by virtue of a kin relationship or because they were paid for their
 Globalization and Migration 17
services. Historically, within many nations, parents or other family members played this
mediating role. Across nations today, first and second-generation immigrants often look to
their homelands to find spouses for themselves or for their offspring, and they are more
likely to rely upon family ties and friendships rather than marital agencies. Some of
the marriages that result are clearly arranged, that is, it was parents or guardians of the
couple that made the major decisions concerning who will marry who. Sometimes
their decisions are final, and sometimes the couple involved has veto power over
parents’ choices. In other cases, the external trappings of arranged spouse selection
follow the culturally prescribed form, but the couple involved are actually the ones
that steer the relationship to a large degree.62
Another form of cross-national assisted mate selection involves mail-order brides, a
practice that goes back to at least the early 17th century when contracts were drawn for
women to travel from England to the Virginia colony in North America. Arranging for a
mail-order bride has continued in many nations, though in recent decades it has typically
involved betrothed women leaving global south nations to move to prospective hus­
bands in global north nations. These arrangements, well into the 20th century, were
often transacted through largely unregulated international marriage agencies. Some of
them have remained in operation, but in recent years, the Internet has greatly facilitated
mail-order bride arrangements, and it has also led to an expansion of lifestyle choices; for
example, there are now sites offering same-sex male-order grooms.63
Many marriages that cross national boundaries are, of course, negotiated only by the
couple involved, and they are based upon many of the same factors that propel marriages
among people within the same nation: sexual attraction, compatibility, common in­
terests, etc. However, marriages that entail migration of one of the spouses are also
sometimes transacted for other reasons, and these other objectives may be primary (to
either spouse) or coexist in addition to the “usual” reasons. When facilitating one of the
spouse’s ability to emigrate is an important motive for marrying, the migration literature
terms these “marriages of convenience.” In many of the nations considered to be the
most desirable destinations for a migrant, mostly located in the global north, marriage to
a person who is already a citizen of that nation is one of the best ways for a migrant to
legally enter.
All of the OECD nations make some effort to assess the “genuineness” or “authen­
ticity” of marriage migration requests by examining various documents and/or inter­
viewing applicants. When entry for a spouse is requested in Finland, for example,
immigration officials try to determine whether it is a “good” marriage (permit to be
offered) or one which was either forced or arranged primarily for migration purposes (no
permit). Looking for indicators to guide their subjective conclusions, the officials ex­
amine how much time the couple has spent together, whether they previously shared the
same address, if they speak the same language, etc.64
Overall, as we have noted, marital out-migration is more common for brides than
grooms and this gender disparity has been especially pronounced in a number of Asian
nations. How women fare in these marriages has been widely studied, but with less
than consistent findings. To begin, it is not clear the degree to which the emigrating
women are enticed by better living conditions and more opportunities, or whether
desperation is the primary motive. In addition, many studies have contended that
when female marriage migrants move from global south nations in Asia (Afghanistan,
Cambodia, Laos, etc.) to marriage partners in Europe and North America, they are in
vulnerable and powerless positions. On the other hand, a few studies have argued that
18 Globalization and Migration
these women have been able over time to maneuver themselves into positions offering
a degree of autonomy and mobility.65 These issues are further examined in Chapter 4.
The female to male surplus of marital out-migrants in Asia has resulted in local “bride
drains” which have implications for the communities they have left, and the women who
have remained, in particular. To be specific, the bride drain has in the affected nations
resulted in lower rates of marriage, due to the scarcity of potential brides, and it has also led
to changes in the relative status of men and women. In Viet Nam, for example, large
numbers of women have left poor villages to marry men in the global north, frequently in
Western Europe. They have then been able, via remittances, to help support their parents.
That is a highly desired practice in Vietnamese families that has traditionally been associated
more with sons than daughters. It has increased the perceived value of daughters and more
generally raised the relative status of women. Supply and demand have further enhanced
the role of women in these communities because the out-migration of female brides has led
to the relative scarcity of women remaining in the local marriage market.66
In some nations, particularly in Latin America, it has become increasingly common
for the gender roles involved in marriage migration to have reversed. In Costa Rica,
Cuba and elsewhere in the region, female tourists from the U.S. and Western Europe
have been involved in what has been termed, “sex tourism” or “romance tourism.”67
According to some ethnographers who have studied the issue, the image of the virile
Latin male has been attractive to a number of Western women, and they have con­
sidered a sexual dalliance with a local man to be part of their Latin American tourist
experience. They did not, at the onset, imagine it turning into an enduring re­
lationship. For the Latin men, however, a more permanent relationship with a woman
from a wealthier nation was desirable because it offered the possibility of upward
mobility by increasing their chances of emigrating to a nation with greater economic
opportunities.68 In these cases emigration continues to be from the global south to the
global north, but it is males in the global south who are moving.
Box 1.4, which follows, describes the marriage migration of Cuban men who have
linked up with women tourists who traveled from Denmark to spend time in Cuba with
the possibility of romance with the locals on their minds.

Box 1.4 Danish Wives and Cuban Husbands

Between 2000 and 2016 Denmark issued about 350 family reunification migration
permits to persons from Cuba. These permits enable a Cuban spouse legally to
enter and take up residence in Denmark. In 2016 about two-thirds of all the
Cubans in Denmark entered with this type of permit. All of the couples had met in
Cuba while the Danish partner was either vacationing or enrolled in a short-term
foreign study program. Most of the Danish visitors were female and white, and
their socioeconomic status almost always exceeded that of their future Cuban
husbands, most of whom were either black or mulatto. For most of the women,
marriage was totally unanticipated because it grew out of what they initially
viewed as likely to be a “fling:” a short-term romantic or sexual relationship
without any future commitments. 69
For most of the Cuban men, marriage to a woman from Denmark offered the
promise of upward mobility because the labor market in Denmark was much
 Globalization and Migration 19
stronger than Cuba’s. One Cuban man who after an affair with a Danish visitor
eventually married her, and then emigrated to Denmark with her, told Nadine
Fernandez, “I felt like I had won a scholarship.” 70 However, adjusting to life and
marriage in Denmark was typically difficult for the Cuban men. The gendered
division of labor they grew up with in Cuba and learned to expect was strongly
patriarchal while Denmark’s was much more egalitarian. The men reported feeling
frustrated and unhappy. Similar results have been reported in a wide range of other
nations: When the groom has migrated to the bride’s place of residence, it has tended
to result in high rates of desertion and domestic violence. 71 A large percentage of all
marriages in Denmark tend to be unstable, according to Fernandez, and about one-
half of all of them end up in divorce. However, among Cuban-Danish couples, most
of whom barely knew each other before marriage, the rate is even higher. 72
If a marriage that involved an emigre is terminated, the emigre’s ability to
remain in Denmark can be jeopardized. While the official position of the state is to
be vigilant in monitoring the dissolution of what it suspects may have been
marriages of convenience, pro-forma divorces often escape bureaucrats’ notice. In
addition, some of the Cuban men in Fernandez’ sample remained in Denmark
10 years after a divorce from their Danish wife by continuously seeking temporary
residence and work visas. When the marriage resulted in children, the offspring
were automatically granted Danish citizenship by virtue of being born to a Danish
mother, and the Cuban fathers were then permitted to remain in Denmark,
without any further action on their part.

Tourism and Migration

Most of the traveling done by tourists does not meet the U.N.’s minimum length of
stay criterion to be considered migration. Tourism is nevertheless discussed here be­
cause of the numerous connections between tourism and migration. We begin by
noting that a large percentage of international tourism involves travel to the same cities
and nations that we have previously seen to be the leading global migration origins or
destinations. That is not coincidental because a good deal of tourism involves emigres
returning to visit their former homelands. Similarly, people often visit a place as a
tourist, become familiar with it, and later decide to move there as a permanent re­
sident. We will consider some examples later in this chapter. Finally, migrant enclaves
have often become major tourist attractions in the cities in which they are located.
(These enclaves are discussed in Chapter 7.)

International Tourism
Accurate information on the number of international tourists is difficult to obtain for a
variety of reasons. The first problem is definitional. The World Tourism Organization
(WTO), a special UN agency, presents as an ideal definition: The number of people who
travel to a country other than the one in which they usually reside, and stay for a period
exceeding one day, but less than 12 months. Also part of the definition is the require­
ment that the main purpose of the travel cannot entail remunerated activity. The focus is
solely upon inbound travel and WTO counts the number of arrivals and not the number
20 Globalization and Migration
Table 1.2 International Tourism

City Foreign Visitors (in millions)

Bangkok 22.78
Paris 19.10
London 19.09
Dubai 15.93
Singapore 14.67

of different people who arrive in a place, so people who travel to a different foreign
country more than once (and stay for at least one day) are counted as tourists each time.73
Data meeting the WTO requirements, as described above, are not available for all
nations. Some countries count all visitors, including those who stay for less than a full
day; visitors on a part-day excursion from a cruise ship, for example. The data are also
assembled by different sources in different nations, including: immigration officials,
tourism accommodation establishments, police, and so on. The criteria they employ
in counting tourists vary somewhat, so one must be cautious in comparing specific
nations.
Regardless of how it has been measured, however, the number of international
tourists has been shown to increase almost every year since the mid-1990s. It has
dipped only slightly during global recessions. To be specific, in 1996 there were
fewer than 600 million international (inbound) tourists. In 2007 the number in­
creased to 911 million and by 2018 it reached approximately 1.4 billion.74 The global
increase, and the size of the increase experienced by specific nations both correlated
strongly with rates of migration. To be specific, high rates of emigration are asso­
ciated with increased tourism because people who emigrate are especially likely later
to return to their country of origin as tourists. In addition, nations with high rates of
tourism tend to attract large numbers of in-migrants seeking employment in travel,
tourism and hospitality industries.75
The five cities that attracted the greatest number of overnight international visitors in
2018 are presented in Table 1.2. In recent decades, the yearly fluctuations in the rankings
of the leading cities tend to be small. Note that these figures do not count the number of
foreign visitors who exit from a plane or ship unless they spend at least one night in the
city. Otherwise the rankings would be overly influenced by the degree to which cities
served as international transfer points. In addition, as explained above, small differences
among cities should be interpreted with caution. The global figures, compiled at the end
of 2018, are presented in Table 1.2.
The city that benefited the most financially from global tourism was Dubai, with
annual tourist revenue above $31 billion (U.S.).76 It is, of course, the principal city in
UAE, previously identified as the nation in which migrants comprised the largest share of
the total population, though its exotic resorts, malls and museums attract millions of
tourists with no prior connection to Dubai.

Immigrant Immersion Tourism

Every year thousands of people sign up for international travel that is designed to provide
the tourist with an in-depth cultural experience. Some of the programs are designed to
 Globalization and Migration 21
facilitate learning a language or how to cook native dishes, but of interest to us are those
trips in which observing and meeting with migrants is a major objective. These trips are
organized by churches, colleges, immigrant aid organizations, etc., and they can ordi­
narily last for as little as one week or for as long as one year.
The most complete assessment of a migrant immersion tour is probably Gary
Adler’s analysis of BorderLinks, an organization that brings church or college groups
to the U.S. Mexican border where they meet with customs officials and spend time
interacting with Mexican migrants hoping to settle in the U.S. but living in im­
migration shelters or border towns on the Mexican side of the wall separating them
from the U.S. The immersion experience is designed to generate understanding and
sympathy for the migrants and it seems to be successful in this regard. Most parti­
cipants described their experience as transformative. However, Adler found it dif­
ficult to decide whether the immersion produced any long-lasting changes among
participants or made them more inclined to act on behalf of the migrants. The
problem, he concluded, was that participants were given little background in­
formation about the political and social conditions that led to their migration and
border settlements. So, they felt saddened but were not mobilized to act on behalf of
the migrants.77

Medical Tourism
Every year thousands of people travel across national boundaries in search of some
type of medical care that they believe is better than what is available in their
home country. Their length of stay abroad can be as brief as a few days and can be
one-time event, or it may involve recurrent visits, and in some cases lead to a per­
manent move. This variation has made it difficult to find the best way to label
medical-related travel. The earliest analyses usually described it as “medical tourism,”
so that is how it is being referred to here. However, tourism usually implies leisurely
and entirely voluntary travel for pleasure. The international search for medical as­
sistance, by contrast, is more likely to entail stress and it is not as fully voluntary as
most tourism. At the same time, many people seeking foreign medical assistance
combine the medical consultation or treatment with sightseeing, adding a conventional
tourist dimension to their travel.78
Some medical travel might also be best viewed as a “quest” or a “pilgrimage.” In
response to a pessimistic medical prognosis in their home country, a number of
people search for a foreign alternative and are willing to travel a great distance in
order to access an experimental treatment they believe may help to alleviate their
problem. A variety of medical issues can lead to this type of travel: debilitating
symptoms that are not given a medical diagnoses, infertility, illnesses viewed as fatal
in their home country but not everywhere, etc. It is the faith and hope that desperate
people place in a distant alternative that suggests viewing their travel as resembling a
pilgrimage.
Medical travel can be the idiosyncratic preference of an individual or it can be tied to a
cultural pattern in which visits to distant family and friends are expected to occur per­
iodically in conjunction with travel to seek medical assistance. Somali patients who travel
from the UK, described in the following case study (in Box 1.5), illustrate how medical
tourism can be part of this type of cultural pattern.
22 Globalization and Migration

Box 1.5 Somali Medical Tourists From Britain

During the last half of the 20th century, there were several waves of migrants from
Somali who moved to neighboring African countries, to North America and to
Western Europe. Some of the Somali expat concentrations became very large; for
example, in 2020 there were a total of over 100,000 Somalis living in major cities
in the UK. Large numbers also emigrated to Germany and the Netherlands. Many
of the Somalis living abroad maintained ties with Somali emigres living in other
nations, and these ties shaped the destinations they chose when they sought outside
medical care. Through these ties, they obtained information about what medical
treatments might be available in these other nations, though they also received
information via targeted advertising. For example, commercials for German clinics
and doctors regularly appeared on Somali television channels available via satellite
in the UK. 79
Among members of the Somali community in the UK, and specifically in
Manchester and Camden, Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) was generally
viewed unfavorably. Many felt that in the health care system available to them,
medical staff did not give them adequate attention. They felt that doctors and
nurses asked too few questions about their ailments and were too quick simply to
dispense a prescription in order to get rid of them. They were told to return in a
month or two if they did not feel better as they were hurried out the door.
Within the UK, the alternative to the NHS was a doctor in the private sector,
but it was a very expensive alternative. With help from the local Somali
communities, the Somalis living in the UK could get health care in Germany or
the Netherlands more cheaply than from UK facilities that were outside of the
NHS. In addition, the travel to these other nations enabled them to re-establish
connections with family and friends from whom they had been separated, as well
as giving them an opportunity to do some sightseeing. Somalis in Germany and the
Netherlands not only provided Somali travelers from the UK with information
about local medical facilities but also provided help with room and board and
medical costs when needed.

Finally, in some instances, what began as medical tourism has led people permanently
to move to a different nation. In Cuenca, Ecuador, for example, there are hundreds of
retirees from the U.S. who initially traveled to Ecuador to take advantage of that nation’s
inexpensive and easily accessed health services. Most of them wound up buying homes
and settling in a “gringo” enclave where they remained largely because they believed
they could not afford comparable health care in the U.S.80

Notes
1 See, for example, Jeffrey D. Sachs, The Age of Globalization. Columbia University, 2020.
2 For a review of economic globalization in the late 20th century, see Chapter Three and Appendix C
in, Angus Maddison, The World Economy. OECD, 2006.
 Globalization and Migration 23
3 For further discussion of TNCs, see Grazia Ietto-Gillies, Transnational Corporations and International
Production. Edward Elgar, 2019.
4 Employment and revenue figures from, UN Conference on Trade and Development, World
Investment Report. 2012, and Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation,
Multinational enterprises in the global economy. May, 2018.
5 International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook. July, 2019.
6 Zachary Karabell, “The End of Globalization?” The Wall Street Journal, March 21–22, 2020.
7 Stephen Castle, “How Russia’s Invasion is Helping.” The New York Times, March 5, 2022, p A10.
8 Ibid, p C2.
9 Andrea Kolbel, “Imaginative geographies of international student mobility.” Social and Cultural
Geography, 21, 2020.
10 United Nations, World Migration Report, 2020. (See especially chapter two.)
11 Ibid.
12 UN, World Migration Report 2020. See especially chapter two.
13 Ibid.
14 Worldometer, United Arab Emirates Population. May, 2020.
15 For these and other definitions, see International Organization for Migration, Migration Data Portal
2020.
16 Ibid.
17 Due to a historic tie to the U.S., the Micronesians were allowed to work in the U.S. without visas
or green cards. For further description of the Micronesian economy, see the Asian Development
Bank, Report on the Federated States of Micronesia, December 1, 2018.
18 Jack Healy, “Crossing an Ocean to Butcher Hogs, and then Set Adrift.” The New York Times,
October 14, 2019, p A14.
19 A vivid ethnographic account of migrants’ work in an Iowa meatpacking plant is provided by,
Deborah Fink, Cutting into the Meatpacking Line. University of North Carolina, 2020.
20 Healy, op.cit., p A14.
21 Ibid.
22 Hannah Beech, “In a World of Migrant Workers, A World of Risk.” The New York Times, April 11,
2020, p A4.
23 National Science Foundation, S&E Indicators 2018, chapter three. In 2015 the U.S. government
issued about 600,000 visas for high-skilled workers, over half on J-1B visas that are issued for up to
three years, with the possibility of an extension to six years.
24 Transfers within UN agencies and global banks are examined in, Ranji Devadson, “The Golden
Handcuffs?” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43, 2017.
25 See the discussion of how General Motors decisions made in the U.S. were implemented in
Australia, in, Stephen Clibborn, “The politics of employment relations in a multinational cor­
poration during crisis.” Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2019.
26 OECD, Multinational Enterprises in the Global Economy. May, 2018.
27 KPMG, Global Assignment Policies and Practices Survey. KPMG, 2020.
28 For further discussion, see Brooke Harrington and Leonard Seabrooke, “Transnational
Professionals.” Annual Review of Sociology, 46, 2020.
29 Katrin Sontag, “Mobile Entrepreneurs.” Budrich UniPress, 2018.
30 See, for example, Marisa F.F. Tavares, “Across establishments, within firms.” Journal for Labour
Market Research, 54, 2020.
31 The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom has produced a number of papers,
available online, describing women’s roles in TNCs. See, for example, “Transnational Companies
and their Impact on Women’s Human Rights.” 11 June, 2014.
32 For further discussion, see Ines Wagner, Workers Without Borders. Cornell University, 2018.
33 For more information about the agency, see: http://www.unchr.org
34 See Marta B. Erdal and Ceri Oeppen, “Forced to leave?” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44,
2018.
35 UNCHR, Global Report 2018. See also Figure 1 in, Serdar Kaya and Phil Orchard, “Prospects of
Return.” Journal of Immigration and Refugee Studies, 18, 2020.
36 “800,000 Syrians on the Run, With Nowhere Left to Go.” The New York Times, February 17,
2020, p A6.
24 Globalization and Migration
37 See Jacques Charmes, “The Informal Economy,” In Erika Kramer-Mbula and Sacha Wunch-
Vincent (Eds), The Informal Economy in Developing Nations. Cambridge University, 2016.
38 Omer Karasaapan, “Turkey’s Syrian Refugees – the welcome fades.” Brookings Future Development,
October 25, 2019.
39 Izza Leghtas, “Insecure Future.” Refugees International Field Report, September, 2019.
40 See Anju Mary Paul, “Stepwise International Migration.” American Journal of Sociology, 116. 2011.
41 Michael Schwirtz, et al., “Desperation Grows for Trapped Civilians.” The New York Times, March
8, 2022, p A1.
42 For further descriptions, see IOM, Traffickers and Trafficking. UN, 2014.
43 For further discussion, see Fabian Georgi and Suzanne Schatral, “Toward a Critical Theory of
Migration Control.” In Martin Geiger and Antoine Pecoud (Eds), International Organizations and the
Politics of Migration. Routledge, 2017.
44 UNODC, Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2016.
45 Ibid. See also IOM, Human Trafficking Global Database, 2017.
46 Allyson Hobbs, A Chosen Exile. Harvard University, 2016.
47 Angela S. Garcia, Legal Passing. University of California, 2019.
48 Lynne A. Hartnett, “Relief and Revolution.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45, 2019.
49 World Tourist Organization, op.cit., p 12.
50 Public Broadcasting System, “Saving Elian.” Frontline, 2001.
51 Annika Henroth-Rothstein, Exile. Bombardier Books, 2020.
52 See, for example, Chris B. Current, Questioning the Cuban Exile Model. LFB Scholarly, 2010.
53 These terms are described in, UNESCO, Facts and Figures, Mobility in Higher Education, 2015.
54 UNESCO, Internationally Mobile Students, 2019.
55 Laura Prazeras, “At home in the city.” Social and Cultural Geography,19, 2018.
56 See, for example, the study of STEM students at UC-Santa Barbara, reported by, X. Han, et al.,
“Will they stay or will they go?” PLoS One, 10, 2015.
57 Carolyn Choi, “Moonlighting in the nightlife.” Sexualities, 20, 2017.
58 For more information about OECD and family migration data, see OECD, International Migration
Outlook, 2017, and OECD, Migration Data Portal, 2019. See also, Kate Hooper and Brian Salant,
“It’s Relative.” Migration Policy Institute, April, 2018.
59 Jessica Vaughan, “Immigration Multipliers.” Center for Immigration Studies, September, 2001
60 See Alisdair Rogers, et al., A Dictionary of Human Geography. Oxford University, 2013.
61 For a discussion of these terms, see Thomas H. Eriksen, “What’s wrong with the global North and
the global South?” Global South Studies Center, 1, 2015.
62 For further discussion, see Caroline B. Brettell, “Marriage and migration.” Annual Review of
Anthropology, 2017.
63 For a history of mail-order brides, see Marcia Zug, Buying a Bride. New York University, 2016.
64 Saara Pellander, “An acceptable marriage.” Journal of Family Issues, 36, 2015.
65 See the review of studies in, Wei-Jun Jean Yeung and Zheng Mu, “Migration and marriage in
Asian contexts.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45, 2019.
66 Daniele Belanger and Guillaume Haemmerli, “We no longer fear brides from afar.” Asian and Pacific
Migration Journal, 28, 2019.
67 For a discussion of sex tourism, especially from the female perspective, see Jacqueline S. Taylor,
“Female sex tourism.” Feminist Review, 109, 2006.
68 For further discussion of sex and mobility in Cuba, see Carrie Hamilton, Sex and Revolution in Cuba.
University of North Carolina, 2012.
69 Nadine T. Fernandez, “Tourist brides and migrant grooms.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies,
45, 2019.
70 Ibid, p 3146.
71 See the discussion in Brettell, op.cit.
72 Fernandez, op.cit.
73 World Tourism Organization, Yearbook of Tourism Statistics, 2020.
74 Ibid.
75 The criteria are presented and explained in, World Tourism Organization, Tourism and Migration,
2009.
 Globalization and Migration 25
76 Ibid.
77 Gary J. Adler, Empathy beyond U.S. Borders. Cambridge University, 2019.
78 For further discussion see Meghann Ormond and Dian Sulianti, “More than medical tourism.”
Current Issues in Tourism, 20, 2017.
79 Neil Lunt, “The United Kingdom’s Somali population as medical nomads.” Journal of Ethnic and
Migration Studies, 10, 2019.
80 Matthew Hayes, Gringolandia. University of Minnesota, 2018.
2 The Economic Driver

The drivers of international migration are the forces – both external to people (e.g. collapse
of an economy) and internal (e.g. desiring lifestyle freedom) – that provide the impetus to,
or shape people’s desires to, move. They can also be defined as the variables that correlate
with, and thereby help to explain, rates and patterns of migration. These drivers can in
some cases independently influence migration, but multiple drivers are often involved,
especially when a migration is widespread.
In terms of the number of people who are led to migrate across national boundaries,
the economic driver has historically been especially important. To be more specific,
the variable that has usually been singled out as most crucial is economic disparity
which entails the differences in labor force remuneration between nations. The greater
that difference, the more migration is expected to occur from the poorer to the
wealthier nation.

Macro Perspectives
The earliest theories that attempted to explain how the economies of nations impacted
migration between them were cast in macro terms. Precisely what macro entails varies
somewhat among social science disciplines, but it almost invariably pertains to large-scale
structures and processes. In Sociology, for example, macro ordinarily encompasses the
analysis of an entire society or variables that characterize a society, such as its demo-
graphic structure or system of government; or it can entail processes of social change that
transform a society, such as industrialization or modernization’s impact upon gender
roles. In Economics, to illustrate further, macro involves aggregate activities of the entire
economy, such as overall productivity (e.g. GDP) or levels of unemployment; or changes
in these aggregate phenomena that have economy-wide effects.1
The early theories, stemming from the 19th century, described macro drivers as
“determinants” of migration, implying an automatic, or reflexive, connection between
them and people’s movement. If one nation’s economy declined while another’s im-
proved, large numbers of people were simply expected to move from the deteriorating
economy to the one that was doing better. Little attention was paid to how people
experienced the events that were occurring or how they decided upon a course of
action. In effect, agency – people’s ability to formulate a course of action independently
of structural constraints – was either dismissed or ignored. This tendency is characteristic
of most macro theories because they are trying to explain aggregates or large in scale
processes. As a result, they tend to be very abstract, and explaining precisely how macro
phenomena shape people’s actions can be problematic.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003158400-2
 The Economic Driver 27
From Push Pull to Neoclassical Macro
The contemporary emphasis upon economic drivers and economic disparities between
nations has as its primary predecessor the push-pull theory, and it is probably the oldest
theory of migration that is still discussed today. It was first presented, in systematic form,
by the geographer Ernest Ravenstein in the late 19th century. In a series of papers
analyzing census documents from a sample of nations, he concluded that most migration
was due to economic conditions that produced a spatial dis-equilibrium. Stated ab-
stractly, he proposed that movement between two places was a function of their masses
(i.e. population size) and the distance between them. This formulation was intended to
parallel Newton’s second law of motion. More concretely, he reported that it was the
difference between the limited opportunities of poor agricultural areas (“push”) and the
more attractive possibilities offered by industrial cities (“pull”) that accounted for most of
the migration he observed in the late 19th century. The moves in his sample largely
involved short distances and most moves were within nation rather than international.
However, he concluded that the push-pull model operated similarly for migration both
within and between nations, except for the tendency for international migrants to in-
volve a higher excess of males to females.2
Over the years, while the push-pull theory was able to explain some patterns of
migration, many analysts considered it to have fundamental flaws. The theory’s harshest
critics contended that it was a static model that simply listed differences between places
and then regarded the differences as “automatically” generating a flow of people be-
tween them in order to attain a balance or equilibrium. Migration, they argue, is better
conceptualized as a more dynamic process because there are all sorts of contingencies that
arise between a migrant’s origin and a destination and the push-pull theory does not
capture these dynamics.3
Many migration analysts nevertheless continue to rely upon some of the basic as-
sumptions of the push-pull model, but without referring to it as push-pull theory, and no
longer try to parallel Newton’s Laws of Motion. For example, Nicholas Van Hear and
colleagues state that, despite the criticisms, they continue to find the theory useful in
explaining empirically observed patterns of migration. In particular, they see merit in the
theory’s basic idea that external material conditions – i.e. macro structural forces, such as
fluctuations in the economic institution – shape migration process “by making certain
decisions, routes or destinations more likely.”4 In this pared down form it is a more
conventional macro economic theory and it has a lot of supporting empirical evidence.
Illustrative of contemporary research that relies upon such a macro model is a recent
global study conducted by the World Bank (WB). The investigators computed mean
(i.e. average) wages in a sample of 88 nations from the global north and south, and then
calculated wage differentials between each pair of nations. The wage differentials were
variable one. The WB researchers also obtained data on the number of emigrants moving
between each pair of nations in their sample. That was variable two. In their analysis they
found a strong positive relationship between these two variables: the greater the dif-
ference in mean wages between any two nations, the greater the emigration from the
lower to the higher wage nation. Because average wages in the U.S. were higher than in
Canada, for example, even though both were high-wage nations, more people emi-
grated from Slovenia (a lower-wage country) to the U.S. than to Canada. Overall, WB
found that a difference of $2,000 between an origin and destination nation made an
emigrant 10% more likely to choose that destination nation. Finally, separate analyses of
28 The Economic Driver
economic migrants and refugees showed that economic differences between nations
played a similar role in the migration decisions of each group.5

Leaving Venezuela
Venezuela presents an interesting nation in which to study the migration effects of a
macro economic driver because, to date, the largest emigration ever in the Americas has
involved the recent movement out of Venezuela. In 2013, the nation entered a reces-
sionary period that grew dramatically worse in (and after) 2015 when the nation’s oil
production declined along with the price of oil. Prior to 2013, Venezuela was the
wealthiest country in Latin America, due primarily to oil revenue, and had a surplus of
in- to out-migration. In 2013 there was also a change in government and a more au-
tocratic regime took power, and was widely accused of corruption and incompetence.
Oil revenue continued to decline, unemployment and under-employment increased and
it became almost impossible for many people to buy food, medicine, and other basic
necessities.6
Between 2016 and 2020, an estimated five to six million Venezuelans left the country
in search of jobs. From among nearby nations, Venezuelans emigrated to those with the
best economies. Columbia, with whom Venezuela shares hundreds of miles of common
border, is the closest nation, it has the highest income levels of Venezuela’s immediate
neighbors, and it has received, by far, the most Venezuelan emigrants. Just how powerful
the economic driver has been is illustrated by the thousands of Venezuelan parents who
left their children to emigrate to Colombia in hopes of finding work. See the discussion
in Box 2.1.

Box 2.1 Leaving Children Behind in Venezuela

By 2020, after years of a deteriorating economic situation, most people fortunate

enough to find any job in Venezuela could not earn enough to feed themselves, let
alone their children. In desperation, they emigrated to Colombia, and to Chile,
Peru, and elsewhere in hopes of finding work. Many parents left their children
behind, either because they feared that the trip would be too difficult or too
dangerous for their children or because they could not afford to take them along.
An estimated one million children were left with grandparents, other relatives, or in
the care of older siblings, children themselves. 7
Especially because many of the households were headed by single mothers, the
departure of the sole parent was usually extremely difficult for the children left
behind. As Aura Fernandez, a single mother, waited in front of her home for the
bus that would be the start of her trip to Colombia, her eight-year-old son
promised he would not cry, her 10-year-old daughter hid in the kitchen, and her
12-year-old son hauled her suitcase into the yard. She felt torn, but her children
were eating only one small meal a day, and she saw no alternatives in Venezuela.
She left her children under the supervision of her parents, and set out along with
thousands of other desperate Venezuelans. In Colombia, she found a job as a
housekeeper that paid better than any job she could find in Venezuela, and every
two weeks she sent as much money home as she could to her parents. 8
 The Economic Driver 29
How long migrating parents will ultimately be separated from their children is
often indefinite. Aura Fernandez, for example, returned home at Christmas but
found the children were still only eating one meal a day so she returned to Colombia.
To illustrate further: Ysabel Abad Rojas left three children under her parents’
oversight when she went to Colombia in search of work, but she had little success.
Penniless and frantic, she was easily recruited by drug gangs to smuggle cocaine out
of Colombia, but she was apprehended before she could cross the border, and jailed
in Colombia. As this is written, she is awaiting a likely sentence of 8 to 15 years. 9

At the same time that we recognize the impact of macro economic drivers, consider
the fact that despite economic adversity within a nation and economic disparities be-
tween nations, everyone does not leave lower-wage nations. In fact, more people usually
remain in a lower-wage nation than migrate to a higher-wage nation. Macro theories are
framed at a level of analysis that is necessarily removed from the actions of concrete
individuals. Therefore, macro drivers do not enable analysts to explain what accounts for
the differences among people because they do not explicate the processes that intervene
between macro events and people’s actions. In other words, there is no clarification of
how the macro event leads to concrete behavior (e.g. moving).10 Questions of this type
were instrumental in leading migration theorists to develop a micro level theory.

Micro Perspectives
Micro refers most fundamentally to small-in-scale analyses. In sociology it entails the
study of individuals and small groups, usually in face-to-face interaction. Micro eco-
nomics focuses upon decision-making by individuals and organizations, for example,
how they analyze supply and demand in setting prices. In geography, to illustrate further,
micro analyses examine relations between people and places in small spaces, such as a
neighborhood or a business office.11
Cutting across social science disciplines, micro analyses consistently emphasize the
deliberate actions of individuals within a perspective that assumes that macro structures
and processes may be influential, but are not deterministic. Agency is correspondingly
stressed. Finally, most of these theories assume that micro phenomena are the building
blocks of larger entities so that over the long run analysts can work inductively from
explanations of the local and specific to the more general and abstract.

Neoclassical Micro Theory

During the 1960s and 1970s, there were a number of journal articles that pushed mi-
gration theory toward more consideration of individuals’ cost-benefit assessments in
reaching the decision to migrate. The most basic migration postulate in the micro
perspective is that workers will continue to move as long as the marginal benefits exceed
the marginal costs, that is, as long as the incremental increase in benefits received by
migrants is greater than the incremental increase in their costs.
A notable contribution to the development of the micro perspective was a paper by
economist Michael Todaro which presented a behavioral model, focusing upon the
process through which people go in choosing either to remain or leave. While he
30 The Economic Driver
primarily discussed intra-urban moves, his theory was equally applicable to inter-nation
moves. He proposed that individuals’ decisions were based upon a rational calculation of
the net economic benefit that a move could entail. To migrate obviously entails costs
from the actual expense of moving to lost wages in the transition. People will not un-
dertake the costs of moving unless they think the eventual return will be worth it. The
relevant considerations are the size of the income differential between origin and des-
tination, plus the individuals’ calculation of the probability of finding employment in the
destination that would be sufficient to compensate for the costs of relocating.12
The development of models that could explain how individuals calculate rewards and
costs has remained a central concern of contemporary micro theorists. For example, a
major factor in determining net benefits is what Clemons and associates refer to as the
“place premium.” It is the increase in wages that is due to the place, itself, rather than the
training or skill of people in its labor force. To illustrate, in the U.S. compared to a large
sample of low-wage nations, there is an average place premium in purchasing power of
$13,600. (Purchasing power adjusts wages to reflect the costs of commodities in different
nations. See the explanation in Box 2.2.) The cost of moving includes diverse expenses,
such as travel fees, visa requirements and so on. So, the theoretical expectation would be
that workers would continue to leave low-wage nations and migrate to the U.S. as long
as the costs of the move were less than $13,600.13

Box 2.2 Remittances and Household Risk Avoidance

For households facing economic adversity, particularly in less wealthy nations with
limited safety nets, it is often considered the best strategy for one member of the
household to migrate to another nation whose employment opportunities may be
better. Household members can then more easily pool resources to cover the cost
of one of them traveling to another country rather than the entire household. For
example, in an impoverished Guatemalan village, the father of one young man sold
his last four goats for $2,000 to pay for the cost of his son’s migration. 27
The individual who leaves is usually expected to send money back to the people
left behind. These remittances are often of critical importance to the household,
and the individual who migrates usually feels a strong obligation to keep sending
money, even if economic conditions deteriorate in the destination nation. The
following examples involve migrants who left households behind in Mexico and
moved to the United States. In the summer of 2020, a Covid virus outbreak
slowed the U.S. economy, and good-paying jobs became harder for migrants to
get. They nevertheless felt great pressure to keep sending money home.
Elias Bruno found work for a construction company in Florida that enabled him
to send remittances that helped to support five people in his household who
remained in Mexico. When there were fewer construction projects because of the
economic slowdown, he began to station himself outside a hardware store waiting
for a homeowner or another contractor to come by and hire him on a daily basis.
“You have to make every sacrifice to feed your family,” he said. 28 Despite the
problems he has faced in finding enough work, he still continued to send them at
least $200 every month.
 The Economic Driver 31
Rafael Romero found a job working for a company in Maryland that both
finished and patched the asphalt in stores’ parking lots. He was earning $1400
per week until many businesses were closed by the epidemic, and no longer
spent money on their parking lots. During the good times, he was able to send
$600 per month to help support his extended family: his parents, children and
siblings. When a lot of the work disappeared, he was only able to remit $300 per
month so he left his temporary home and traveled 250 miles to Virginia, where
he heard there were more better-paying jobs. “We aren’t going to let down our
families who depend upon us,” he said. 29

In addition to placing an emphasis upon individual assessments, Todaro broadened

the narrow economic focus, recognizing that the potential costs people consider in-
clude the difficulty of adjusting to a new labor market and leaving family and friends.
Writing at the same time as Todaro, sociologist Everett Lee further elaborated on the
number of “intervening obstacles.” Here he noted other impediments to migration
such as immigration restrictions and lack of transportation. Noting such barriers has
remained an important part of contemporary research. For example, the previously
introduced World Bank (WB) study concluded that “economic costs and benefits
remain critical determinants of migration decisions …”14 However, WB analysts stated
that costs include not only physical distance between origins and intended destinations
but social-cultural differences between origins and intended destinations. Specifically,
inter-nation differences in language and culture acted as barriers to, and cost of, emigration
much the same as the physical distance between them.
Another important insight in the development of the micro perspective came from Lee
emphasizing that people have imperfect knowledge of the difference between origin and
potential destinations. They may make inaccurate assumptions, especially concerning job
availability in the potential destination and the likely reception given to newcomers. Even
if unrealistic, however, these perceptions influence the decision of whether or not to
migrate. Further, these perceptions systematically vary among individuals so that macro
differences among places are not the automatic migration driver. In other words, to un-
derstand how people reach the decision to migrate requires a micro-level analysis. For
example, older individuals may be less likely to migrate because their greater familiarity
with their place of residence may lead them to over-value it.15

Aspirations Versus Capability

There is also the matter of wanting to migrate as opposed to being able to migrate, and
the tendency for macro theories not to distinguish between them. Large in scale eco-
nomic downturns may make people wish that they could move elsewhere, but their
ability to do so is a separate matter and the distinction is most likely to arise in an
individual-level analysis. For example, Mexicans who live in rural areas are more likely
than their urban counterparts to want to migrate to another country because they
perceive their current opportunities as more limited. However, urban residents who
want to leave typically face fewer obstacles – because they tend to have more resources
and more access to transportation – and are therefore more likely to migrate than si-
milarly inclined people in non-urban regions of the country. Across both types of areas,
32 The Economic Driver
the desire to migrate correlates strongly with migration, but the correlation is stronger in
urban than rural areas. Stated differently, the rural areas of Mexico contain more in-
voluntary non-migrants.16
According to a Gallup World Poll Survey conducted in 140 nations between 2010
and 2015, more than 20% of the surveyed respondents expressed a desire to migrate to a
different nation. However, no large, multinational sample contained that large a pro-
portion of people who actually migrated. We noted in Chapter 1, for example, that
around 2015 about 3% of the world’s population was estimated to consist of international
migrants. Such large differences between desires to move and actual moves have led the
European Commission’s research group to warn forecasters that, “a wish to migrate is
not a reliable enough indicator … about future migration.”17
The macro drivers clearly impact people’s aspirations to move, but for many reasons
the relationship between aspiration and behavior is contingent rather than automatic. In
selecting a course of action in reaction to the same set of forces, variations occur because
people confront different sets of obligations. For example, family ties inhibit some people
from moving, but not others. In addition, some people can better afford the typical costs
of migration and have differential access to the necessary modes of transportation.
Furthermore, individuals and groups often differ in how the “same” situation is per-
ceived, and as a result they choose different courses of action. For example, members of
different religious groups may diverge in whether they see a political change as so
threatening to them as to suggest a need for members of the faith to emigrate.

Aspirations and the Inverted U

At the same time that the neoclassical theories helped to explain patterns of migration,
studies often reported some discrepancies between the theory and their data. In some
places, the observed rate of migration was less than would have been expected given the
amount of inequality between countries. In other cases, a higher than expected rate of
mobility has been observed to continue despite declining disparities between nations.18
One reason for the discrepancies between the theory and data lies in the relationship
between amount of wealth in country of origin and the magnitude of differences in
wealth between countries.
As adjusted per capita annual incomes in a nation increase to somewhere between
$6,000 and $8,000 (studies differ), there is a corresponding step for step increase in that
nation’s rate of emigration. This relationship is presumably due to the fact that as a
nation’s wealth increases, more people have the resources that can enable them to mi-
grate. This strong positive relationship between income and emigration is linear, that is,
it can be plotted on a straight line because as income increases there are proportional
increases in emigration. However, as the wealth of nations increases above $6–$8
thousand dollars per capita, emigration levels off and then declines. So, if an analysis
includes a wide range of nations, and not just the poor ones, the relationship between
income and emigration is better captured by an inverted U rather than a straight line.
The classic theory of the inverted U was presented in 1971 by geographer Wilbur
Zelinsky and is usually referred to as the “mobility transition theory.” He proposed that
societies go through a series of developmental stages (i.e. become more modern) pri-
marily determined by their wealth and fertility, and that these stages are associated with
different emigration patterns. At the lowest end of the development hierarchy, nations
are very poor and have very high birth rates. People in these societies tend to give little
 The Economic Driver 33
thought to emigrating, but in any case few could afford to move. As a nation moves
toward a more middle stage of development, more people are aware of alternatives and
more people have the requisite means to leave. Emigration rates increase; but as na-
tions’ wealth and modernity continue to increase toward a higher stage, people’s
incentive to move is reduced by greater opportunities at home. Rates of emigration
are again low.19
One of the most thorough assessments of the mobility transition or inverted U theory
was reported by economist Michael Clemens. Extrapolating from a dozen or more
studies, he concluded that within the low-income category, a nation’s rising income is
strongly associated with increased emigration, almost without exception, until nations
reach the mid-stage turning point. Emigration levels off at this point and then among
high-income nations it falls (but not below that of the poorest nations). The inverted U
pattern, Clemens concluded, is “unmistakable.” The policy implication is also clear: If a
wealthy destination nation (e.g. U.S.) wished to discourage emigration from the poorest
nations, providing economic aid to those nations would, at least in the short run, be
counter-productive.20
Digging deeper into the inverted U, Dao and associates say its shape can be best
understood by distinguishing between the effects of ability and aspiration to move. They
propose that ability continues to rise across all income stages and would, by itself, result
in a continuation of the linear relationship between income and emigration. Aspirations,
by contrast, level off as income increases, and then decline, and thereby account for the
inverted U. A few studies may provide some support for their contention, but as they
note, it can be difficult empirically (if not conceptually) to separate capability and as-
piration.21
Further insight into how aspirations to emigrate are influenced comes from studies
of young people in a number of nations. Of most relevance to us is the research that
has been conducted in nations, or regions within nations, that are experiencing
economic difficulties, but would not be placed into the lowest income levels. Many
rural areas in eastern Germany fit this description. There is consensus among studies in
finding that the primary impetus for young people in these places to emigrate would
be to improve their economic positions. However, the decision to move is not made
in a vacuum. Few people think about moving and make decisions in isolation. They
are typically enmeshed in friendship and family networks in which economic con-
ditions are socially defined as making emigration desirable and logical or unwise and
unnecessary.22
It would not be surprising if there were a relationship between relative economic
conditions and the nature of people’s shared definitions of their economic situation. In
that case, somewhat better local economic conditions would likely be paired with more
hopeful local social-cultural views and they would conjointly restrain emigration.
In sum, the micro neoclassical economic model brought agency into the migration
model, stressing the importance of individual differences in the evaluation of the costs
and benefits of moving or staying. Aggregate migration flows between nations – the
macro variable – are then seen as the cumulation of individual cost-benefit decisions.23
However, by the mid-1980s, many economically-oriented migration analysts believed
that micro perspectives had been taken too far, and that important macro con-
siderations were being overlooked, and they concluded that both the neoclassical
micro and macro models should be replaced by a new economics of labor migration
(NELM).
34 The Economic Driver
New Economics of Labor Migration
NELM was initially presented not only as a synthesis of the neoclassical macro and micro
perspectives but also as a new way to study migration, different from either of the two
previous approaches. Among its major innovations was a change in focal point, from a
micro emphasis upon individuals to an emphasis upon the household, or family, as the
decision-making unit. (In most instances, households overlap closely with either nuclear
or extended families, but focusing upon households enables analysts to deal with a
broader range of possible living arrangements.) It was in the household unit, according to
Stark and Bloom, that decision were made concerning whether all, some or none of the
members of the household should migrate.24

Meso Analysis
In emphasizing the role of the household, NELM brought the meso level into the
analysis. It is an intermediate level between the macro and the micro. Two types of
studies can be placed into this category: (1) studies of specific groups or organizations that
focus upon the ties among members. Following this approach, analysts frequently at-
tempt to view the way relationships form an interlocking network. Or (2) studies that
attempt to bridge the macro and micro, showing for example how individual cost-
benefit analyses are translated into aggregate patterns.25

Household Risk Avoidance

According to Stark and Bloom and other NELM advocates, in addition to wanting to
maximize their combined income, households consider risk mitigation a crucial criterion
in evaluating the stay versus go alternative. In less wealthy nations, which are the major
origins of economically-driven migration, there are a very limited number of ways in
which people can hedge their bets. Unlike wealthier nations, they usually have neither
government nor company offered insurance against a variety of adverse circumstances
that people could confront: crop failures, loss of employment, etc. As a result, households
in less wealthy nations often agree that one member of the household should leave to
find employment in another nation. Further, the travel and relocation costs will be a lot
less for one person than for the entire household. And if it does not work out for the
migrant, he or she will have a place to return, and all of the household’s accounts will not
have been placed in a single basket. On the other hand, if the migrant is successful, she or
he can send remittances back to the household members who remained behind (see
Box 2.2). Then, depending upon the relative success of the migrant in finding good
employment, those initially left behind may move to join the migrant. It is, therefore,
the household (rather than any individual) that is seeking to maximize income and
minimize risk.26

Relative Deprivation
NELM also proposed, unlike its immediate predecessors, that fluctuations in migration
would not necessarily correlate highly with inter-nation changes in economic disparity.
Even if a nation’s economic standing declined, increased out-migration might not occur if
leaving the country was not congruent with households’ concern with minimizing risk.
 The Economic Driver 35
And even if a nation’s economy improved and disparity with other nations decreased, how
the household was faring in comparison to others in the community or nation could also
serve as a driver. This introduced the long-standing sociological concept of “relative de-
privation” into the migration picture. This concept was formulated in studies of soldiers in
World War II which found that their dissatisfaction was related more to differences in
treatment, by rank, than to the absolute amount of deprivation they were experiencing. So
soldiers expressed more dissatisfaction back at the base where some people were living in
better conditions than others, and less dissatisfaction at the battlefields where everyone was
in the same miserable boat. The investigators concluded that how satisfied people were
with their situation depended largely upon how they saw themselves faring in comparison
to others. Feelings of deprivation, in other words, are based on an assessment of one’s
relative position.30 In any society, at any given time, some segments are likely to do better
than others. For those households that see themselves lagging behind, relative deprivation
can be an incentive to migrate, even if their nation’s overall economy is improving.

Conclusions
Although NELM broke new ground, it has not been free from criticism. Particularly
relevant are the issues raised by economist Alexandre Abreu. While he approved of
NELM’s substituting households for individuals as the focal unit, he felt that in following
NELM analysts were still placing too much emphasis upon economic motivations, and
correspondingly, paying too little attention to within-household dynamics. How, for
example, do households reach decisions concerning who among them should migrate?
How do gender and age affect these decisions? More interdisciplinary analyses were needed
to answer these questions. Finally, Abreu argued that NELM under-appreciated how
structural constraints affect migration decisions. In effect, NELM was criticized for too
closely following its micro predecessor rather than balancing it with a macro perspective.31
Many of the criticisms offered by Abreu and others are currently being addressed in
contemporary studies. For example, there is a growing literature on household decision-
making dynamics in relation to migration, and it involves diverse contributions not only
from economists but from sociologists, geographers, anthropologists and others.32 And
the macro approach, as we have noted with contemporary examples, continues to have
adherents who are able to demonstrate that a macro perspective can explain large-scale
migrations.

Actual Economic Returns

While not every migrant seeking better economic opportunities in another nation ac-
tually finds them, there are a number of studies that report moving to a wealthier country
is typically associated with personal economic gain. To illustrate, a group of economists
compared the wages (adjusted for differences in purchasing power between nations) of
people who migrated to the U.S. to the wages of those who remained in the same low-
wage nations as the ones the migrants left. In an effort to control, or at least minimize,
differences between those who moved and those who were stationary, the entire sample
consisted of men, 35 to 39 years of age, with high school education or less. On average,
the economists found that the emigrants’ adjusted earnings in the U.S. were about five
times greater than the earnings of similarly aged and educated men from the same nations
(mostly in the global south) who did not migrate – a substantial place premium.33
36 The Economic Driver
Other research suggests that moving to a higher-income nation, even on a part-year
basis can yield a sizeable economic return. New Zealand, for example, brings in a large
group of seasonal migrants from low-income nations who return every year to work on
farms during planting and harvesting periods. Sampling from within these low-wealth
nations, Gibson and McKenzie compared the incomes of households with such seasonal
workers to those without. They found, over a two-year period, that incomes of the
households with a seasonal migrant increased by over 30% relative to the households
without a migrant. From interviews, they also found that people’s subjective feelings of
economic well-being were considerably higher in the households that contained a
seasonal migrant.34
In sum, research suggests that those who emigrate from a low-income to a high-
income nation can expect earnings substantially higher than that of their contemporaries
who remain behind; but the cost of living also tends to be higher in high-income na-
tions. Will the benefits be as great as they appear? If migrants manage to earn five times
more, for example, will their purchasing power be similarly enhanced? An interesting
way to answer this question is presented in Box 2.3 which examines earnings and
purchasing power of McDonald’s workers in different nations.

Box 2.3 The Real Cost of a Big Mac to McDonald’s Workers

A “real” wage rate, according to economists, is calculated by dividing wages by the

price of various products and services. The resultant figure indicates how much an
hour of work, by an average paid worker, can buy. The best known of these
calculations is Purchasing Price Parity (PPP) and it is often used to compare how
much the same basket of commonly purchased goods costs workers in different
nations in terms of hours of work. So, if the average worker in Nation A can
purchase that basket of goods with earnings from 30 minutes of work and it takes a
worker in Nation B one hour to buy a comparable basket, then the effective
purchasing power (i.e. the real wage rate) in Nation A is twice that of Nation B. 35
One problem with the basket of goods often used in comparing nations’ PPP is
that there are inter-nation differences in what goods and services are commonly
purchased. Potatoes are more important in some nation’s food baskets than rice in
others; people in some nations regularly go to movie theaters, while people in
other nations rarely attend. Comparability can, therefore, only be approximated.
Economist Orley Ashenfelter decided to substitute a Big Mac for the basket of
goods. It is widely consumed sandwich all over the world, rich nations and poor,
north and south, and it is as close as one can find to an identical product wherever
it is sold. And to compute PPP in each nation, he focused upon the wages paid to
the average McDonald’s crew member. 36
In wealthier nations, McDonald’s workers could purchase a lot more burgers with
each hour’s work than workers in poorer nations. Given the local cost of a Big Mac,
and the wages of local McDonald’s employees, one hour of work was enough to
purchase almost three Big Macs in Japan; almost two and one-half in the U.S. and a
little over two in Canada. In the economically less well-off nations, by contrast,
McDonald’s workers could afford to buy much less. For example, overall in a large
group of Latin American nations (Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, etc.) it took
 The Economic Driver 37
almost three hours for a crew member to buy a single Big Mac. In other words,
McDonald’s workers in Japan had nearly nine times more purchasing power than
workers in the Latin nations (i.e. 3 per hour versus 1/3 per hour). Generalizing from
the McDonald’s data, Ashenflelter concluded that, “there are extraordinarily large
differences in the effective wage rates received by workers doing the same work and
using the same sets of skills in the rich and poor countries.” 37

The Welfare Magnet Thesis

Given the acknowledged importance of economic drivers to global migration, some
analysts have raised the question of whether generous welfare benefits operate like good-
paying jobs as a magnet for emigration. The welfare magnet theory proposes that some
migrants who would otherwise remain at home may decide to migrate in order to obtain
more generous benefits abroad; and then if the job market in the destination country
does not turn out well, sizeable welfare outlays may discourage return migration. This
theory was originally presented by George Borjas, and he provided support for the
theory by examining where immigrants clustered in the U.S.38
The major cost of migrating to the U.S. from another country, Borjas argued, is
getting to the U.S. To then decide to settle in a state with generous welfare benefits
rather than a closer-to-the-border state with limited benefits entails a very small marginal
cost. To demonstrate that migrants would choose to put down roots in generous states,
he examined the distribution of migrants, by state, and ranked states on the size of the
welfare benefits they offered. He found that there was more clustering of immigrants in
states that offered the highest benefits, and this finding seemed consistent with his theory.
A number of studies followed, examining the welfare magnet theory in different
groups of nations and reporting inconsistent results. Overall, they have found only
conditional support for the welfare magnet theory. The welfare expenditures of nations
have sometimes been shown to be positively related to the size of migrant inflows,
especially for migrants from the global south, though the magnitude of the effect has
generally been small. Many of these studies have also been criticized for their lack of
statistical controls, raising the possibility that it is not welfare benefits that are the at-
traction, but some other variable that happens to be associated with those benefits. For
example, nations with generous benefits tend to be wealthier, and these nations usually
offer more jobs with good wages. So, perhaps it was the high wages and not the welfare
benefits that drew the migrants. Particularly relevant is an analysis by sociologist Aaron
Ponce who found that when he held constant other economic variables that are usually
associated with a nation’s in-migration rate, the overall effects of welfare benefits on
migration were markedly reduced. His data suggested that the high cost of living and
high taxes that were associated with generous welfare benefits might discourage eco-
nomically motivated in-migration from all but the poorest nations.39
Some of the inconsistency in findings may also be due to differences in the types of
welfare benefits that were examined in the different studies. For example, if the migrant
pool has many families with young children, then the size of the old-age benefits a nation
offers may be of little interest. To focus more specifically upon the possible attractiveness
of different types of welfare, De Jong and associates studied migration patterns within 25
European nations; that is, people who left one of the European nations to settle in
38 The Economic Driver
another European nation. This sample, they state, provides a “natural laboratory” in
which to isolate the effects of welfare because these nations differ from each other in the
welfare domains that they prioritize; and entry policies are irrelevant because of free
movement within the EU.40
They examined migration between European nations that occurred between 2002
and 2008, focusing upon the relationship between a nation’s yearly welfare expenditures,
the type of welfare emphasized, and the number of in-migrants the nation attracted in
the following year. They found that when a nation offered generous family benefits, it
attracted large numbers of young families with children while generous old-age benefits
attracted large numbers of the oldest migrants. However, a government’s spending on
unemployment benefits not only failed to attract people of working age, it actually had a
negative effect.
Finding for young families and the oldest migrants are consistent with the welfare
magnet theory and may need no additional explanation. The finding on unemployment
benefits is inconsistent with the theory, and the investigators speculated on why this
relationship would be negative. They suggest two possibilities: (1) perhaps younger
adults are less interested in unemployment benefits because they have not worked long
enough to qualify for generous unemployment assistance and/or (2) perhaps higher
unemployment expenditures imply labor market problems which discourage would-be
migrants of working age. The investigators left the unanswered questions for future
studies to resolve. We can nevertheless conclude that the welfare magnet theory receives
the most support when the generosity of a nation’s welfare benefits corresponds with
certain demographic characteristics of migrants. Under these conditions, welfare benefits
can operate like an economic driver of migration.

Migrant Selectivity
While studies consistently report that moving from a low-income to a high-income
nation, even on a part-time basis, results in economic gains, attributing a precise causal
effect to such emigration has been hampered by methodological concerns. What espe-
cially confounds analyses of migration’s economic returns is the possibility that in any
samples of nations being compared there were systematic differences between those
people who emigrated and those who remained behind. If those who opted to leave
were either better or less educated or either more or less motivated, for example, then
any observed differences between the outcomes of migrants and non-migrants could be
due to pre-existing differences. This introduces the issue of selectivity, and in recent
years it has been one of the most studied issues in the migration literature.
It is very difficult to specify exactly when research interest in selectivity began, but
there are a couple of early publications that warrant mention. One of the earliest sys-
tematic studies of differences between migrants and non-migrants from the same area
was reported by Carle Zimmerman, a rural sociologist. Around 1920 he studied young
people from farm families in the state of Minnesota, some of whom moved to nearby
towns and cities, and some of whom remained in their rural areas. He was interested in
how the movers and the stayers differed from each other and he calculated the differ-
ences between them in age, gender, family wealth, and so on. While Zimmerman did
not examine international migration and did not identify his research question as one of
selectivity, he clearly helped to introduce the issue into the migration literature.41
 The Economic Driver 39
Methodological Issues
Some years after Zimmerman’s work, there was a stream of methodological publications
that were not specifically directed to migration that nevertheless helped later to focus
attention upon selectivity in migration. Of particular importance, Social Psychologists
Cook and Campbell published a book in 1979 that examined a variety of interpretive
issues in non-experimental research (that is, studies that lack the controls typically found
in an experimental design). They noted that any time two groups are being compared on
the effects of an event or experience it is possible that the people who happen to be in
one of the groups will have had, prior to the research, an experience that people in the
other group has not had. It can then be very difficult to separate the effects of that prior
experience from the effects of the variable being studied. This problem, they concluded,
besets all types of non-experimental research, but they did not assign a label to the
problem.42 A few years later, sociologist Stanley Lieberson expanded upon Cook and
Campbell’s work, further clarifying the need to separate the impact of an experience or
event from effects that were better attributed to a prior selective sorting process. He
explicitly identified this methodological issue as a selectivity problem.43
One model against which Lieberson, Campbell and Cook, and others were comparing
most social science research was a laboratory experiment on rats conducted by an animal
behaviorist. The subjects (e.g. rats) are specially bred to eliminate genetic differences, and
they are kept under highly controlled conditions to eliminate the possibility of differ-
ences in their experiences prior to an experiment. Then the subjects are differentially
exposed to some condition in a single experiment which enables an investigator to infer
that any differences observed among the animals are due to the variables the investigator
manipulated in the experiment. When humans are the subjects in research, the same
degree of pre-experiment control is obviously impossible. The alternative for social
scientists is to randomly assign subjects to experimental and control groups. In principle
that will eliminate any systematic differences between those in each group. Any observed
differences can then be attributed only to the variable being studied.
However, almost all migration studies follow a non-experimental design, and are
therefore vulnerable to a selectivity problem because the past experiences of people are
not randomly controlled. The people who happen to move or to remain behind may,
prior to the time the research began, have differed from each other in ways that can
confound efforts to interpret any differences that are later observed between them.
Some migration studies have designed special procedures to examine selectivity with
respect to specific variables, such as education, income, physical health, etc. A number of
studies have also followed a method initially described by Cynthia Feliciano. To measure
educational selectivity, she constructed an index that compared the educational level of
groups of migrants to the overall educational level of their origin country’s population.
To be more specific, she compared the migrants to their birth cohort in their origin
country in order to eliminate the effect of changes that may have occurred in the origin
country after the migrant’s cohort completed their education.44 This procedure has been
widely followed in selectivity studies focusing upon both education and income.
If, on the other hand, there are substantial regional differences in the population
within the origin nation, Feliciano later suggested that the most appropriate group to
compare to the migrants might not be the entire country’s population, but the popu-
lation in the migrants’ region of origin, assuming that most of the migrants came from
40 The Economic Driver
the same region. The objective, of course, is to identify the most equivalent non-migrant
group in the home country in order to minimize pre-existing differences.45

Socioeconomic Status Selectivity

Socioeconomic status usually refers to the standing of a person relative to others in a
community or society. As its name implies, it involves a ranked hierarchy that combines
people’s social and economic attributes. It is most typically measured by level of edu-
cation and the prestige of one’s occupation. Other variables, such as lifestyle, wealth or
place of residence, are also sometimes utilized as measures of socioeconomic status; but
particularly when combined, education and occupation correlate highly with many other
variables, including income.46
Depending upon the data that are available, some studies rely upon a single indicator,
for example, education. Others rely upon a combination of variables, with education and
occupation the most commonly utilized. Because all of the socioeconomic indicators
tend to be inter-related. the use of different measures usually produces similar results. (At
some times and places, immutable characteristics, such race and ethnicity can also be
involved in determining socioeconomic standing.)
A number of studies, such as Feliciano’s noted above, have found that emigrants are
positively selected on education and other indicators of socioeconomic status compared
to homestayers. Particularly if they are living in a low-income nation with limited
employment opportunities, people with more education and skills may feel trapped, and
be more inclined to emigrate as a result. However, there are also studies that report a
negative association between migration and education.47 Especially if educational re-
quirements are increasing in the home nation, less educated people may find it difficult
to find work, and may decide to emigrate in response.
Most of the studies on educational or income selectivity have examined a single ethnic
group’s international movement from one origin to one destination, so it is likely that
different findings are at least in part a function of variations among migrant streams. For
example, Mexican migrants to the U.S. have tended to be less educated (hypo-selected)
than their non-migrant counterparts while Nigerian migrants to the U.S. have been
much more educated (hyper-selected) than non-migrant Nigerians. In addition, com-
pared to the U.S. population, Mexicans are under-educated while Nigerians are over-
educated.48 (There are also substantial selectivity effects on the second generation which
are discussed in Chapter 4.)
Some insight into why there are differences in socioeconomic selectivity among
emigrant groups comes from a study of asylum seekers from five different nations. All
applied to Germany for asylum between 2013 and 2016, claiming that they faced threats
to their lives at home, though actual threat levels varied among their countries of origin.
Lucas Guichard was able to obtain data on the would-be migrants level of education at
the time they applied, and this enabled him to examine self-selection patterns. He found
that asylum seekers fleeing Iraq and Syria were positively selected. Migrants trying to
leave Albania and Servia, by contrast, tended to be negatively selected on education
while there was no apparent self-selection for asylum seekers from Afghanistan.49
A number of different conditions were apparently responsible for the variations in self-
selections. For example, Guichard reported that Serbians seemed able to take advantage
of a large network of Serbians who previously migrated to Germany. Their assistance
reduced migration costs which enabled people with fewer economic resources, due to
 The Economic Driver 41
limited education, to migrate. The result was a pattern of negative socioeconomic self-
selection for the Serbs. To illustrate further, the asylum seekers from Iraq and Syria had a
longer distance to travel and faced higher transportation costs. This placed more of a
premium on financial resources, hence migrants from these nations tended to positively
self-select on education.
Even among migrants from the same nation there appear to be differing selectivity
effects across time, or among earlier and later migrant streams referred to by demo-
graphers as “developmental stages.” Across a number of origin and destination nations
there are often three fairly distinct migrating stages:

1 A pioneer stage in which migrants tend to be younger and unmarried, with fewer
familial or employment attachments that could restrain their emigration. They also
tend to come from families with well above average financial resources to finance
the emigration. The pioneers have been described as the innovative risk takers who
pave the way for later waves.
2 A take-off or early adopter stage in which people benefit from the experience of the
pioneers and as information spreads across social networks, there is an increase in the
number of people who migrate and selectivity is reduced. Differences between those
who stay and those who leave become smaller both with respect to socioeconomic
characteristics and attitudinal variables.
An interesting example of the first two stages is provided by a migration stream
from Governador Valaderes, Brazil, to Boston. Its first stage began when a small
group of entrepreneurial women left their community and found that they were
able to support themselves by cleaning the homes of suburban Boston families.
They were successful in attracting more clients and slowly established home
cleaning services. They then began to recruit a larger group of women from their
community of origin. The pioneers helped the women in the next wave to make
travel arrangements and helped to place them into positions as domestic
cleaners.50
3 A late adopter stage in which most of the people inclined to emigrate have already
left so the number continuing to leave is markedly reduced, and those who do leave
in this stage may either be representative of their nation or hypo-selected on
socioeconomic variables.51

The initially slow increase in the rate of emigration followed by a more rapid rate of
increase has been described by Douglas Massey and others as the theory of “cu-
mulative causation.” The theory initially emphasized how the impetus to emigrate
diffuses within a community and becomes a self-sustaining process. Later research
led to a modification in which the rapid increase was expected to level off at some
point as the destination nation becomes saturated with more emigres than it can
support and the outflow results in better opportunities in the origin nation for those
who remain.52 (The theory of cumulative causation is discussed at length in
Chapter 3.)
In sum, with respect to socioeconomic status specific groups of migrants tend with
some consistency to be either hypo- or hyper-selected making it essential explicitly
to take selectivity effects into account when examining migrants’ outcomes. It is
often very difficult, however, totally to control for possible selectivity effects because
the migration statistics that are available often lack some of the requisite data.
42 The Economic Driver
Further, even when more data are available, the statistical manipulations often
provide less control than the control that would be built into an experiment.
Fortunately, a New Zealand migration lottery offered a serendipitous opportunity to
conduct a natural experiment in which the effects of selectivity could be largely
controlled. To be specific, each year for several years, New Zealand let a quota of
250 people from Tonga permanently migrate. The Kingdom of Tonga comprises a
series of Polynesian islands, 1500 air miles from New Zealand. It is an extremely poor
nation in which many people make bare subsistence living from fishing or farming.53
Winning New Zealand’s lottery enables Tonga residents to move from a very low to
a high-wage nation, and because the drawing is random, one can safely assume that
there are no systematic differences between winners (who get to move) and losers
(who remain behind). The results of the study are summarized in Box 2.4.

Box 2.4 New Zealand’s Migration Lottery

Thousands of Tongans applied to New Zealand’s migration program each year and
250 were randomly selected annually. Based upon the typical size of the applicant
pool, one’s chances of being chosen were about one in ten. Once people were
selected they were given six months to find a full-time job in New Zealand, after
which they could file a final residence application. Spouses and unmarried children
could accompany the lottery winner meaning it was usually a nuclear family that
migrated; but the total number of family members who were going to move
counted against the 250-person quota.
Over a period of three years, John Gibson and associates found that the typical
lottery winner was 33 years old at the time of the application, two-thirds were
married, and 84% of the winners eventually migrated to New Zealand. A few were
later unreachable, leaving the investigators with a sample of 194 migrating
households from whom they were able to obtain information. The investigators
were also able to go back to the Tongan villages and obtain information about 143
lottery losers.
The baseline data showed that the two groups – (1) winners who emigrated and
(2) those who applied but were not chosen – had very similar incomes in Tonga
prior to the lottery. This further reinforced the assumption that the two groups
were essentially the same, separated only by a random event, winning the lottery,
and therefore self-selection differences among migrants would be eliminated
because all had entered the lottery, wishing to emigrate.
After their first year in New Zealand the migrants’ adjusted wages were more
than two and one-half times greater than those who remained involuntarily in
Tonga because they lost in the lottery; and this difference between the two
groups only increased across time. After 10 years the migrants earned, on
average, about three times more than those who remained in Tonga. The
investigators concluded that it was difficult to imagine any other way, besides
migrating to a high-wage nation, for people in low-income nations to
comparably increase their wages. 54
 The Economic Driver 43
Socioeconomic Selectivity and Downward Mobility
The data previously reviewed in this chapter indicated that migration often resulted in
substantial economic gains. However, most of the relevant studies did not attempt to
measure or control socioeconomic selectivity effects. Several recent studies now suggest
that upward mobility may be problematic for positively selected migrants, especially if
they are moving to an economically advanced nation with stricter labor force regulations
than those found in their country of origin. Under these conditions, for many migrants,
positive selectivity on socioeconomic status can mean downward mobility.
Engzell and Ichou examined upward and downward mobility in a large and re-
presentative sample of immigrants to 18 European countries. They came from over 100
diverse nations. For each person in their sample, they measured selectivity by comparing
the person’s level of education to the average education of people of their gender and
birth cohort in their country of origin. The investigators also obtained data on the
immigrants’ current income and occupation. Comparing immigrants’ status in their
countries of origin to their status in their destination nation provided the investigators
with a measure of upward or downward mobility for each of their respondents.55
From the analysis, the researchers found that migration resulted in a loss of status for
many of their positively selected migrants Most of those in this category were people
who left managerial and professional positions in their home countries and found they
could not duplicate these positions in their new nations. Several examples are discussed
in Case Study 2–3 at the end of this section.
From questionnaires, the investigators found that many of those who left privileged
positions in their homelands that they were unable to duplicate were disappointed in
their new nations. How much better they had fared in their countries of origin con-
tinued to shape their perception and evaluations. Specifically, they saw themselves as
worse off financially than they had been and they were less optimistic about the future
than other immigrants who were currently in the same socioeconomic position but had
not experienced downward mobility.56 Some examples are presented in Box 2.5.

Box 2.5 Status Loss for Positively Selected Migrants

The post-migration experiences of a few migrants to the U.S., all of whom left
economically less advanced nations, illustrate how downward mobility can be
commonplace for those who, socioeconomically, are positively selected migrants. 57
Julio Godoy emigrated from Guatemala in 2013 after spending the previous 25
years in high-level, very well-paying managerial positions at several large banks.
He expected to find a good position in banking in the U.S. as soon as he improved
his English skills so he devoted himself to studying English, but he progressed
slowly and when his savings ran out he was forced to take a job cleaning airplanes.
He spent years working 60 hours per week at the airport which left him little time
to study. His English hardly improved, leaving him stuck in what he described as a
vicious cycle.
Aeksandra Dino had a Master’s Degree and worked as a psychologist in her native
Albania before migrating to the U.S. in 2015. Potential U.S. employers would
not offer her a comparable position so she finally took a job slicing meat in a deli.
44 The Economic Driver
Several years later she was still hoping to duplicate the position she held in Albania,
but without success. In the meanwhile, she volunteered at a local community center,
counseling homeless people.
Rafel AlHiali had a medical degree and nine years of experience in his native
Iraq before he migrated to the U.S. in 2012. Lacking a medical residency program
in the U.S. he was not permitted to practice in the U.S. He tried for years to be
accepted into a medical residency, but was denied admission because he lacked
clinical experience in the U.S. He eventually took a position as a part-time medical
interpreter for Iraqi patients, and kept hoping he would again be able to practice
medicine.

Personality Selectivity
From a psychological perspective, it has been proposed that emigrants may be positively
selected on some personality traits as well as according to socio-economic attributes.
Given external circumstances that provide opportunities to emigrate, those members of a
community that possess a “migrant personality” will presumably be the ones most likely
to move. The traits most frequently assumed to be the components of the migrant
personality include high motivation to achieve and a willingness to take risks. These
inferences have sometimes been suggested by results that seemed, to investigators, to be
anomalous; for example, when the aspirations of migrants were found to exceed those of
native-born, even when socioeconomic status was held constant. (With regard to
educational aspirations, this anomaly has been described as an “immigrant optimism
paradox.” Because most of the research focuses upon the children of migrants, i.e. the
second generation, this research is discussed in Chapter 4.)
In other studies, the personality traits assumed to characterize migrants have been
inferred from their behavior, but direct measures have been lacking. Pioneer migrants,
for example, take a chance when they move to unchartered places where they will be
largely alone as newcomers. This has led some migration analysts to see the migrants as
adventurous and infer that they must be more inclined than most to take risks.58
When migrant’s personalities have been directly examined it has typically involved
reliance upon questionnaires. These are paper and pencil assessments that relay upon
how people see themselves rather than clinical evaluations designed to produce pro-
fessional personality profiles. A few of the studies have reported some personality dif-
ferences between movers and stayers, but the samples were not adequate to support any
strong conclusions. To illustrate, a group of analysts studied one-half dozen personality
traits in a sample of Poles living in the Netherlands and compared those results to a
sample of Poles who remained in Poland. On most of the measured traits, the two
groups were mostly alike, but there appeared to be significant differences with respect to
interpersonal attachment styles and assertiveness.59
However, the Netherlands study relied upon a sample of convenience that is not
known to generate representative samples. Specifically, the investigators chose people
they happed to find at schools and churches, without any systematic selection procedure.
Despite the fact that they had a suspect sample, that they examined only one group of
migrants in a single country, and the fact that movers and stayers were not significantly
different from each other on most of the measured personality traits, they concluded that
their finding provided support for inferring that there was a migrant personality.
 The Economic Driver 45
To illustrate further, Bhai and Dramski worked from a representative national survey
to create a sub-sample of respondents who had migrated to the U.S. and compared this
sub-sample to those respondents who were born and remained in the U.S. This yielded
better sub-samples than the study of Poles described above, but the data were still
confined to a single destination nation. Their results again showed that movers and
stayers were alike on many of the personality traits measured, but as predicted, they
found that people who had emigrated to the U.S. answered the personality self-
perception questions in a way that indicated they were more open to new experiences
than those born in the U.S.60 They concluded that their findings showed that im-
migrants had a distinct set of character skills even though this might seem a little too
strong an assertion given their results.
As of this writing, it appears that the most complete assessment of personality traits in
relation to migration was probably the study reported by a team of sociologists led by
Javier Polavieja. Their research involved samples of recent migrants to Europe from nine
different nations. Their questionnaire contained indicators of: desires for wealth, the
importance of success, adventurousness and risk-taking. These indicators correlated very
highly with each other and were combined into an index which the authors described as
a measure of achievement-related motivational orientations (ARMOs). They then
compared the scores of recent migrants to samples of their non-migrant co-nationals.
They found some partial and limited support for the migrant personality thesis, but for
the most part their findings for various immigrant groups were not consistent. For ex-
ample, there were generally positive signs of ARMO selectivity for Andrean males and
for both Brazilian males and females who migrated to Portugal. However, there was
generally negative selectivity for Moroccan females, for both Romanian males and fe-
males who migrated to Spain, and for Polish migrants in Scandanavia. And for several
groups who had migrated to different nations, there was no indication of positive or
negative selectivity. Overall, the authors concluded, motivational selectivity does not
follow any clear pattern.61
Soysal and Cebolla-Boada proposed that many studies may not find much evidence of
migrants’ personality selectivity because the samples analyzed typically contain large
number of less skilled and less educated people. For them, economic motivations may
simply overwhelm any differences in personality. To see whether sampling has unduly
affected these findings, the investigators selected a more homogenously skilled and
educated sample consisting entirely of Chinese students who were pursuing under-
graduate or graduate degrees. One group remained in China and another group migrated
to colleges in Germany and the U.K.
All of the students filled out questionnaires which asked their self-perceptions on four
attributes thought to be characteristic of a migrants’ personality: creative, independence,
risk-taking and orientation to achievement. When the personality self-appraisals of the
students who migrated were compared to those who remained in China, the results
showed no differences. The students who left China to study displayed a degree of
positive socioeconomic selectivity (as indicated by their fathers’ education and occu-
pation), but evidence of personality selectivity was totally absent.62
In sum, the research we have reviewed has reported only very limited support for the
existence of a migrant personality that would selectively predispose some people to
emigrate. However, this line of research has been particularly hampered by measurement
and sampling problems compared to studies of socioeconomic selectivity.
46 The Economic Driver
Notes
1 For further discussion of the macro approach to migration, see the “Introduction” in Caroline B.
Brettell and James F. Hollifield (Eds), Migration Theory. Routledge, 2015.
2 Ernest Ravenstein, “The laws of migration.” Journal of the Statistical Society, 48, 1885.
3 See, for example, Hein de Haas, “The Determinants of International Migration.” Working Paper
32, International Migration Institute, University of Oxford, April, 2011.
4 Nicholas Van Hear, Oliver Bakewell and Katy Long, “Push-pull plus.” Journal of Ethnic and
Migration Studies, 44, 2018.
5 The World Bank, Moving for Prosperity. July, 2018.
6 Javier Corrales, Venezuela’s Transition to Authoritarianism. Brookings Institution, 2020.
7 Tom Phillips and Clavel Rangel, “A million children left behind.” The Guardian, February 20,
2020.
8 Julie Turkewitz, “You Grow Up Fast.” The New York Times, March 25, 2020.
9 Phillips and Rangel, op.cit.
10 For further discussion, see Peter Hedstrom and Petri Ylikoski, “Causal mechanisms in the social
sciences.” Annual Review of Sociology, 36, 2010.
11 See, for example, Christopher C. Liu and Matt Marx, “Micro-geography.” Industry and Innovation,
27, 2020.
12 Michael P. Todaro, “A model of labor migration and urban unemployment.” American Economic
Review, 59, 1969.
13 Michael Clemens, Claudio Montenegro and Lant Pritchett, “Bounding the Price Equivalent of
Migration Barriers.” Center for Global Development, Working Paper 428, June, 2016.
14 The World Bank, Moving for Prosperity. July, 2018, p 85.
15 Everett Lee, “A theory of migration.” Demography, 3, 1966.
16 Mathew J. Creighton, “The role of aspirations in domestic and international migration.” The Social
Science Journal, 50, 2013. For a review of the aspiration-mobility literature, see Jergen Carling and
Kerilyn Schewel, “Revisiting aspiration and ability in international migration.” Journal of Ethnic and
Migration Studies, 44, 2018.
17 S. Migali, et al., International Migration Drivers. European Union, 2018, p. 7. Also see this volume for
further discussion of the Gallup Poll.
18 Ann-Maria Eurenius, “A family affair.” Population Studies, 24, 2020.
19 Wilbur Zelinsky, “The hypothesis of the mobility transition.” Geographical Review, 61, 1971.
20 Michael A. Clemens, “Does Development Reduce Migration?” IZA Working Paper 8592,
October, 2014.
21 T.H. Dao, et al., “Migration and Development.” Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales
de l’Universite catholique de Louvain. Discussion Paper 2016–29.
22 For a review of these studies, see Frank Meyer, “Navigating aspirations and expectations.” Journal of
Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44, 2018.
23 See the summary in, Douglas S. Massey, et al., “Theories of international migration.” Population and
Development Review, 19, 1993.
24 Oded Stark and David E. Bloom, “The new economics of labor migration.” American Economic
Review, 75, 1985.
25 For further discussion, see Sandro Serpa and Carlos M. Ferriera, “Macro, meso and micro levels of
social analysis.” International Journal of Social Science Studies, 7, 2019.
26 For further discussion, see Massey, op.cit.
27 The New York Times Magazine Climate Issue, July 26, 2020.
28 Miriam Jordan, “Immigrants Keep Sending Money Home Despite Job Losses.” In ibid., p A7.
29 Ibid.
30 Samuel A. Stouffer, et al., Studies in Social Psychology in World War II. Princeton University, 1949.
31 Alexandre Abreu, “The New Economics of Labor Migration.” Forum for Social Economics, 41, 2012.
32 See, for example: David Kretschmer, “Explaining Differences in Gender Role Attitudes among
Migrant and Native Adolescents in Germany.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44, 2018; and
Sebnem Eroglu, “Are movers more egalitarian than stayers?” International Migration Review, 54,
2020.
33 Clemons, op.cit.
 The Economic Driver 47
34 John Gibson and David McKenzie, “The Development Impact of New Zealand’s Seasonal Worker
Policy.” In Robert E. Lucas (Ed), International Handbook on Migration and Economic Development.
Edward Elgar, 2015.
35 For further discussion of the calculation of PPP, and its shortcomings, see The World Bank Group,
Purchasing Power Parities and the Real Size of the World Economy. The World Bank, 2014.
36 Orley Ashenfelter, “Comparing Real Wages.” NBER Working Paper #18006, April, 2012.
37 Ibid., p 22.
38 George J. Borjas, “Immigration and welfare magnets.” Journal of Labor Economics, 17, 1999.
39 Aaron Ponce, “Is welfare a magnet for migration?” Social Forces, 96, 2019.
40 Petra W. De Jong, Alicia Adsera and Helga A. De Valk, “The Role of Welfare in Locational
Choices.” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geographie, 111, 2020.
41 Zimmerman published several papers, and a book, focusing upon this research question. See, for
example, Carle C. Zimmerman, “The migration to towns and cities.” American Journal of Sociology,
32, 1927.
42 Thomas D. Cook and Donald T. Campbell, Quasi-Experimentation. Houghton-Mifflin, 1979.
43 Lieberson entitled chapter two of his book, “Selectivity.” See Stanley Lieberson, Making It Count.
University of California, 1987.
44 See Cynthia Feliciano, “Educational selectivity in U.S. immigration.” Demography, 42, 2005.
45 Cynthia Feliciano, “Immigrant selectivity effects on health, labor market and educational
outcomes.”Annual Review of Sociology, 46, 2020.
46 For further discussion, see the essays in, Geoffrey Perkins (Ed), Socioeconomic Status. Nova Science,
2016.
47 See, for example, Michael S. Rendall and S.W. Parker, “Two decades of negative educational
selectivity of Mexican migrants to the United States.” Population and Development Review, 40, 2014.
48 For further discussion, see Van C. Tran, et al., “Hyper-selectivity, racial mobility, and the remaking
of race.” The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 4, 2018.
49 Lucas Guichard, “Self-selection of asylum seekers.” Demography, 57, 2020.
50 For further discussion of the Brazilian emigration, see Jan Brzozowski, “International migration and
socioeconomic development.” Estudos Avancad0s, 76, 2012. For a more general discussion of
emigration and entrepreneurship, see Jan Brzozowski, “Entrepreneurship and economic integration
of migrants.” International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, 23, 2019.
51 For further discussion of the stages, see David P. Lindstrom and Adriana L. Ramirez, “Pioneers and
Followers.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 630, 2010.
52 For an extensive review of the theory, see Douglas S. Massey, et al., Worlds in Motion. Oxford
University, 2005.
53 For additional information about Tonga, see Ian Campbell, Island Kingdom. Canterbury University,
2016.
54 John Gibson, et al., “The long-term impacts of international migration.” The World Bank Economic
Review, 32, 2018.
55 Per Engzell and Mathieu Ichou, “Status loss.” International Migration Review, 54, 2020.
56 Similar findings concerning the continued relevance of economic conditions in migrants’ home
countries is reported by, Alpasian O. Akay, et al., “Home sweet home?” Journal of Human Resources,
52, 2017.
57 The following case studies are taken from, Allison Bowen and Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz, “Skilled
immigrants often struggle to put degrees, credentials to use in U.S.” Chicago Tribune, March 27,
2017.
58 See the discussion in Lindstrom and Ramirez, op.cit.
59 Ela Polek, Jos M. ten Berge and Jan P. Van Oudenhoven, “Evidence for a migrant personality.”
Journal of Immigration and Refugee Studies, 9, 2011.
60 Moiz Bhai and Pavel Dramski, “The Character Skills of Immigrants.” SSRN, May 14, 2018.
61 Javier G. Polavieja, Marina Fernandez-Reino and Maria Ramos, “Are migrants seleced on moti-
vational orientations?” European Sociological Review, 34, 2018.
62 Yasemin N. Soysal and Hector Cebolla-Boado, “Observing the unobservable.” Frontiers in Sociology,
5, 2020.
3 Environmental Drivers: Climate
Change and Natural Disasters

Over the past 100 years, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases have led to an
increase in the earth’s average temperature; and without drastic changes in patterns of
land use, reductions in emissions from industries and automobiles, and fundamental
changes in other human activities the earth’s temperature will almost certainly continue
to rise. Climate change involves this long-term rise in temperatures along with greater
temperature fluctuations in the short-term. The consequences are highly diverse: rising
sea levels, ocean acidification, greater fluctuations in rainfall, etc. Of particular note is the
tendency for climate change to result in more frequent and more severe natural disasters:
storms, earthquakes, floods, and so on.
Natural disasters are classified as “fast-onset events” because they strike suddenly and
tend to be of short duration. They are most likely to result in immediate displacement as
the effected population flees to safer places. Climate change, by contrast, tends to involve
“slow-onset events,” affecting communities gradually, over long periods of time, and if
emigration eventually results, it usually follows an additional, intervening driver. The
proximate driver that has been most widely noted in the literature involves economic
hardship; for example, climate change can slowly result in progressively worse droughts,
leading to reduced agricultural production. Farmers find it increasingly difficult to make
a living. Eventually, many give up, and move, but their migration may be attributed to
more recently experienced economic privation rather than the environmental changes
that preceded it. Political instability in conjunction with economic adversity has also been
identified as a proximate driver of international migration in a causal chain beginning with
slow-onset environmental effects.1
The coastal areas of many nations and island nations have been particularly vulnerable
to the effects of climate changes. The Philippine Islands present a stark example of the
catastrophic consequences of the interplay between climate change and natural disasters.
This series of islands in a seismically active part of the Western Pacific Ocean has for
many years been periodically battered by earthquakes and volcanoes. With global
warming, however, sea temperatures have risen and warmer ocean waters have meant
larger and more frequent tropical storms. Further exacerbating the environmental si-
tuation, mass deforestation along the coast has eliminated a natural barrier to wind and
water. Muddy conditions are therefore typical and have frequently led to massive
landslides that bury hundreds of people alive. Between 1997 and 2016 an estimated
23,000 Filipinos died from the various effects of the more powerful storms.2
In the mid-1980s, Lohachara, an Indian island in the Bay of Bengal, became the first
island to disappear because of a combination of climate change and more severe cyclones
which caused coastal erosion and mangrove destruction. Before disappearing, it had a
DOI: 10.4324/9781003158400-3
 Environmental Drivers 49
population of about 10,000 most of whom moved to the nearby island of Sagar which,
again due largely to climate change, has also experienced erosion and may ultimately face
the same fate as Lohachara.3
As bad as some of these events have been, they have not been widespread. Many
scientists contend that without dramatic changes in human activities, the worst is yet to
come. The most vulnerable populations – those that have already been most affected –
are likely to be victimized even more in the future. The environmental shocks are,
according to these many scientific predictions, expected to cause millions of people,
primarily in the global South, to be displaced permanently. Two climate researchers
recently concluded: “Given the overwhelming evidence about the expected adverse
effects of climate change in the future, we can expect that it can become an even more
important driver of migration flows in the future.”4
Many forecasters believe that people impacted by climate change will have to
choose “between flight or death” leading to the “greatest wave of global migration the
world has ever seen.”5 If nations of the global North do not let the migrants cross their
borders, hundreds of millions of people will be trapped. It will be “wildly destabilizing,”
according to many climate experts, and governments “could topple as whole regions
devolve into war.”6
While there is scientific consensus concerning the likely future consequences of
climate change with respect to extreme environmental effects, the prediction of mass
migration as a response is not as firmly grounded in data. As early as 2011, the UK’s
Office of Science published a report summarizing research on climate-linked mi-
gration. Referenced typically as the Foresight Report (the name of the government
unit), it reported that migration was a much less frequent response to climate stressors
because many people became poorer as a result of long-term, slow-onset changes.
They were trapped. And many of those who were less adversely impacted by climate
change found new ways to adapt to their altered environments as an alternative to
migration.7
In the decade since the publication of the Foresight Report, there has been a great deal
of research on climate-linked migration, conducted in nations throughout the world.
We will review a representative sample of those studies in the following section, and
focus upon the likelihood of people leaving their homes, temporarily or permanently,
and moving across national boundaries. We will also examine the effects of varying
environmental events and circumstances across different parts of the world in the hope of
being able to offer generalizations about climate-linked migration.

The Status of Environmental Migrants

People forced to flee because of environmental threats have, until recently, been con-
sidered climate or environmental migrants, but were not officially designated as refugees
by the UN refugee agency (UNCHR). As a result, the rights that were expected to be
accorded to refugees – people forced to flee because of fear of persecution – were not
extended to those who were forced to flee because of environmental events. They were
also excluded from UNCHR’s refugee statistical compilations despite the fact that they
were a very large group of forced migrants. However, in 2016 the General Assembly of
the United Nations added a “New York Declaration” which became implemented in
2018. It extended refugee status, and corresponding rights, to include people who were
forced to flee or were displaced across national borders as a result of environmental
50 Environmental Drivers
disasters. Such persons are expected, in all UN member nations, to receive the same
protections as all other vulnerable refugees who have been forced to leave their homes.8
The basic necessities to which any group of refugees are entitled, according to U.N.
resolutions, are not defined in detail. In addition, there are often ambiguities in terms of
which local or national entities are responsible for providing subsistence and shelter, and
in any case, there are limited sanctions that can be invoked to force a reluctant host to
comply with U.N. expectations. All of these limitations are illustrated by the difficult
situation of a diverse group of refugees who were stranded in Bosnia, described in
Box 3.1.

Box 3.1 Trying to Obtain Refugee Rights in Bosnia

In Northeast Bosnia there is a refugee camp, “Lipa” that was abandoned in

December of 2020 after aid workers deemed it uninhabitable because it lacked
electricity, water, etc. Migrants had been sleeping in tents and abandoned shipping
containers. As they left, a fire destroyed most of the tents. Nevertheless, later that
month about 700 refugees were moved into this abandoned camp. Some had fled
natural disasters, others escaped from civic strife, but most qualified for refugee
status. They had come from a diverse set of nations including: Afghanistan,
Bangladesh, Iraq and Pakistan; and most were hoping to reach nations in the
European Union when they became bogged down in Bosnia.
The Chief of Mission (CoM) in Bosnia for the U.N.’s International Organization
for Migration said the refugees were in freezing temperatures, lacking basic necessities,
and had to be moved to the next town where there were better facilities available. The
Bosnian government said okay but did not give a moving date. In the meanwhile, the
government asked local authorities to help the refugees, and to arrange a transfer.
However, residents of the local towns insisted that they did not want the refugees, and
moved to set up barricades to block the roads.
The CoM was not optimistic that the refugees would be moved any time soon
because of the local opposition. The refugees spent New Year’s Day, 2021, in freezing
temperatures, trying to warm themselves around makeshift fires. The Bosnian civic
protection agency agreed eventually to provide tents, but the CoM complained that
leaving people in tents in icy conditions was not sustainable and went unheeded. Two
weeks later the refugees were still washing themselves in snow, because there was no
better alternative, and lining up barefoot to receive food. 9

With fast-onset events, it is usually clear that the people who are fleeing floods or
erupting volcanos or the like should be considered environmental refugees. Cause and
effect are made evident by the close temporal connection between the environmental
occurrence and the increased migration. Slow-onset events, on the other hand, tend not
to produce an immediate response. The environmental changes can slowly affect the way
a large portion of an effected population supports itself, but as a rule, people do not
initially recognize all the potential consequences at the onset of the environmental
change and so if it is going to generate an exodus, it does not usually occur until later,
and as we have noted, it tends to involve an additional driver.
 Environmental Drivers 51
For host nations, and UN agencies, labeling the migrants for official purposes has
posed ambiguities because of the mix of environmental, economic and other drivers
attendant particularly to slow-onset events. For example, suppose that slow-onset land
degradation led to declining crop yields and after a time farmers decided to migrate. One
could argue that they left willingly or that they were forced; that they left for economic
opportunities or because of environmental deterioration.10
The rights of refugees that host nations have felt obliged to honor in accordance with
UN stipulations have varied according to which driver is emphasized. Prior to 2018,
environmental migrations did not qualify for refugee status so a claim based on an en-
vironmental event would not then have ordinarily been recognized. Therefore official
refugee migration statistics, compiled prior to 2018, almost certainly under-counted the
amount of environmentally driven migration. When the slow-onset event resulted in civic
conflict and that was emphasized, nations have been more inclined to accord refugee status
recognizing that the migrants faced actual threats. Correspondingly, it is likely that official
refugee records overstated political conflict as a migration driver. When the economic
driver was emphasized, the migrants have not typically been considered refugees.11 That
has undoubtedly greatly reduced the official number of refugees in the world because, as
we have noted, economic motivations can be highly salient when transnational migration
is the eventual result of environmental issues.

Methodological Issues
There are a number of alternate procedures that investigators can follow in examining
the relationship between migration and fast- or slow-onset events. The first decision
concerns how to measure the potential environmental catalyst, and there are two basic
alternatives: measures generated by objective instruments or the subjective perceptions of
affected populations. Second is the question of how to assess migration, and again there
are two possibilities: by inferring population changes from a comparison of data sets
created before and after the environmental event, or by asking people in the affected area
about friends, family and neighbors who left, and in some cases, attempting to track
down and interview those who moved.

Measuring the Environmental Event

A variety of objective instruments with which to gauge the intensity of an environmental
event or change are sometimes available. For example, to study the effects of severe
tornados in the U.S., Ethan Raker utilized the government’s Severe Weather Database.
It details the latitude and longitudinal coordinates for the touchdown and dissipation
points of tornados, and a tornado’s magnitude is estimated at several points along its
path.12 Similarly, investigators have ascertained the magnitude of earthquakes with a
seismograph, and utilized rainfall data from weather stations to examine droughts.
The validity of the data obtained from these measuring instruments depends, of course,
upon their ability accurately to measure the event in question; in addition, there is the
necessity of obtaining information precisely for the area assumed to have been impacted by
the environmental event and that is sometimes difficult. For example, if the possibility of
rainfall leading to flooding in a village is being studied and the village is located in a plain
with high river density, then upstream precipitation may have a greater impact upon
people living in the village than precipitation measured right at the village.13
52 Environmental Drivers
Most recent studies have relied upon objective instruments of the type described here.
The alternative is to rely upon people’s perceptions. With slow-onset changes, analysts
have been concerned that their gradualness and lengthy duration, and the frequent
presence of additional, proximate drivers may lead people to underestimate the mag-
nitude of their effect. However, a few studies have attempted to utilize questionnaires
and/or interviews to assess how people view these environmental effects. For example, a
group of researchers in Ghana asked goat farmers about the effects of long-term varia-
tions in rainfall. They relied mostly on questionnaires, but also conducted interviews and
formed focus groups. Knowledge of rainfall varied among goat farmers in different parts
of Ghana, but based upon the farmers’ different adaptation strategies and the results of the
focus group discussions, the researchers concluded that the questionnaires provided a
reasonably valid measure.14
However, there are some data that suggest people’s perceptions may not typically
provide a very accurate measure of environmental conditions. Relevant data come from
Switzer and Vedlitz’s comparison of survey data pertaining to a U.S. sample’s perception
of drought in their area with statistics on drought from the U.S. Drought Monitor
(USDM). The USDM may be the best measure of drought in the U.S. because it is a
composite of numerous indicators: rainfall deficit, water shortages, and so on. The in-
vestigators placed geographical areas in the U.S. into two categories: those that ex-
perienced moderate or severe drought in the previous year, and those that did not. With
their questionnaire, they asked a representative national sample whether they were aware
of drought in their county. Among individuals who lived in a higher drought county,
according to the USDM figures, only 31% correctly identified their country as having
experienced drought in the past year.15
Those who were aware of the drought also were most likely to perceive it as pre-
senting a risk. If migration were to be a response to drought, people in this category
would most likely provide the migrants. Those who were less aware of the drought and
its risks would be much less likely to move in response. Therefore, relying upon people’s
perceptions of the environment to measure the driver may not provide accurate esti-
mates of its impact upon migration because there may be a large group of people who do
not recognize its impact.
With fast-onset events, time delays in getting a research project into the field often
present an additional impediment to relying upon people’s perceptions to measure the
magnitude of the environmental event. It may be impossible to question samples of
people soon enough after a fast-onset event for them to be able to recall its impact
accurately. If the event was cataclysmic, then it may be a long time before researchers can
enter the setting, and they may find that many of the affected residents who survived
have left. Reliance upon instruments may then be the only alternative.

Measuring Migration as a Response

The most widely used technique for inferring migration as a response to environmental
events entails comparing census or other population datasets that were compiled before
and after the event. A decrease in population after the event can imply that out-
migration occurred. Estimating migration in this way is illustrated by a study of flooding
and crop failures in rural Bangladesh. Gray and Mueller obtained three surveys, con-
ducted in the same region over a period of ten years. They were able to trace almost all
of the households in the original sample across the subsequent surveys, and thereby infer
 Environmental Drivers 53
who had left. In addition, information about departed household members was obtained
from administrative districts that collected data on the timing and duration of moves.16
When changes in data sets are used to measure migration, the causal link between
migration and environmental impacts is usually not directly assessed. The timing of
people’s moves may suggest environmental instigation, but the linkage is circum-
stantial. Absent self-reports, it would be helpful at least to have migration data from
similar communities not affected by environmental stress. The latter could provide a
baseline with which to assess whether movement from the environmentally stressed
community was greater than might be expected, and therefore more likely attributable
to environmental events.
Illustrating the use of surveys and interviews is a study of the Marshall Islands (dis-
cussed in Chapter 2). The investigators gave questionnaires to several hundred re-
spondents living in the Islands asking about where their siblings and children currently
live. Those siblings and children who had residences anywhere beside the Marshall
Islands were assumed to have migrated, and the respondents who remained and provided
the information were asked why these people left, and specifically, whether it was due to
environmental impacts.17 Relying upon the explanations of the family members who
remained can also lead to over- or under-stating the effects of environment upon mi-
gration because those who remained and provided the explanations may know only the
reason they were given by the departing members of their family, or they may make
incorrect assumptions about the migrants’ motives.

Conclusion
In an ideal situation, an investigator would have multiple measures of the variables being
studied, for example, both objective readings from properly placed instruments and
subjective responses from local people. Obtaining congruent findings when using dif-
ferent measures is the best way to be certain that findings are not an artifact of mea-
surement, though most studies do not have the luxury of multiple measures. It is
important, therefore, to know the possible limitations of any study’s design.

The Empirical Research

We begin by examining migration patterns in the last half of the 20th century from an
extensive analysis reported by Beine and Parsons. They obtained a data set comprising
census documents between 1960 and 2000. For this time period, they analyzed bilateral
migrations between 226 origin and destination countries located in both the global
South (Afghanistan, Jamaica, Namibia, etc.) and global North (Denmark, France, New
Zealand, etc.). Most of the out-migration occurred from nations of the global South and
it appeared to involve more internal than cross-national movement. When migration
was international, the destinations were to both global South and North nations.18
The investigators studied both fast-onset natural disasters – the cumulative number of
earthquakes, floods, etc. during a decade – and slow onset environmental stressors –
measures of deviations from long-term temperature and precipitation, derived from a
climate research database. International migration was inferred from changes in a nation’s
contiguous decennial censuses. In their analysis, they attempted statistically to control for
return migration because to the degree that migrants returned to their country of origin
prior to the next census, out-migration flows would be understated.
54 Environmental Drivers
The results showed that neither fast- nor slow-onset stressors had much of an effect
upon international migration. What small effects they did have in some limited condi-
tions were dwarfed by economic and other drivers. The investigators lacked any direct
measure of internal migration, but following some previous studies, they relied upon
urbanization as an indicator. and it increased as expected. The logic supporting this
assumption is that people in primary industries (fishing, farming, etc.) who are the ones
most impacted by environmental stressors and migrate in response, are most likely to
move internally, to a nearby city, increasing the urbanization of the nation. Among
nations in the global South prior research has shown natural disasters to increase urba-
nization. In other words, where there were large vulnerable populations, when en-
vironmental stressors pushed people out of rural villages they were most likely to move
to nearby cities which grew as a result, and the urban growth combined with the rural
decline led to a higher degree of urbanization.19
Focusing upon the same time period, Cattaneo and Peri analyzed bilateral migration
between 116 countries for which they were able to access data on fluctuations in
temperature and precipitation, obtained from a variety of global weather stations. They
found that temperature increases along with reduced precipitation led to the impover-
ishment of rural populations. The overall effects upon migration were not clear, how-
ever, until they statistically re-analyzed the data, dividing countries into two income
categories. In the nations placed into the poor grouping, emigration was depressed.
People could not afford to move and the climate stressors just kept pushing them further
into poverty. In the middle-income nations, by contrast, out-migration increased in
response to the climate adversities. Their moves were mostly internal, rural to urban,
though there was also some international migration out of the middle-income nations.20
In sum, environmental stressors during the last half of the 20th century did not
produce a substantial amount of international migration. When people did move in
response it was more often from a rural to urban area within the same nation. The overall
amount of out-migration was apparently limited by people’s resources; many could
simply not afford the costs of moving. They were trapped in place.
While the effects of climate change were clearly being felt in the latter decades of the
20th century, by all accounts the problems worsened in this century. In order to try to
document the effects of the growing number and severity of environmental stressors,
there have been a much larger number of studies conducted throughout the world in this
century. The results have tended largely to mirror those of the late 20th century, though
there have been some significant differences as well. We will examine the recent trends
beginning with the global South.

In the Global South

Agencies of the United Nations and many associations of climate specialists have all
pointed to the global South as the part of the world most likely to be strongly impacted
by climate change. Correspondingly, much of the research has focused upon the degree
to which migration occurs as a consequence in this part of the world. Most of the
research has involved case studies, that is, analyses of whether disasters led to migration in
one nation, or in specific regions of one nation.
Representative of these studies, a group of sociologists and demographers led by
Barbara Entwisle focused upon how extreme floods and droughts affected out-migration
from the Nang Rang district of Northeast Thailand. They found no effect. The climate
 Environmental Drivers 55
stressors were associated with out-migration, but out-migration from this area had been
well-established for many years. People continued to move from the district to the same
places in roughly the same numbers. The investigators concluded that out-migration
from droughts and floods is so tied to previously established migration patterns that
absent the continuing influence of these social networks, out-migration would actually
decline following environmental stressors.21 (Social network effects on migration are
discussed at length in the following chapter.)
Bangladesh is an ideal nation in which to examine the most draconian predictions
concerning the impact of environmental events upon migration, and it has been very
well studied. Part of the global South, it is one of the most densely populated countries in
the world. It is dominated by the largest river delta in the world, helping to make its
fields fertile. Farming of various types predominates, and nearly one-half of the nation’s
labor force works in agriculture. However, because most of the nation is less than 40 feet
above sea level, it has historically been prone to flooding which, along with tornados and
cyclones, have often killed thousands of people.22
Climate change and warming temperatures, in particular, have created the “perfect
storm” in Bangladesh. It has led to more frequent and more intense cyclones that have
forced hundreds of thousands of people to be relocated. In addition, melting of the
glaciers and snowpack in the Himalayas has led to the swelling of the rivers that flow into
Bangladesh. The rise in sea level has made Bangladesh especially prone to flooding when
the already swollen rivers overflow during the annual monsoon rains. In 1998 the
country experienced the worst flooding in modern history. The overflowing rivers
covered an estimated 300,000 homes and killed an estimated 1,000 people. Making
matters worse, the conversion of mangrove forests along coastal Bangladesh which has
been cleared to support several types of farming has greatly reduced one of the nation’s
best natural defenses against super-cyclones which are another consequence of climate
change.23
Some interdisciplinary groups of economists and geographers have over the past
several years been studying the effects of flooding and other natural disasters in rural,
coastal Bangladesh. Their research has produced a rich set of data, from a particularly
vulnerable region of the world, with which to assess the prediction that worsening
environmental events will lead to massive migration from the global South to the global
North.
The measures utilized in the various studies have been diverse. Flooding has only been
measured objectively, but it has entailed reliance upon remote sensing and satellite data
for direct measures, and has been inferred from data on rainfall extremes. Mobility has
been measured by changes in longitudinal data sets created specifically for the research
and by changes in communities’ vital statistics as compiled by the government of
Bangladesh. The studies involved different, but overlapping time periods between the
late 1990s and about 2010, and some of the measures that were employed were known
to have flaws; however, what stands out is the very strong degree to which the findings
were congruent with each other despite the studies’ different methods.24
The most consistent finding across the studies is a surprising lack of movement in
response to flooding. What migration did occur, tended to be temporary and across short
distances involving moves to a nearby city. People who left their homes remained in the
country, and returned to their former villages after relatively brief periods of time. When
more lasting displacement occurred it was still much more likely to be internal than
international. This is a typical finding: across all regions of the world, most studies have
56 Environmental Drivers
reported that internal displacement exceeds international displacement, by far, following
environmental disasters.25
With respect to international migration, research in coastal Bangladesh has generally
reported either no relationship between flooding and international migration – most
people stay in place – or an inverse relationship in which fewer people are found to
migrate than generally occurred in the absence of flooding. In fact, one study reported
that while even modest flooding deterred cross-nation migration, very broad exposure to
flooding had an especially strong negative effect upon migration.
Each team of investigators explored why flooding did not induce more people to
migrate; why the apocalyptic prediction did not seem to be borne out, especially in a
highly vulnerable nation of the global South. The most consistently offered explanation
was that people felt trapped. Households lacked the resources necessary to migrate,
especially for expensive long-distance journeys across national boundaries. And when
there were repeated environmental shocks, entire villages became impoverished, and
collectively lacked the means to help finance the migration of those who wished to
leave.
Slower-onset environmental impacts in Bangladesh, such as increased soil salinity, also
a consequence of the rise in sea level, resulted in a higher rate of movement than the
faster-onset events, such as flooding. However, most people remained in place and tried
to find new means of employment. Those who did leave were again much more likely
to remain within the nation rather than move outside the nation. After completing
several studies in Bangladesh, Chen and Mueller noted that, somehow, people have
managed to adapt enough to remain in Bangladesh; but the investigators asked: What
will happen as climate change makes the country less and less inhabitable over time?26
In a different region of the global South, rural Ecuador, Gray and Bilsborrow studied
environmental influences upon migration during the first decade of this century. Because
the country is located near the equator and to melting glaciers, and has a prolonged wet
season, it is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Ecuador has for years experienced
heavy rainfalls leading to landslides and flooding. The investigators measured slow-onset
events with a composite index that included access to irrigation, agricultural land quality,
etc. and one indicator of fast-onset events, annual rainfall shocks. They examined these
annual environmental measures in relation to migration during the following year, de-
fining migration as a departure from one’s former household lasting for at least six
months.27
From a household survey, they obtained data on 1,670 persons who were between
the ages of 14 and 40: the ages that correspond with most international migrants.
Slightly over one-half of their sample (898 people) did not move in the year following
environmental stressors. Of those who did leave their households, the vast majority
remained in Ecuador, often moving to an adjacent town or city. The sample of 1,670
persons included 165 who were international migrants, or about 10%.
While the amount of international migration was less than some would have expected,
what was most surprising about their results was that favorable environmental changes in
any year were more likely to be followed by an increase in internal and international
migration. Perhaps such changes made moving more affordable, especially for better-off
people. For land-poor households, when migration occurred in response to environ-
mental stressors it was almost exclusively internal, and frequently entailed very short
distances. The large percentage of poorer households who did not move were likely,
according to the investigators, trapped in place.
 Environmental Drivers 57
As we have previously noted, internal migration – specifically, rural to urban – has
been frequently observed as a consequence of environmental stressors. In 32 nations in
Sub-Saharan Africa, to illustrate further, a group of researchers found that a decline in
moisture availability (mostly due to decreased rainfall) led to a significant increase in
subsequent years’ movement out of rural and into urban areas, so long as the urban
area offered industrial employment. Sub-Saharan Africa is a region that is particularly
vulnerable to climate change, and the investigators predicted that increasing en-
vironmental stressors would, over the next decades, result in the region becoming
substantially more urbanized.28
In sum, there are a substantial number of studies of nations in the global South that
report that neither fast- nor slow- onset events are major drivers of international mi-
gration. Fast-onset events tend to result immediately in larger amounts of displacement,
but regardless of type of onset, temporary and internal displacements predominate:
people move short distances, often leaving rural areas for temporary relocations in more
urban areas. And in many circumstances, slow-onset events have tended actually to
reduce international migration by adversely impacting people’s financial ability to afford
long-distance moves.29 These patterns are illustrated by the aftermath of two powerful
hurricanes in Guatemala, described in Box 3.2.

Box 3.2 The Effects of Hurricanes in Guatemala

In November, 2020, Guatemala was hit by two ferocious hurricanes in quick

succession. Thousands of homes, bridges, roads and croplands were destroyed.
Government officials surveyed the impacted area and admitted they could not
begin to address the devastation. They asked for other nations to help and asked
the U.N. to declare their Central American region the most affected by climate
change, with warming ocean waters making storms both more frequent and
stronger.
When villagers slowly returned to where their homes had been, they found a sea
of rocks and mud where the town formerly stood. They picked their way through
the rubble to salvage whatever they could find. More than 100,000 people had no
choice but to crowd into shelters that offered little. Aid workers found them to be
suffering from a number of diseases due to the crowding and the lack of potable
water. Despite the harsh conditions, most of the displaced Guatemalans told
reporters that they could not imagine what their long-term alternatives were going
to entail.
Located near the Mexican border, some people crowded into handmade rafts to
cross the lakes produced by the storms; some swam. They went up and back on
trips to Mexico to find whatever food they could, and bring it back. Some decided
to leave the area permanently and walked hours to reach the nearest dry village in
Guatemala. They were safe for the moment but saw no future there which led a
few to think about migrating to the U.S. However, they had no idea how or
whether they could make the trip or whether they would be permitted to enter if
they did get to the U.S. border. 30
58 Environmental Drivers
An unambiguous conclusion regarding the effects of slow-onset stressors is not possible
because there are also a few studies focusing upon nations in the global South that have
found environmental stresses to be a major driver of international migration. Of particular
note are several studies conducted by economist Dennis Wesselbaum analyzing migration
to a sample of nations affiliated with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD). Introduced in Chapter 1, OECD includes many of the world’s
largest economies: Australia, France, U.S., etc. All the OECD studies covered the same
time period, namely 1980 to 2015. Note, this 36-year time period is substantially longer
than that included in many other studies of environmental effects, providing more op-
portunity to observe much-delayed migration. He examined different samples of origin
nations in a number of studies, but all of them were in the global South.
In one study, Wesselbaum focused upon flows of migration between each of the 54
African countries and each of the 16 major OCED nations. Migration figures came from
the U.N., and therefore included only legal immigration which almost certainly un-
dercounted the true amount of migration. (Surveys and census figures, the most com-
monly utilized sources of migration data, simply display differences in population size,
regardless of the legal conditions under which people moved.) Weather stressors were
measured with a variety of geophysical data sets. He found that flooding in these African
nations significantly increased population outflows, but storms and droughts did not. He
surmised that the difference might arise because flooding has a more highly concentrated
adverse effect on a local economy compared to storms and droughts whose effects might
be dissipated over a larger area.31 The implication is that economic adversities increased
out-migration between nations in Africa and OCED nations.
In a second study, Wesselbaum and Aburn examined annual migration flows to the
same 16 OCED nations, during the same time period and again relied upon a number of
geophysical climate measures; but this study included a larger and geographically much
more diverse group of origin nations, 198 in all. In this sample, they found that the
number of weather-related disasters substantially increased international outflows from
the origin nations and that temperature changes did the same. They also found that the
more an origin nation relied upon agriculture, the more environmental shocks led to
emigration. Presumably, it was farmers’ economic losses that again were the force behind
migration. The researchers also examined measures of several other possible drivers of
migration but concluded that, in their sample, environmental stressors were the major
drivers of cross-national migration.32
In conclusion, it is difficult to offer sweeping generalizations about the impact of
environmental stressors upon international migration from nations in the global South.
Whether such movements are heightened or depressed may depend upon: the type of
environmental stressor, the relative economic distress of impacted communities, and a
variety of methodological differences among studies in how they measure both en-
vironmental impacts and international migration, and how long of a delay in migration
following environmental stressors can be inferred from the data set.33

In the Global North

In nations of the global North, neither fast- nor slow-onset events have typically led to
international migration. Displacement in areas prone to natural disasters has, of course,
occurred, but as in the global South, such displacements have typically involved tem-
porary movement over short distances. Very extreme weather events have been the
 Environmental Drivers 59
exception because they have sometimes caused a large segment of the affected popu-
lation to flee, usually resulting in more permanent moves to nearby communities in the
same nation; examples include the migratory response to a devastating hurricane
(Katrina) in 2005 in New Orleans34 and a powerful earthquake and tsunami off the east
coast of Japan in 2011.
An interdisciplinary team studied the response to what has been termed the Great East
Japan earthquake and tsunami, by comparing migration out of the affected area in 2010
(the year before the quake) to migration in the years following, specifically, 2012 and
2013. One group of affected residents identified as evacuees moved to nearby destina-
tions that had not been impacted, intending to return as soon as it was possible. A second
group of people who the investigators labeled as migrants remained in Japan, but moved
further and more permanently away from their former homes. However, the people
who migrated out of the affected area in the years following the quake left in the same
relative numbers as those who migrated out in the year prior to the quake. And the pre-
and post-quake destinations followed the same patterns. In both 2010 and 2012-13,
people moved to areas in which they had pre-existing ties; for example, to locations
where other family members had previously re-located. This finding of no major
changes in emigration patterns mirrors the results reported in the previously discussed
study in Northeast Thailand. The proportions of people who moved and their desti-
nations remained relatively unaltered by the quake and tsunami because it was resources
that largely determined when and where people could migrate, both previously to the
quake and in its aftermath.35
Similar pre- and post-disaster trends have also been reported in studies of the U.S. In
an ambitious analysis, Elizabeth Fussell and colleagues examined all U.S. counties that
experienced a hurricane or tropical storm between 1980 and 2012. They relied upon
changes in annual population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau to infer whether
people had left affected areas, and they obtained storm damage compilations from a
variety of recorded measures. They found overall that damaging weather events pro-
duced few changes to the post-storm population of counties that experienced them.
Specifically, when counties were growing in the years before the weather-related
stressors they often experienced short-term declines in size immediately following severe
storms, but over the longer term they continued to grow as a result of recovery-directed
investments. The post-disaster size of counties that had not been growing prior to the
severe storms showed no effect.36
Most studies on the effect of environmental stressors upon migration focus upon
changes in the size of a community. However, if investigators only examine possible
reductions in the size of affected communities, they can miss other significant changes
that may occur in the composition of affected communities. A relevant study has been
reported by sociologist John Logan and colleagues from an analysis of changes in the
U.S. Gulf Coast. It is an area prone to severe storms, especially hurricanes. The in-
vestigators obtained hurricane damage estimates for each county and examined these
estimates in relation to annual changes in each county’s population size and composition,
including age and race. They found that sections of the coast that have been impacted by
hurricanes have lost population over the ensuing three years, presumably due to out-
migration. Supporting this interpretation, they found that the reduction in population
was greatest in those areas where the storm damage was most severe.
As in nations in the global South, the consequence of economic resources was again
indicated by the fact that the negative impacts of storms on changes in population size
60 Environmental Drivers
were larger in areas with lower poverty rates. In other words, areas with a higher
concentration of less advantaged people had less migration in the years after storms.
Within all areas, people with fewer economic resources – such as the elderly and racial
minorities – were less likely to move. Therefore, over time, the population of en-
vironmentally vulnerable areas can become poorer, and as the downward spiral con-
tinues, fewer and fewer residents of impacted areas may have the resources to leave.37 In
that sense they resemble the poor Bangladesh farmers: both are trapped in place.
What Logan and associates have termed, “segmented withdrawal” may be most likely
in highly vulnerable areas, like the U.S. Gulf Coast, where climate change is heightening
the risk of both additional and more severe storms. Moving may make more sense in
such areas so residents who can most afford to leave do so.38 Outside of highly vulnerable
areas the choice between rebuilding in a more secure manner and relocating may be
different. For example, Raker found when viewing the entire U.S. that tornados led
those who lacked the resources to properly rebuild to leave affected communities. The
more economically advantaged residents were more likely to remain because they could
better afford to rebuild in a way that provided more protection against future storms.39
In sum, studies in nations of the global North show an array of responses to natural
disasters. As in the global South, following even severe storms it is common for people to
remain in place, and people in the affected communities who lack resources are espe-
cially likely to be trapped in place. However, in highly vulnerable areas, rebuilding can
be an alternative for more affluent residents. Thus, apart from changes in the size of
populations, the overall composition of affected communities often changes, sometimes
becoming poorer and sometimes becoming wealthier.

Conclusion
The macro and micro studies are consistent in concluding that environmental impacts do
not consistently lead to heightened levels of inter-nation migration, and that perceived
economic benefits are the migrants’ most salient motive. The fact that the most dra-
conian visions of disaster-driven global migration, especially in the global South, have
not occurred does not mean that they will not yet happen; nor does it signify that climate
change predictions are off the mark. It simply means that in response to environmental
crises, many people have been trapped, unable to move, and many others have managed
to adapt, and remain in place. Migration, especially across national borders, has been of
much less magnitude than expected – so far.
In addition to all of the reasons for low migration that we have already considered, we
need to add to the list the sometimes serendipitous effects of natural disasters. Floods in
Bangladesh, for example, have been shown in the previously discussed studies to improve
the quality of soil and lead to higher crop yields in some areas. When displaced people
return after experiencing floods, their farms are sometimes more successful so they are
induced to stay until the next flood, then repeat the cycle. Other types of post-disaster
benefits have been reported in a number of other locales. For example, in rural Indonesia
Gignoux and Menendez studied the effects of earthquakes upon household incomes. They
obtained household data from a longitudinal survey that covered a period of twelve years
following a number of earthquakes. They also obtained precise measures of local ground
tremors from a US Geological Survey database. During the first year or two after earth-
quakes, individuals – mostly farmers – were found to have experienced economic losses.
However, by the end of the second year following the earthquakes, an influx in external
 Environmental Drivers 61
recovery aid and infrastructure investments led to economic recovery for most of the
affected people. In the longer run, after 5–6 years, a substantial number of the rural
Indonesian farmers were economically better off than before the earthquakes.40

Proximate Drivers
One reason that migration, and international migration in particular, has not been shown
to result from environmental stressors to the expected degree is because slow-moving
events – the type most expected to result in international migration – usually involve an
additional, intervening driver. When studies have found an association between en-
vironmental factors and international migration, they have concluded that “environment
is rarely the sole driver.”41 When migration across borders does occur, both government
officials and data analysts have often attributed it to that intervening driver, rather than
the slow-onset events that began the changes that led to migration.

Economic
The proximate driver that has been most widely noted in the literature is depressed
occupational opportunities or adverse impact on livelihood; stated generally, it is eco-
nomic hardship. For example, a slow-moving event can: lead to reduced agricultural
production and farmers cannot remain in place and make a living; or it results in the loss
of marine life and fishing in the same waters becomes problematic; or the slow onset
event leads to deforestation resulting in job losses in wood, timber and related industries.
This pattern is illustrated by the emigration of fishermen and their families from villages
around the Gulf of Guinea, described in the case study in Box 3.3.

Box 3.3 Leaving the Gulf of Guinea

Senya Beraku is a West African coastal village on the north shore of the Gulf of
Guinea. Many adults in the village historically supported themselves in the fishing
industry. Men in small boats went out in the Gulf of Guinea each morning and
returned in the afternoon with the day’s catch. Women carrying baskets waded out
to meet the boats and carried the fish back to the shore. Natives and tourists waited
on the beach to purchase the fish. What did not sell on the beach was brought to
local restaurants and food stores. It was never a wealthy village, but people
managed to support their families in this way. 42
Over the past several decades, however, rising sea levels, due to global warming,
increasingly threatened Senya Beraku (and other Gulf villages) with flooding tides
and coastal erosion. 43 Their struggle was made worse when in the 1990s West
African coastal countries signed agreements with Spain, France, China, and other
nations giving them fishing rights in the Gulf. The European and Asian nations
then brought in large capacity fleets of industrial trawlers that scooped up more fish
than their allocated quotas, and the depletion of fish stocks continued to get
worse. 44
On many days, the men from the village came back in the afternoon in their
small boats with nearly no fish. They grew increasingly desperate and many began
62 Environmental Drivers
to think about leaving the village. Others had left and gone to Italy, particularly the
Naples area, and the villagers heard a number of emigrant success stories. Many
undertook a dangerous two-part journey, first across the Sahara desert and then
over the Mediterranean Sea they were smuggled into Italy. Those who survived
the trip found a hostile reception. Many were physically attacked and as illegal
migrants they were afraid to request government help. They also found limited
employment opportunities, forcing many into drug dealing and prostitution. A
few found employment in a local plastics factory and were able to make more
money than they could have if they had continued to fish in Senya Beraku. 45

How to allocate the relative responsibility for migration between the slow-onset event
and economic deterioration has posed problems for analysts. Following a macro per-
spective, an investigator may observe a correlation among: (1) environmental stressors, e.g.
long-term drought (2) local assets or resources, e.g. average income in a village or county
and (3) an increase in the rate of out-migration. From a theoretical perspective, it may be
reasonable to interpret the findings as indicating that economic adversity was a driver that
intervened between environmental stress and out-migration. However, the presumed
causal inferences may be questionable; to be specific, this type of macro study provides data
involving rates and averages which may not be able to show that it was the local people
who experienced the most environmental degradation or economic adversity who were
the ones to migrate. Also left unanswered is the question of how the migrants experienced
either environmental stresses or economic adversity and the degree to which they at-
tributed their move to either. Finally, it would also be helpful to know how the stated
experiences of migrants and non-migrants differed.
There are a few micro studies that have utilized questionnaires and/or interviews to
gain insight into how international migrants, who left places that had experienced slow-
onset environmental stressors with attendant economic deterioration, viewed their
reasons for leaving. These studies have, for the most part, reinforced the contention that
economic motivations are typically the proximate and more salient driver. To illustrate,
we begin again with a study in coastal Bangladesh, one of the world’s most extensively
analyzed regions in climate research.
In the most relevant exploration, an interdisciplinary group of investigators inter-
viewed individuals from a representative sample of households in coastal Bangladesh.
Their sample consisted of 4456 adults who were asked about their household’s members,
their age and gender, experience of natural disasters, etc. They also asked whether
anyone from that household had ever moved, either temporarily or permanently. This
approach identified 279 migrants, nearly 90% of whose moves were both temporary
(defined as less than 6 months in duration) and within the nation. Field interviewers
asked the main reason(s) they moved, and found that better employment opportunities
were the most frequent answer. Environmental hazards were never mentioned despite
the fact the investigators knew that many had experienced significant flooding prior to
moving. Those who moved anywhere, either temporarily or permanently, differed from
the non-movers in several respects. Specifically, they tended to have come from more
affluent households, and they were more often employed in non-agricultural jobs.46
There were only three permanent international migrants in the sample, too few for
any meaningful analyses. There were another 31 people who left Bangladesh temporarily
 Environmental Drivers 63
to move to another nation and they largely resembled the internal migrants, though they
were even more likely to have been from more affluent households. Salinization in the
locations they left suggested they likely experienced environmental stressors, but they
also identified better economic opportunities as their major reason for moving. In sum,
the investigation showed that resources were – again – an important enabler, that
economic motivations were the most important driver, and that environmental stressors
played a very secondary role.
A study of migration from the Marshall Islands provides a much larger group of in-
ternational migrants for analysis. They are a dispersed group of islands in the Pacific Ocean
with a total 2018 population estimated at 58,000 people. Between 2000 and 2018 ap-
proximately 25,000 Marshall Islanders moved to the U.S. Rising sea levels have given rise
to flooding and salinity (high levels of salt), affecting drinking water and agricultural
production, and these long-term environmental stressors have been assumed to be drivers
of the extensive out-migration. Almost everyone who leaves the islands moves to the U.S.
because of a treaty that permits Marshallese people to live in the U.S. without a visa.
Van der Geest and a group of colleagues conducted a survey on the islands and asked
several hundred people whether anyone in their family had migrated and if so, why.
Almost everyone had a relative who had left the Islands and gone to the U.S. The major
reasons given for their moves were to obtain better earnings, education or health care, or
because of ties to family members who had previously migrated (i.e. family reunification,
as described in Chapter 1). Few identified flooding and related problems as an important
reason. Many of the respondents who had not yet left the islands claimed they planned to
emigrate in the future, and they offered the same cluster of explanations as those who
had already left. Limited samples of Marshallese people living in the U.S. were also
interviewed and they too stressed work and education along with health care and family
considerations as having been their main reasons for leaving. Very few people who had
left, or who planned to leave in the future, mentioned environmental factors as a major
driver, though over 60% of those living in the U.S. did cite climate concerns as a possible
reason not to return.47

Types of Entrapment
The economic disparities associated with people’s different responses to environ-
mental stressors suggest the usefulness of distinguishing between two types of en-
trapment. In the preceding pages we have frequently referred to people exposed to
environmental events, but unable to afford to move, as “trapped.” However, a survey
conducted in vulnerable regions of global South nations turned up some interesting
results on this matter. Non-migrants were asked why they had not left, and many
replied that they “had to stay.” This response was interpreted as indicating the person
or household was trapped by limited resources. As expected, in most of the countries
it was people in the lowest income categories in their nations who were most likely
to say that they had to stay.
However, in some of the nations it was people in the highest income categories that
offered the trapped response to the question of why they had not moved. They had the
resources, though. The analysts concluded that the homes and lands they owned may
have led them to decide that they would have to give up too much if they left. So, some
people in vulnerable communities are trapped in place by a lack of income, savings and
tangible possessions while others are trapped by their ownership of immobile assets.48
64 Environmental Drivers
Civil Conflict
There have been some widely described instances in which long-term climate stressors
have been followed by civil unrest and large numbers of people leaving the country. It
has been common for economic hardships also to have been involved, making it difficult
to disentangle hardship and conflict as proximate drivers. After reviewing a large number
of relevant studies, Katherine Mach and associates have concluded that climate effects
upon civil conflict operate primarily through economic shocks related to climate.49
Prolonged drought due to climate warming has in some nations in Sub-Sahara Africa,
for example, sharply reduced agricultural production. The resulting food shortages have
led to rioting, political instability and civic conflict and have also been associated with
large-scale migrations. Many of the out-migrants have left their distressed countries and
moved, permanently or temporarily, to Greece, Italy and other European nations. 50
However, the question that remains unresolved is the degree to which this pattern is
confined to a limited sample of nations in Sub-Saharan Africa and just a few other places
in the world. In other words, to what extent is:

environmental stress --> civic conflict --> out-migration

a causal sequence that can be generalized across nations.

The first issue concerns how frequently environmental hazards lead to civic conflict.
In one attempt to address this issue, utilizing data for nations in Sub-Saharan Africa,
Hendrix and Glaser examined both long-term (land degradation) and short-term (rainfall
variations) climatic variance as precursors to civil conflict (measured by the number of
battle-related deaths in civil wars). They found that both types of climate stressors, but
especially the short-term measures, were associated with the likelihood of armed con-
flict. For example, decreases in rainfall during one year were associated with a greater
likelihood of deaths from civil conflicts in the country during the following year.51 It
must be noted, however, that their sample was confined to Sub-Saharan nations and that
geographical area includes some of the poorest and most conflict-prone countries in the
world. Before further pursuing the generalizability of the possible environment-conflict
association we turn to studies of the second half of the sequence, that is, the possible
connection between civil conflict and out-migration.
Most of the studies examining whether civic conflict is a proximate driver of emi-
gration are case studies, focusing upon one specific nation, or region of a nation. Some
research supports the connection. For example, Aree Jampaklay and associates examined
unrest in the southern provinces of Thailand, where between 2004 and 2016 over
15,000 people were killed or injured due to violent unrest. Both unrest in the provinces
and migration, especially across the nearby border into Malaysia, increased during the
first decades of this century. Are the two connected? The investigators used a database
that provided information on the exposure to violence of each village in the provinces
and obtained data on migration by comparing surveys of household residents conducted
in 2014 and 2016. The results indicated that individuals who lived in a village that
experienced a violent event during a year were more likely to leave than those persons
living in villages without such experiences.52
On the other hand, Agadjanian and Gorina obtained different results in a study of
Kyrgyzstan, a Central European nation, formerly part of the Soviet Union, in which there
were violent border disputes during the first decades of this century. The investigators
 Environmental Drivers 65
noted that there were yearly fluctuations in both internal and international migration, the
latter tending to be temporary. However, neither form of migration was found to be
associated with political unrest. Rather, international migration was found to be related
primarily to economic downturns and to involve residents of urban rather than rural
areas.53
Finally, we turn to a study that examines the entire climate-unrest-migration se-
quence, with a sample that is more generalizable than case studies. This is a research
project whose results were reported by Guy Abel and a group of demographers and
economists. Because their study provides data that are highly relevant to the issues under
consideration in this section we will discuss it in some detail. We begin by describing its
sampling and measurement.54
Sample: Asylum seekers requesting international protection as refugees, according to
data provided by the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights. The applicants came
mostly from throughout Africa and Asia, and many applied for asylum in Western
European countries. The applications occurred during the time period 2006 to 2015.
Note, this sample does not include all international migrants; only those seeking asylum.
Such a sample is more likely to include persons fleeing conflict. Therefore, there is a bias
toward confirming the causal linkages with this sample.
Conflict data: Yearly battle-related deaths for the entire period taken from a variety of
global data sets. (Many studies rely upon annual deaths as the measure of conflict in-
tensity. Such deaths are an aggregated variable and when such data are correlated with
the behavior of individuals – that is, migration decisions – it tends to ignore individual
decision-making. Individuals’ agency is not taken into account; but as we have noted
previously, individuals’ perceptions of macro events are not always accurate either. So,
the measurement decision is always difficult and consequential.55)
Climate data: A drought index compiled from a number of climate databases that
provided specific data on precipitation, rivers, etc.
With these data, the investigators statistically analyzed the climate-conflict-migration
association at a global level. Over the full-time period (i.e. 2006–2015) they found little
evidence of causal linkages, despite the sample bias noted above. A few significant re-
lationships were observed between 2010 and 2012 that mostly involved refugee flows
from Syria and Sub-Saharan Africa during this time period. The investigators concluded
that the climate-conflict-migration association is highly confined to specific times and
places.
In sum, there are findings supporting a connection between environmental stressors
and civil conflicts in a small sample of nations, and there are findings supporting a
connection between civil conflict and migration, also in a small sample of nations.
However, as a generalization, the entire causal sequence – that is, the contention that
environmental stress leads to civic unrest leading to international migration – does not
have a great deal of empirical support.

Adaptation
Some places that due to global warming face the threat of ever more severe floods,
tornados, or other disasters have tried to adapt, as an alternative to mass migration. Some
of these adaptations have involved minimal changes to their social organization. For
example, some places have simply added protective bulwarks, such as sea walls and
stormwater storage basins. These projects have the potential to reduce ecological
66 Environmental Drivers
vulnerability, but many of the areas that are most in need of protective undertakings
cannot afford them. Further, where resources have been available, studies have reported
a tendency for these projects to disproportionately impact poor residents – the ones most
likely to live in impacted areas – often leading to their displacement. In addition, the
long-term efficacy of these projects may be suspect because the effects of future climate
changes may overwhelm even these defenses.56
A more extensive change entails modifying traditional practices without an extensive
transformation of the social organization. For example, farmers in some regions have
responded to the threat of continuing natural disasters by changing crop management
practices: when they plant and what they plant, how they manage water and other
natural resources, etc. These new, hopefully more adaptive practices and technologies
are often described as constituting “climate smart agriculture (CSA).” There have been
a few notable successes, but a review of attempts to innovate CSA practices and
technologies in the agricultural regions of countries around the world has typically
reported low rates of adaptation. People’s traditional practices are typically resistant to
change and innovation often requires investments that environmentally impacted
people cannot afford.57
The most complete form of adaptation involves transforming the way large numbers
of residents earn their living. In these places, the impacts of climate change have been
so drastic that former modes of production cannot continue. The choice that then
confronts people is to migrate to a place where their former practices can still be
followed if there is such a place to which they could go; or to substantially alter how
they will survive. Box 3.4 describes a town that attempted a very ambitious adaptive
transformation.

Box 3.4 A Missouri Town Adapts to the Loss of Geese 58

Sumner, Missouri is a small rural town that for many years billed itself as the “Wild
Goose Capital of the World.” A 40-foot-high fiberglass goose overlooked the
town and the annual social highlight was the Wild Goose Festival. Because geese
from Canada settled near Sumner every winter, the town attracted hunters whose
spending on food, lodging and so on were the heart of the local economy. Most of
the hunters were white, working-class men who were viewed as sportsmen which
gave them leeway to act in a rowdy manner, especially in the Sportsman Club bar.
Their boisterous behavior was accepted because of the importance to the town of
their spending.
But then – as a result of climate warming, the geese moved further north and
Sumner could no longer attract the goose hunters so vital to the local economy. In
response, the town tried to remake itself, flooding a nearby refuge in order to
attract ducks and duck hunters. The women then took over activities around
hunting, and gave the Festival a family-friendly feel: a pie auction, quilt show,
Festival Queen competition, etc.
Local farmers, for whom corn was a major crop, were adversely impacted by the
addition of moisture to the soil in an attempt to attract ducks. Meanwhile, the
attempt to replace goose hunters with duck hunters has had limited success. Never
 Environmental Drivers 67
a large town, when the Goose Festival and related activities began in the 1950s,
Sumner’s population was just over 300 people. Once the geese stopped coming,
and the farmers’ corn crops were affected, the town slowly, but continuously, lost
population. As people kept leaving, by 2020 it population was estimated at fewer
than 100 people, one-third of whom were living in poverty.

Sumner’s disappointing experience with total adaptation appears also to characterize

other towns’ experiences. For example, after devastating tornados struck the Japanese
town of Onajawa in 2011, the town moved to re-establish its traditional fishing industry
by building a seafood processing plant. With private and public funds over the next
decade they built commercial activities around the plant, hoping to turn the area into a
tourist attraction. In the interim, residents continued to leave, and by 2020 it still re-
mained unclear whether Onagawa would make a comeback from the devastation or
slowly become a ghost town.59

Notes
1 For an overview of a great deal of relevant research, see The White House, Report on the Impact of
Climate Change on Migration. October, 2021.
2 Hannah Beech and Jason Gutierrez, “Typhoon Spares Philippine Capital.” The New York Times,
November 2, 2020, p A9.
3 Ilan Kelman, et al., “Viewpoint paper, Islander mobilities.” International Journal of Global Warming, 8,
2015.
4 Dennis Wesselbaum and Amelia Aburn, “Gone with the wind.” Global and Planetary Change, 178,
2019.
5 From the introduction to, Abrahm Lustgarten, “Where Will Everyone Go?” ProPublica, July 23,
2020.
6 Ibid. See also, Betsy Hartmann, “Rethinking climate refugees and climate conflict.” Journal of
International Development, 22, 2010.
7 Government Office of Science, “Migration and global environmental change.” Final Report,
London, 2011.
8 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, “Climate change and disaster displacement.”
U.N. March, 2019.
9 Elian Peltier, “Migrants Chilled to Bone, Lacking Shelter in Bosnia.” The New York Times, January
15, 2021, p 11.
10 Alison Heslin, et al., “Displacement and Resettlement.” Chapter 10 in Reinhard Mechler, et al.
(Eds), Loss and Damage from Climate Change. Springer, 2019.
11 For further discussion, see Lawrence A. Palinkas, Global Climate Change, Population Displacement and
Public Health. Springer, 2020.
12 Ethan J. Raker, “Natural hazards, disasters, and demographic change.” Demography, 57, 2020.
13 For further discussion, see Joyce J. Chen, et al., “Validating migration responses to flooding.”
American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings, 107, 2017.
14 Bright K. Tetteh, et al., “Perceptions of weather variability and climate change on goat producers’
choice of coping and adaptation strategies.” Climate and Development, 12, 2020.
15 David Switzer and Arnold Vedlitz, “Investigating the determinants and effects of local drought
awareness.” Weather, Climate, and Society, 9, 2017.
16 Clark L. Gray and Valerie Mueller, “Natural disasters and population mobility in Bangladesh.”
PNAS, 109, 2012.
17 Kees van der Geest, et al., “Climate change, ecosystem services and migration in the Marshall
Islands.” Climate Change, 161, 2020.
18 Michel Beine and Christopher Parsons, “Climactic factors as determinants of international migra-
tion.” Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 117, 2015.
68 Environmental Drivers
19 For a review of studies, see Michael Berlemann and Max F. Steinhardt, “Climate change, national
disasters, and migration.” CESifo Economic Studies, 63, 2017.
20 Christine Cattaneo and Givani Peri, “The Migration Response to Increasing Temperature.”
Working Paper 21622, National Bureau of Economic Research, October, 2015.
21 Barbara Entwisle, Nathalie Williams and Ashton Verdery, “Climate change and migration.”
American Journal of Sociology, 125, 2020.
22 For further discussion, see Part One in, William van Schendel, A History of Bangladesh. Cambridge
University, 2020.
23 See Robert Glennon, “The Unfolding Tragedy of Climate Change in Bangladesh.” Scientific
American, April 21, 2017.
24 This discussion is based upon: Clark L. Gray and Valier Mueller, op.cit; Joyce J. Chen, et al., op.cit;
and Joyce Chen and Valerie Mueller, “Sea level rise will likely prompt migration in Bangladesh.”
Nature Climate Change, 8, 2018.
25 For further discussion, see International Organization for Migration, “Environmental migration.”
Migration Data Portal, 27 October 2020.
26 Joyce Chen and Valerie Mueller, “Behind the Paper.” Behavioural and Social Sciences at Nature
Research, October 22, 2018.
27 Clark Gray and Richard Bilsborrow, “Environmental influences on human migration in rural
Ecuador.” Demography, 50, 2013.
28 J. Vernon Henderson, Adam Storeygard and Uwe Deichmann, “Has climate change driven ur-
banization in Africa?” Journal of Development Economics, 124, 2017.
29 For a review of the studies, see Cristina Cattaneo, et al., “Human migration in the era of climate
change.” Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 13, 2019.
30 Natalie Kitroeff, “After Two Merciless Hurricanes, Rising Fear of a New Refugee Crisis.” The New
York Times, December 4, 2020, p A1.
31 Dennis Wesselbaum, “Revisiting the climate driver and inhibitor mechanisms of international
migration.” Climate and Development, 10, 2020.
32 Wesselbaum and Aburn, op.cit., p 109.
33 For further overview, see Reiko Obokata, Luisa Veronis and Robert McLeman, “Empirical re-
search on international environmental migration.” Population and Environment, 36, 2014; and Lore
Van Praag and Christiane Timmerman, “Environmental migration and displacement.”
Environmental Sociology, 5, 2019.
34 See, for example, Katherine J. Curtis, Elizabeth Fussell and Jack DeWaard, “Recovery migration
after hurricanes Katrina and Rita.” Demography, 52, 2015.
35 Mathew E. Hauer, Steven R. Holloway and Takashi Oda, “Evacuees and migrants exhibit different
migration systems.” Demography, 57, 2020.
36 Elizabeth Fussell, et al. “Weather-related hazards and population change.” Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, 669, 2017.
37 John R. Logan, Sukriti Issar and Zengwang Xu, “Trapped in place?” Demography, 53, 2016.
38 For further discussion, see Mariana Arcaya, Ethan J. Raker and Mary C Waters, “The social
consequences of disasters.” Annual Review of Sociology, 46, 2020.
39 Ethan J. Raker, op.cit.
40 Jeremie Gignoux and Marta Menendez, “Benefit in the wake of disaster.” Journal of Development
Economics, 118, 2016.
41 Reiko Obokata, Luis Veronis and Robert McLeman, “Empirical research on international en-
vironmental migration.” Population and Environment, 36, 2014, p 119.
42 Hans Lucht, Darkness Before Daybreak. University of California, 2012.
43 Caleb Mensa, Amos T. Kabo-bah and Eric Mortey, “Assessing the effects of climate change on sea
level rise along the Gulf of Guinea.” JENRM, 4, 2018.
44 Neil Munshi, “The fight for West Africa’s fish.” Financial Times, March 13, 2020.
45 Lucht, op.cit.
46 Amelie Bernzen, Craig Jenkins and Boris Braun, “Climate change-induced migration in Coastal
Bangladesh?” Geosciences, 9, 2019.
47 Kees van der Geest, et al., “Climate change, ecosystem services and migration in the Marshall
Islands.” Climate Change, 16, 2020.
48 International Organization for Migration, Making Mobility Work for Adaptation to Environmental
Changes, 2017.
 Environmental Drivers 69
49 Katherine J. Mach, et al., “Directions for research on climate and conflict.” Earth’s Future, 8, 2020.
50 B.S. Levy, et al., “Climate change and collective violence.” Annual Review of Public Health, 38,
2017.
51 Cullen S. Hendrix and Sarah M. Glaser, “Trends and triggers.” Political Geography, 26, 2007.
52 Aree Jampaklay, Kathleen Ford and Aphichat Chamratrithirong, “Migration and unrest in the Deep
South Thailand.” Demography, 57, 2020.
53 Victor Agadjanian and Evgenia Gorina, “Economic swings, political instability and Migration in
Kyrgyzstan.” European Journal of Population, 35, 2019.
54 Guy J. Abel, “Climate, conflict and forced migration.” Global Environmental Change, 54, 2019.
55 Correlating aggregate data with individual behavior has been previously discussed as risking the
“ecological fallacy.” For further discussion of this problem in studying conflict and migration, see
Unit Seven, “Armed conflict, violence, and the decision to migrate.” Migration and Development,
2020.
56 Eric Klineberg, Malcolm Ataos and Ux Koslov, “Sociology and the climate crisis.” Annual Review of
Sociology, 46, 2020.
57 Pramod K. Aggarwal, et al., “The climate-smart village approach.” Ecology and Society, 23, 2018.
58 The following description is based upon, Branden T. Leap, Gone Goose. Temple University, 2019.
59 Camille Cosson, “From a tsunami-devastated zone to an attractive fishing town.” Urban Geography,
2020.
4 Connections Between Origins
and Destinations

This chapter explores the extensive interconnections between emigrants’ origins and
destinations. We begin with variations in the similarities between the nations’ languages
and cultures, noting that the closer they are to each other the more attractive a potential
destination. We will also note how origins and destinations are connected by migration
chains that involve concerted migrations by families, friends and people who share life-
styles. These linkages provide the pathways for both out-migration and return migration.
Return migration is also prompted when migrants reach the financial goals they had set
before moving, or become disillusioned or lonesome in the destination nation and decide
to retrace their steps and go back home. In addition to these connections that are based
upon the movements of people, there are flows of money routed from destinations to
origins in the form of remittances that are of crucial importance to people left behind in
many origin nations.
By way of review, recognize that the topics to be considered in this chapter corre-
spond to theoretical perspectives that were introduced in earlier chapters. To be specific,
language and culture are usually conceptualized as macro level variables, and as such they
are associated with the earlier push-pull and neoclassical macro perspectives. Migration
chains into and out of nations are examples of meso, or network, considerations that are
emphasized in the new economics of labor migration (NELM). Finally, the focus upon
individuals’ assessments of costs and benefits in deciding whether or when to go or stay is
associated with the micro perspective, and neoclassical micro theory in particular.

Cultural and Linguistic Distance

The most historic connection between many origins and destination nations is a cultural
affinity involving similarities in their customs, values and language. The source of the
similarity may lie in a former colonial relationship between the nations, a historically
large-scale migration between them or a change in the legal boundaries that divided
what was once a single nation. This topic was very briefly introduced in Chapter 2
where we noted that potential destination nations with cultures and languages similar to
origin nations could attract migrants despite offering less economic advantages than other
potential destinations where the culture was very different from their own.

Culture and Its Measurement

Culture has been broadly defined as a people’s way of life, encompassing both patterns of
behavior and the norms and values which guide that behavior, and the preferred means
DOI: 10.4324/9781003158400-4
 Origins and Destinations 71
people follow and the implements they use, such as forks or chopsticks. At the macro
level, every culture has been defined by the nature of its social institutions, customs and
beliefs concerning art and architecture, clothing, etc. At the meso and micro level,
culture involves roles and relationships, and offers widely shared values and norms about
what should constitute appropriate behavior in diverse institutional settings, such as
schools, workplaces, churches, and so on.1
Most definitions of culture are abstract and amorphous, so if it is going to be possible
to compare origin and destination cultures (or any two cultures), formal methods have to
be followed, and a number of procedures have been used to assess the degree to which
any two cultures are alike. Some studies have selected specific cultural traits to compare,
implicitly assuming that if two cultures are alike on the selected traits they are probably
similar in other respects as well. For example, Docquier and associates focused upon two
such cultural traits: the importance of religion and belief in gender equality. From a
global survey of people’s values, they selected several questions that appeared to measure
each trait. If, for example, respondents from a nation tended to say that religion was an
important part of their daily life, then it was assumed that religion was highly valued in
that culture. Similarly, if people agreed that men and women should have equal rights,
then the investigators assumed that the culture had gender-equalitarian values. Finally,
based upon differences between nations in the importance of religion and belief in
gender equality, the cultural distance between any two nations could be inferred.2
There are also several established inventories of cultural traits that investigators can
utilize to compare nations. One of the most widely used in migration studies is the
Hofstede scale. It originally contained four cultural dimensions and was later extended to
six. It is utilized to assign values to nations based upon their scores on as many as six
cultural dimensions:

Individualistic versus collective orientations;

People’s tendency to accept power associated with hierarchies;
Feminine or masculine approach (e.g. inclined to compromise or to fight);
Desire to avoid uncertainty;
Emphasis upon restraint versus indulgence;
Orientation to the long-term or short-term.

Societies are given scores of zero (low) to 100 (high) on each dimension, with 50 considered
the mid-point. To illustrate, a society in which people felt a strong responsibility to their
families would have an individualistic score below 50. The quantitative scores that are as-
signed to each nation make it relatively easy to compare the cultural similarities between any
two nations.3

Language as Culture
In research, a nation’s language is sometimes used as a proxy for its culture. The un-
derlying rationale is that languages are major components of culture and therefore likely
to be related to other major components. Further, languages are the principal medium
through which distinctive cultures are transmitted and maintained. Associated with the
linguistic practices are cognitive styles and patterns of thought. Thus, a language is in-
timately tied to the characteristic ways of viewing the world which are signature features
of every culture.
72 Origins and Destinations
While there is theoretical support for viewing language as a proxy for culture, and
many studies do, a word of caution is also in order. Two societies could have historically
shared essentially the same language, but if each subsequently had different experiences
and had developed different institutional arrangements, then their languages might re-
main more similar to each other than their cultures.4 (While cultures often change
slowly, they are not static.)

Language and Its Measurement

From a measurement standpoint, how language is viewed in relation to culture is of little
consequence. Further, given the importance of a migrant’s ability to converse in a
destination nation’s language, some analysts have focused upon measuring the similarity
between nations’ languages without emphasizing the fact that language can also be
viewed as an integral component of any culture.
Most language comparisons between nations make use of an established linguistic
tree which consists of: families (meaning they are languages that share an ancestral
history), branches (which are clusters within families) and groups (languages within
clusters that are very similar in grammar and vocabulary). For example, the largest
family is Indo-European and among its largest branches are Romance (which includes
French, Spanish, etc.) and Baltic-Slavic (which includes Russian, Polish, etc.) Groups
usually consist of very similar to each other languages that relatively recently split from
each other (e.g. Danish and Norwegian). Nations whose primary languages are in the
same families, branches or groups are assumed to be more alike linguistically – and
perhaps culturally as well – than nations whose languages are in none of the same
categories.5
Linguistic proximity indices usually assign values based upon how many levels of the
family tree two languages share. For example, the highest score would be given to two
nations that shared the same language (e.g. France and Belgium). The next highest score
would go to two nations in the same group, next most for two nations only in the same
branch, still less for two nations whose language was only in the same family. A score of
zero would go to two nations whose languages were in separate families. See the il-
lustration in Figure 4.1.6

If languages are in:

Different Families, Score = 0

Same Family only, Score = 1

Same Family & Branch, Score = 2

Same Family, Branch & Group, Score = 3

Identical languages, Score = 4

Figure 4.1 Linguistic Similarity Scoring.

 Origins and Destinations 73
Cultural Distance and Migration
There have been both case studies and comparative analyses focusing upon the effect of
cultural distance on emigration flows, and the results have usually been consistent in
showing that cultural disparities are a barrier to emigration. How large a barrier appears
to vary with the economic development of the origin nation.
Docquier and associates examined emigration aspirations in a sample of nations in the
global South, specifically in the Middle East and North Africa. Respondents were asked if
they hoped to emigrate to one of the OECD nations, all of which are in the global North,
and if so, to which one. They measured cultural distance between the respondent’s origin
and hoped-for destination with two previously described dimensions: religiosity and belief in
gender equality. Those people who had OECD migration aspirations exhibited lower levels
of religiosity, especially when compared to others in the same nation who did not intend to
migrate. Because lower levels of religiosity are typical characteristics of OEC nations, these
people were self-selecting on the dimension of cultural affinity. However, the differences
between would-be migrants and those planning to stay were relatively small indicating that
people who hoped to migrate selected destinations where they would fit better culturally
with respect to religiosity; but only to a small degree. Some of the aspiring migrants also
expressed more gender egalitarian views than non-migrants, but this difference was confined
to people under 30 and single women, and again the differences between them and non-
aspirants were not large.7
The investigators did not attempt to compare cultural and economic drivers, but in
light of the research on economic drivers, described in Chapter 2, we can surmise that
for many of the people hoping to emigrate out of nations in the global South income and
employment opportunities would be paramount considerations. Cultural differences
would remain relevant in choosing a specific destination, though they would likely be
less salient than economic opportunities. Studies of people emigrating from nations in
the global North to other global North nations – where economic differences among
potential destinations are relatively small – support this contention because under these
conditions cultural distance takes on much greater importance.
Relevant data come from a case study of Romanian migration to other European
Union countries. Mikai and Novo-Corti obtained inter-EU migration data from The
World Bank and measured the cultural distance between Romania and each other EU
nations with the previously introduced six dimensions Hofstede scale. They found a
strong negative relationship between Romanian emigration flows and the cultural dis-
tance between Romania and each destination nation. The less the cultural disparity, the
greater the amount of migration. They concluded that for people emigrating within the
EU, where economic differences among nations were not very large, cultural similarities
were a crucial determinant.8
Focusing upon a broader sample of global North nations, Belot and Ederveen viewed
migration flows among 22 OECD nations. They measured cultural distance with an
early version of the Hofstede scale as well as two other indicators dealing with traditional
values and similarities in religion. (Two nations would have a low religious distance score
if the distribution of religious adherents was similar in each.) The three indicators might
have been expected to be positively related to each other given that all were presumably
measuring the same concept (i.e. culture). However, the correlations among them were
very low and sometimes negative in direction: a puzzling finding that raises questions
about the validity of some of the measures.
74 Origins and Destinations
Despite not finding strong and positive relationships among the cultural indicators,
each of them was nevertheless negatively correlated with migration flows, as expected. In
other words, regardless of how cultural distance was measured, greater similarities among
nations were associated with more migration between them. In addition, the in-
vestigators included measures of the differences between OECD nations in income and
employment, and their analysis showed that cultural barriers did a better job of ex-
plaining inter-nation migration patterns than economic differentials in this economically
relatively homogeneous sample.9
In sum, people who leave their nations seem to prefer moving to a nation whose
culture is similar to their own. This cultural driver becomes particularly salient when
economic differences among the nations are not pronounced, for example, when people
are emigrating within the global North. South to North emigres, however, may be
relatively less influenced by cultural similarities and more attuned to the possibility of
better economic possibilities in choosing destinations.

Linguistic Distance and Migration

Language disparities have been expected to act as a barrier to migration because language
skills are often a pre-requisite for finding employment. Correspondingly, a number of
studies report that migrants able to speak the destination nation’s language tend to re-
ceive at least a modest “fluency return” in the form of higher wages.10 In addition,
language facility is one of the most important ways through which migrants culturally
assimilate in a new nation. Research suggests that prior to emigrating, people are aware
of the effects of language dissimilarity and act accordingly in choosing destinations.
The previously discussed analysis reported by Belot and Ederveen examining the
effects on migration of cultural distance also examined the effects of linguistic distance.
To review, their sample consisted of 22 OECD nations, and they were trying to explain
migration flows between these nations. They relied upon two measures of linguistic
distance: whether origin and destination nations shared the same language; and the
proximity between a sample of words selected from each nation’s language. The latter
measure produced scores close to those that would be obtained by a family tree analysis
as illustrated in Figure 4.1. Both indicators were found to have significant effects on
migration flows. Specifically, lacking a common language decreased migration between
nations and, in addition, the greater the distance between the nations’ languages the less
the migration between them.11
Adsera and Pytlikova reported similar results, but their study is particularly noteworthy
because of its expanded sample which enabled them to examine migration flows from
over 200 origin nations to 30 OECD nations. They also increased the number of lin-
guistic indicators to three: a language tree index; the phonetic similarity of words in the
two languages; and the similarities among samples of words from the two languages. In
addition, they examined the diversity of languages in destination nations, hypothesizing
that nations where people spoke many different languages would present migrants with a
more difficult adjustment, hence acting as a migration barrier.12
The investigators found that all three of the linguistic proximity indices were strong
predictors of migration flows to non-English speaking nations. The indices also ex-
plained migration flows to English-speaking nations, but the effects were smaller. They
assumed the difference arose because many migrants from non-English speaking nations
learned some English in school, from movies, or other sources prior to emigrating so
 Origins and Destinations 75
leaving a non-English speaking nation to move to an English-speaking nation would be
less of a handicap than moving between nations that spoke different non-English lan-
guages. Linguistic diversity in the destination nation, as expected, also acted as a barrier,
discouraging emigration.
In sum, despite relying upon highly diverse indicators the studies we have reviewed
are congruent in reporting strong suppressing effects of cultural and linguistic dissim-
ilarity on migration. The suppressing effect appears to be so strong that it continues to be
visible regardless of what dimension of either culture or language is reflected by the
indices relied upon by investigators.

Chain Migration
Chain migration describes a widely observed pattern of movement in which prospective
migrants decide to move, and choose where to move, according to the paths that were
forged by people they knew, or knew about, who moved previously. Once migration
between an origin and destination nation begins it can eventually create a social network,
with multiple interpersonal ties that link former and future migrants. New migrants tap
into these ties and receive help in moving, finding employment and housing, etc. Then
each new migrant expands the network’s connections, leading to still more migration in
the same footsteps.13 These processes are illustrated by a migrant stream from a few
Bangladesh districts to some cities in Northeast Italy, as described in Box 4.1.

Box 4.1 Chain Migration from Bangladesh to Italy

During the mid-1990s most European nations tightened their immigration restric-
tions more than Italy did. A few cities in Northeast Italy then became main
destinations for a growing number of Bangladeshi migrants, large numbers of whom
left a few specific districts in Bangladesh – a pattern which suggests that chain
migration was involved. As the migrants explained to Morad and Sacchetto, the role
of social ties was very significant in their choice of destinations. 14
The social connections – based upon family, friendship and neighborhood –
between previous emigres and later emigres were often in place for long periods of
time. One young recent migrant explained:

“Some Bangladeshi from my home region were living in Italy.

I have always kept in touch with them by telephone.”

Other Bangladeshi who lacked direct contact with others who had emigrated to Italy
were able to benefit from information provided by others in their home district who
did have direct contacts with Bangladeshi who had emigrated to Italy. Information
that was passed on in the network involved work and housing opportunities and it
was the basis for numerous migrants’ decisions to move to Italy.

“My friends who have relatives in Italy told me that ‘Italy is the
only country in Europe where you can .. work without documents.”
76 Origins and Destinations
As new migrants arrived they, in turn, facilitated the movement of still others from
their home districts. One young man who came to Italy with the help of his cousin
explained how he later helped others to follow.

“The number who came here .. with my help is around 100. They
were my brothers, my cousins, husbands of my nieces, my neighbours
and some others.”

Chain migration has usually been invoked to describe the migration links con-
necting people based upon kinship ties, or people who lived in close proximity in the
sending society. However, essentially the same process occurs among people who
share a distinctive lifestyle that set them apart. For example, in the Northern Italian
town of Cremona there is a concentration of highly dedicated artisans who com-
pletely devote themselves to making extremely well-crafted stringed musical in-
struments: violins, violas and cellos. Since the 15th century, this center has been
widely known for its innovative artistry and the craftsmen’s total immersion in their
creative work. This reputation led to a cross-national social network that for hun-
dreds of years has brought young people to Ceroma who wanted to be part of a
community of artisans whose lifestyle revolved around their shared passion for their
craft.15
Contemporary social media amplify the spread of information concerning whether
people who share a distinctive lifestyle will find a place to be attractive. Twitter or
Facebook, for example, can efficiently set a migratory chain in motion which can some-
times trigger the vigilance of people who take responsibility for monitoring who enters a
place. To illustrate, a young American woman who with her female partner had been
living in Bali and found it to be “queer friendly” posted that information on a thread on
Twitter. She and her partner also offered to help other gay and lesbian couples settle in Bali,
providing direct links to helpful visa agents. Fearing an influx of other gay Americans
would be attracted to the conservative nation, Balinese immigration officials removed their
Twitter accounts and gave them a few hours to pack their bags and leave the country.16
The way that a lifestyle chain of the type that had Balinese officials worried has
operated in other nations is described in Box 4.2.

Box 4.2 Chain Migration of Mexican Gay Men

Sociologist Hector Carrillo and a team of assistants interviewed and observed 150
men in gay bars and clubs, and at gay-themed events, in San Diego. The men they
observed and interviewed consisted largely of Mexican-born gay immigrants and
their U.S.-born male partners, all of whom were then living in San Diego. (From
the Mexican border, it is about 25 miles to the city.) The objective of the research
was to illuminate international migrations that were largely motived by the men’s
distinctive sexual interests: a “gay culture of migration.” 17
 Origins and Destinations 77
A majority of the Mexican-born immigrants, according to Carrillo’s findings,
believed they would be more able to live “openly gay lives” in the U.S. and
perhaps even legally marry. These were not options in more conservative Mexico.
In addition, being further away from the Mexican families in which they were
raised – where their sexual orientation was generally disapproved – also protected
both them and the families they left behind from the “stigma” that all of them
would have experienced if they had openly remained in their hometowns.
The Mexican migrants followed an established gay network of friends and
acquaintances that over time came to provide a link between San Diego and a
number of Mexican cities and towns. After migrating, they relied upon what the
investigators termed, a network of informal cultural ambassadors. These men, who
had previously migrated, and were more integrated in the gay community,
introduced them to the people, places and activities that were at the center of
Mexican American gay life in San Diego.

In studies of economic, environmental and other migration drivers, chain migration

has probably often been a complicit, but unrecognized, variable. Assume, for example,
that one person, a pioneer, decides to emigrate to another nation. The specific desti-
nation may have been selected for its economic opportunities, its linguistic similarity, or
to escape floods or droughts. Some people connected to this original mover – because
they had lived in the same village or were kin – will be inclined to follow, and a
subsequent macro analysis will find that most of the migrants moved to a new locale that
offered better economic opportunities, linguistic similarity, or a safer environment. And
while such conclusions are not incorrect, they may fail to recognize the chain effect that
was also influencing migrants’ choice of pathways. In one notable study, a team of
sociologists and demographers found that the effects of climate change on patterns of
out-migration in Thailand were heavily dependent upon previously established social
networks. While climate change was a proximate driver, where people chose to move
was strongly related to their links to previous migrants.18 However, most studies of
migration in response to climate change, or to economic or cultural drivers, do not also
take these possible network influences into account.

Migration Chains as Stimuli

Sometimes implicit and sometimes explicit in formulations of the chain migration thesis is
the assumption that previous migrants not only influence the destination of subsequent
migrants but actually encourage emigration. In other words, the information they provide
and the potential assistance they can offer may act as a stimulus to move to those left behind.
Data with which to test this assumption has generally been lacking, though. Empirical study
of this hypothesis has been hampered because a relatively very small proportion of any
population actually emigrates, and an even smaller number would have a connection to a
prior émigré. Hence, it would require a very large sample to include sufficient numbers of
such people; and for a complete assessment, it would also be necessary to obtain a “control
group” consisting of similar people from the same place who did not emigrate.
A Swedish demographer, Anna-Maria Eurenius, created a unique database from the
Swedish National Archive with which to test the chain-stimulus hypothesis. From this
78 Origins and Destinations
database, she selected a random sample of 250 people who lived in a specific county in
Sweden in 1890 and left the country to move to the U.S. in 1891. From the same
county, she took a random sample of 500 people similar in age to the migrants who did
not move. For both the movers and the stayers she was able to obtain the emigration
history of their close family members.19
Eurenius’ main finding was that the chances of a person emigrating increased sub-
stantially with each increase in the number of previous family emigrants. The same direct
relationship held for both males and females, and it was when they were in their middle
20s in age that both were particularly likely to follow the lead of previous family emigres.
There were no data on the effects of previous emigres who may have been friends or
neighbors but did not share a kinship relationship so their possible influence could not be
assessed. And the study’s time interval (i.e. one year) was highly condensed so that if it
took people more than one year to follow family emigres that data would not be
available either. Despite these limitations, the results provided strong support for the
chain-stimulus hypothesis.

The Chain Multiplier

In most nations, regardless of how restrictive their immigration policies, certain categories
of family members (spouses, children, parents, etc.) are typically admitted under family
reunification programs (as described in Chapter 1). This is a type of chain migration and it
has been labeled a migration multiplier because of the way following family members
entering a nation to join an “initiating” migrant increases the total size of the destination
nation’s immigrant pool. In the U.S., for example, since about 1990, chain migration has
exceeded new migration almost every year. On average, each new immigrant sponsored
about three and one-half additional migrants. According to a 2017 report from the Center
for Immigration Studies, over 60% of all people admitted into the U.S. were added as a
result of a migrant chain, mostly under family reunification policies.20
The nation with the highest rate of chain migration into the U.S. was Mexico,
averaging over six additional people for each initiating migrant, with family chains the
major component. For example, among Mexico’s large émigré population – virtually all
of whom moved to the U.S. – sibling networks have been especially active. Pairs of
brothers were the typical initiators followed by sister migration, and these connected
moves were often generated over very short periods of time.21 As we have previously
described, however, streams of Mexican migration to the U.S. follow a number of
different informal networks.

Cumulative Causation
Cumulative causation refers to a frequently observed tendency for international mi-
gration flows between the same origin and destination to be self-sustaining over a
lengthy period of time. Chain migration is the principal force behind this tendency as a
result of the informal recruitment networks that link migrant groups across time and
space. One question that has been of particular interest to migration analysts concerns
whether there is an upper limit to cumulative causation; a point after which the inflow
slows or stops, if the destination’s initial attractiveness fades.22
At some point, network resources can become strained or exhausted. Among people
from the African nation of Cape Verde, for example, there was a migration chain linking
 Origins and Destinations 79
to the Netherlands. People who for years had helped other family members and friends
to follow in their footsteps – obtaining legal documents, finding places to live and work
– often eventually came to feel burdened and frustrated because they felt that people
back home did not appreciate the fact that they could not help everyone.23
In addition, there are often built-in forces that can lead to deteriorating conditions in
the destination nation. The range of jobs that emigres from a specific place can perform is
likely to be limited. At some point the continuing influx of migrants can saturate the
local job market, leaving later arrivals with fewer opportunities. At the same time, be-
cause of the tendency for people in a migrant stream to settle in close proximity to each
other, their sustained inflow raises the demand for a relatively fixed supply of housing,
leading to rent increases. Despite facing less income and higher costs migrant flows have
often been observed to continue. At what point will the chain network eventually be
shut down? Mexican emigrants to the U.S. are the group that has been most studied in
relation to this question.
Focusing upon Mexico is suggested because the nation has experienced very large
rates of out-migration, and it has almost all entailed moving to the U.S. The data set that
has most often been utilized is the Mexican Migration Project (MMP). It began by
accumulating data on four Mexican communities as origin sites in 1982, and has peri-
odically added sites since. By 2020 it included 93 rural and 61 urban communities. About
one-half of the latter were in metropolitan areas with over 100,000 inhabitants. For each
community included, the database contains data for households, including their com-
position, assets, migration history, etc.24
Fussell and Massey proposed that changes occurring in Mexico would reduce the
migratory chain. Specifically, they noted that Mexico was becoming more urban and
that more of the migrants were coming from urban areas while they were previously
much more likely to be leaving rural areas. Relying upon classical theories about rural-
urban differences, they assumed that urbanites were more selective and limited in their
friendship and neighborhood circles and so less likely to be connected to migratory social
networks. Even if someone from the same residential block were to migrate, they
probably would not even notice. The typical urbanite is also thought to be less likely
than the typical rural resident to be involved in an extended kinship network.25
Some years later, utilizing data from the MMP, Paredes-Orozco examined rural-urban
changes in U.S.-bound migration from Mexico. He noted that, as Fussell and Massey
had anticipated, the composition of the flow out of Mexico had changed in recent years
to involve more urban origination. However, the likelihood of people migrating was not
lower in small urban or even metropolitan areas than it was in rural areas, and in some
conditions it was actually higher. Further, the same social processes appeared to be
operating across all the different potential origin areas. Migrants from both small and
large communities were found to rely upon community and family ties to reduce the
risks and costs of moving to the U.S. In short, cumulative causation had apparently not
been limited by increasing urbanization in Mexico.26
There is, however, some evidence to suggest that while the social network-driven
migratory chain to the U.S. has not been compromised, deteriorating local conditions
for migrants may have resulted in more dispersal of Mexican migrants in the U.S.
During the last decades of the 20th century, there was an especially large migration
from Mexico to Los Angeles. Ivan Light has argued that Los Angeles reached a sa-
turation point, making it more difficult for later arrivals to find jobs and housing, and
also exposing them to the resentment of locals, objecting to the growing number of
80 Origins and Destinations
poor migrants. The self-perpetuating movement of Mexican migrants to Los Angeles
markedly slowed, and was redirected to other U.S. cities and towns that had not
previously attracted large numbers of Mexican migrants.27 Social networks continued
to generate migration out of Mexico, but the chain linking Mexico and some parti-
cular destinations (e.g. Los Angeles) apparently reached an upper limit.

Family as Compensation
Migrations analysts, as we have noted, have been puzzled by the way chain migration can
continue even after economic conditions deteriorated at the destination. Perhaps that
seemed puzzling because some analysts focused too narrowly upon economic motiva-
tions. Ties to family can be important motivators for non-economic reasons. For ex-
ample, studying a British sample, Ermisch and Mulder found that people who lived far
from their parents were likely to move long distances to be close to them, even after they
had lived for five years or more at the same residence, and were socially integrated into
their neighborhoods.28
The strong pull of family, parents and siblings in particular, obviously has an emotional
component, and being close enough to be able to actualize family relationships may
compensate for some loss of income if people are unable to duplicate their economic
situation after the move. Gillespie, Mulder and Thomas analyzed a large Swedish sample
of working-age individuals for whom they had survey data concerning their reasons for
moving. When living closer to family was the primary motive, their labor market
outcomes were generally worse after the move, and the relative losses were especially
pronounced for the migrants who had children of their own.
There were compensations, though. Having family close by could be a source of
childcare, providing parents with workplace flexibility, and eliminating some childcare
costs. However, even if it did not have these benefits, the investigators noted that the
migrating parents might be quite willing to sacrifice economic returns for family contact.
Moving to connect with family could also, under some conditions, eventually have
economic benefits. Among those who were unemployed immediately prior to the
move, the investigators inferred that families must have been a source of information and
contacts because those who moved primarily for family were more likely to find em-
ployment in their new locale than previously unemployed migrants who moved for
other than family reasons.29

Stepwise Migration
Stepwise migration, sometimes also referred to as multiple or serial migration, describes a
frequently observed tendency for people not to remain in one destination nation, but
rather to move to several destinations. Sometimes a return to the origin nation is in-
terspersed between the various destinations. Additional moves often occur when mi-
grants confront adverse economic conditions in the initial destination, but a sequential
pattern of moving to new destinations can also be an established part of a migratory
chain. While many variations are possible, underlying all of them is a tendency for many
international migrants to settle temporarily in more than one destination nation.
Studies of migrants’ life courses showing multiple destinations began to appear reg-
ularly during the first decade of this century and bourgeoned during the second decade.
Many of the studies concluded that migrants shared a hierarchical ranking of destination
 Origins and Destinations 81
nations and tried to accumulate sufficient resources along the way eventually to reach the
nation(s) they considered to be most desirable. The ranking, according to anthropologist
Nina Glick Schiller is multi-dimensional. A city’s economic opportunities, as one would
expect, were one of the ranking criteria. In addition, from her interviews with migrants,
Schiller concluded that the migrants, along with their friends and families, shared a
ranking of cities based upon their cultural diversity, openness and lack of political sur-
veillance. At the top of their rankings were the leading cities of the global North which
they viewed as offering both economic opportunities and cultural openness: London,
New York, Paris and Toronto.30
While many migrants from the global South would prefer to move to the highest-
ranked cities, it can be prohibitively expensive and difficult to do in a single move. It
very often takes a series of moves as described in Box 4.3.

Box 4.3 Stepwise Migration of Multinational Maids

Anjou Paul interviewed 160 Filipina and Indonesian domestic workers who had
left their homes and migrated to Singapore and Hong Kong. For some, it was a
first move, for others a step along a way that they hoped was going to continue,
while for others it was a last stop after multiple moves. She found that they shared a
hierarchy of destinations, ranked according to desirability, and that they aspired to
keep moving up the hierarchy. Paul later enlarged her study with a survey of 1200
domestic workers and interviews with their agencies and employers. 31
The Filipinas were especially hoping eventually to reach Canada, or the U.S.,
however, they faced difficulties. Placement agencies demanded large fees, often
creating “debt bondage” because the fees were so large relative to their modest
salaries, and indebtedness slowed their movement. There were also immigration
barriers and costs that combined to make it nearly impossible for them to move to
their most desired locations in a single move. At each step, they acquired more
information and help from enclaves of fellow nationals who had remained in that
place, at least temporarily. And they tried to save enough money to finance their
next step.
The patterns of movement were variable. For example, some moved to
Singapore, then on to Italy or Bahrain and then to Canada. Others moved to
Hong Kong and then to the U.S. And some remained at stops along the way,
unable to move up the hierarchy; or they found they could make enough in a
place like Hong Kong to send remittances back to family in the Philippines, and so
they chose to stay.

Stepwise migration can also occur as a result of unanticipated circumstances that

migrants confront. For example, a large group of Latin Americans migrated to Spain,
largely in hopes of finding better employment opportunities. In Spain they also re-
ceived European Union (EU) citizenship, enabling them to move freely across much
of Europe. When their employment conditions in Spain deteriorated, they took ad-
vantage of their EU citizenship to move to England (when England was still part of the
EU).32 Similarly, when EU citizens born in Somalia, Iran and Nigeria confronted
82 Origins and Destinations
discrimination and racism in Sweden or Germany, they moved on to England in
anticipation of better treatment there.33
For some migrants, however, the serial moves may not have been part of a long-
term plan envisioned at the onset. Crawley and Jones interviewed over 100 migrants
from Syria, Nigeria and Afghanistan who were living at the time in Greece, Italy and
Turkey. Many of them have lived in other places along the way: Libya, Iran, etc. They
explained that they believed they might have remained at any of their previous lo-
cations had conditions been different; for example, if their economic situation had not
deteriorated or if civic conflict had not increased. They became serial movers without
really intending to continue to move. In other words, everywhere in-between their
home country and their final destination was not, as they remembered it, meant simply
to be a stepping stone.34

Transnational Families
In Chapter 2 we described a common tendency in the global South for one household
member to migrate, usually to the global North, in hopes of finding better wages. For the
family, this is a strategy of “hedging their bets” because it is less risky than if the entire
family were to move. The one who migrates, if successful, sends remittances to the family
that stayed behind. This arrangement can last for many years, or the one who migrated can
return home; or if the migrant obtains better wages than could be expected back home,
then the rest of the family may follow. In any case, an integral member of a family is away
for an extended period. In this section, we will examine some of the likely consequences.
Anthropologist Caroline Brettell, in an overview, writes that the most common
pattern of migration by one spouse is for the male partner to migrate and the wife (and
children, if there are any) to remain in the sending community. Sometimes, the overall
situation of the family members left behind improves; but often, the absence of the
husband/father creates additional burdens for those who remain.35 What data are
available also show a new tendency has been increasing in the global South in which it is
the wife/mother who is the family member that migrates. This recent trend modifies an
historical pattern in which it had almost always been the husband/father who left, if only
one family member migrated.36
As women migrate from nations in the global South to live and work in nations in the
global North, they are exposed to different cultures, with new ideas and values. Of
special significance is the “modern” view of women that is widely held throughout the
North. It emphasizes much more gender equality than women from patrilineal societies
in the South previously experienced. When these women return home their husbands
typically expect them to resume the subordinated role traditionally prescribed in their
culture, and conflicts over different expectations can ensue. However, the recent in-
crease in the amount of female migration has, in many nations of the global South,
gradually weakened patrilineal structures and slowly altered gender relations.37

Men Left Behind

When a female family member migrates, like the previously described transnational
domestic workers, she is the one who ordinarily sends remittances. The wife’s new role
in helping to support her family can create stress for the husband left behind, but apart
from finances, the absence of the wife-mother also tends to create special strains for
 Origins and Destinations 83
everyone in both the nuclear and extended families left behind. The men who stayed
typically reported that they missed their wives, and they also expressed dissatisfaction
with the extra responsibilities of child care and domestic household chores, both of
which they found to be difficult. How one group of men left behind coped with an
absent wife/mother is described in Box 4.4.

Box 4.4 Husbands Left Behind in Ghana

An international team of sociologists was able to find 12 men who were living in
Ghana’s principal city, Accra, and were willing to sit for extensive interviews. All
of these men were married to women who had been overseas for at least two years.
Most of their wives were either in the U.S. or the U.K., and their average stay at
the time of the study had been about four years in duration. Most of the husbands
left behind were in professional positions (lawyers, lecturers, businessmen, etc.).
To handle domestic chores, the men with adolescent daughters at home relied
upon the girls to do most of the cleaning, cooking and taking care of younger
siblings. Those without adolescent daughters relied mostly upon other female
relatives, female friends or they paid female domestic workers. (Most of the men
could afford to pay for services, if necessary.) Note, they maintained a rigidly
gendered division of labor, common in nations in the global South, in which child
care and household chores were considered women’s work, even when wives/
mothers were absent.
The separated husbands and wives maintained regular phone and text contact,
and some were also able to travel up and back for regular visits. Some of the men –
the investigators did not note the number – felt so emotionally or sexually
deprived that they found “girlfriends” to temporarily replace their wives. Overall,
however, the investigators concluded that the men in their sample effectively
handled their wives’ absence by employing a number of coping strategies. 38

Absent mothers tend to remain involved in “mothering from afar,” calling their children
regularly and wanting detailed information about their lives, but in many instances studies
report that the children resented their mothers’ absence and felt emotionally less attached to
her.39 The young children who remain home usually receive much of their daily care from
“other mothers,” female relatives including older sisters and aunts, and grandmothers, in
particular.40 It is apparently commonplace for these substitute caregivers to try to en-
courage these children to be independent and take care of themselves as much as
possible. The grandmother of a young Filipina girl whose mother had migrated ex-
plained that she (i.e. the grandmother) had been getting the little girl ready for school
each day, but that she planned to help less in the near future.

“I told her to learn how to do the things I’ve been doing for her … so that
when her mom comes back she will be happy to know that her daughter
can take care of herself.”41
84 Origins and Destinations
Females who migrate, according to several studies, tend to remit a larger share of their
earnings than males, though the absolute amounts they send are often less due to a
discriminatory tendency for women to be paid less than males. The relatively large re-
mittances the women send probably indicate that the norm of family obligation is
stronger among females than males in the global South. However, as the remitting fe-
male demonstrates an ability to help support a family, at least in some nations it raises
their status in the family.42
The children in many cases do benefit from the migrant mother’s remittances,
especially with respect to enhanced educational opportunities. However, there is a good
deal of evidence that indicates children are adversely impacted by the absence of a
migrating mother. A meta-analysis that involved thousands of children and adolescents
who were originally included in studies conducted across nations of the global South
found that children typically suffered more depressive and anxiety disorders, and phy-
sically were more likely to be under- or over-weight when their mothers migrated. This
analysis included every published study the investigators could find through 2018.43 In
addition, at least one other study compared the effects of migrating fathers and mothers
on their children’s school performance and found that children lagged further behind
their peers when it was the mother who was away.44
The consequences for parents, when a grown daughter migrates, appear to vary ac-
cording to the daughter’s marital status. From several small studies it appears that when
unmarried daughters migrate, left behind parents are typically the beneficiary of re-
mittances, though in some instances daughters are more concerned with trying to save
for a prospective marriage, and parents feel they are not getting as much as they should.
With married daughters, most of the remittances go to their husbands and children,
unless the grandparents need assistance in paying for the children’s education. The
daughter’s separation from her own nuclear family, however, is a frequent matter of
concern to her parents. They often feel that her children miss her and they worry that
her marriage will not survive the separation.45

Women Left Behind

When husbands leave, the consequences for their wives left behind have until recently
been the subject of a lot of speculation, and a few limited studies from which it is difficult
to generalize. Theorizing about how wives fare when their husbands emigrate has been
driven by two polar hypotheses: (1) the first holds that women who under the best of
circumstances tend to be overburdened in many nations of the global South are further
weighed down by having to pick up husbands’ work while continuing to handle their
own responsibilities, or (2) which argues that wives’ household status improves when
their husbands are gone, especially in patrilineal societies, and that they have more au-
tonomy with which to pursue leisure activities.
In this writing, the most complete empirical assessment has been reported by a team of
sociologists and demographers utilizing a unique dataset in Nepal. A panel study – which
follows the same selected participants across time – has been ongoing in a rural area of
south-central Nepal since 1996. It provides a wealth of data on migrations, remittances,
household and community characteristics. In recent years, hundreds of thousands of
people have left Nepal every year due largely to the nation’s high level of unemploy-
ment, and most of them are young, married men. The data that have been collected by
the panel study provide an ideal data set with which to examine whether wives’
 Origins and Destinations 85
situations improved or deteriorated when their husbands migrated. The analysis showed
that the husband’s absence typically had both positive and negative consequences for the
left-behind wives. On the one hand, the time used calendar each wife completed
showed that the women usually spent more hours toiling on their farms because of the
loss of the male’s labor; difficult work, usually on top of their other chores. On the other
hand, the remittances sent by the absent husbands gave many wives a new degree of
financial freedom and enabled them to participate more in leisure activities outside of the
home.46
The children of a migrant father may benefit from his remittances which can increase
household assets. This can translate into better nutrition and more educational oppor-
tunities for them. At the same time, studies in Pakistan, Thailand and elsewhere also
report that the children of fathers who emigrate miss the guidance and support they
otherwise could have received, and may be more likely to be unhappy and anxious.
Other studies that compare the offspring of families with both migrant and non-migrant
fathers are consistent in showing that children in households with a father who emigrated
are more likely to have behavioral problems and display hyperactivity and inattention.47

Remittances
Remittances from international migrants who left nations in the global South steadily
increased from the mid-1990s to 2019, reaching a high point of (U.S.) $554 billion.
These remittances became an important source of income, reducing overall poverty in
the nations that received them. COVID-19 reductions in work and travel subsequently
led to several years of decline, and total remittances for 2021 were estimated to decline to
approximately (U.S.) $470 billion.48 Even when the scale was reduced, remittances
continued to be a large and important part of nations’ economies in the global South,
and the economic growth of many nations continued to be positively related to the size
of remittance inflows.49
Philippine migrants present a good illustration of the importance of remittances. In
2020, an estimated ten million Filipinos, almost ten percent of the nation’s population,
lived and worked outside of the country. The government of the Philippines has for
many years encouraged and facilitated work-related emigration by establishing a number
of boards and bureaus to promote and manage the export of labor. The government
made these investments both to ease domestic unemployment and because migrants’
remittances made an important contribution to the nation’s economy.50 In total, ac-
cording to World Bank figures, the emigres sent back about (US) $35 billion in 2020
which was approximately ten percent of the nation’s GDP. Only in Guatemala (13%)
and Ukraine (11%) did remittances constitute a larger share of the nation’s GDP. The
migrants worked at casinos in Marrakesh, car washes in Macau, as nurses in the U.S., as
maids in Taiwan, and on global cruise ships; and in many families, more than one
member of the family migrated and sent remittances.51
With so many members of families away from each other for extended periods of time,
maintaining family ties can become problematic. However, Anthropologist Ina
Zharkevich contends that remittances are an important means by which a separated family
member reinforces kinship bonds with those who remained behind. Because many mi-
grants from nations in the global South earn money from physical labor – as maids, farm
and construction workers, etc. – the remittances they send are viewed as meeting their
obligations by “blood and sweat.” The toil that the money represents makes these
86 Origins and Destinations
remittances more intimate to the recipients than monetary conferrals acquired in other
ways. At the same time that remittances can reinforce family ties, they can also be a source
of conflict among extended family members who remain behind. In other words, they can
both bind and divide. One day, in a local court in Nepal, Zharkevich witnessed a dispute
over remittances brought by an older woman, Sapana, against her daughter-in-law. It is
described in Box 4.5.52

Box 4.5 Conflict Over Remittances in Nepal

Sapana accused her daughter-in-law of taking all of the remittances sent by her
son, the husband of the daughter-in-law. Even though the two women lived in a
joint household, worked together in the same family fields and ate from the same
hearth, they had different “money pots.” Sapana felt that she was entitled to a
portion of her son’s remittances because she had taken out a loan to pay for his
travel, and she was still making payments. She was a widow and finding it difficult
to make ends meet.
In the emotion-charged court hearing, each woman accused the other of
failing to show proper respect. The quarrel made apparent the strains between
the nuclear and extended family. The women were part of a joint family as a
result of Nepal traditions, and not by choice. Keeping all of her husband’s
remittances, and excluding her mother-in-law, provided the daughter-in-law
with a tangible way of asserting the salience of her nuclear, rather than
extended, family.
In Nepal, Zharkevich noted that there were also frequent conflicts over
remittances within transnational nuclear families. Wives often complained that
migrant husbands were not sending enough money; that they were failing to meet
their traditional male obligation to provide for their wives. Arguments about
money over the phone could grow so frequent and so heated that emigrant men
sometimes avoid phoning, and some of them stated that they would like to get rid
of their phones altogether to avoid the conflict that they thought was likely to
recur in future conversations.

Studies conducted in a number of nations in the global South have focused upon the
recipient households, and tried to chart precisely how remittances affect household
budgets. The results have varied. Some household expenditures will almost invariably
increase, given the infusion of external funds, but differences are reported in which
budget categories receive increased expenditures. Some recent studies illustrate the absence
of an overall pattern:

1 In Bangladesh, Raihan and associates found that remittances increased household

expenditures on health, food and housing, but not on education, and it did not
increase durable investments (e.g. farm equipment).53
2 In Senegal, Randazzo and Piracha found that cross-national remittances
increased household expenditures across every category; and that the increases
were roughly proportionate to previous allocations. In other words, marginal
 Origins and Destinations 87
spending patterns did not change as a result of the infusion of additional funds
from remittances.54
3 In Mexico, Aysa-Lastra found that remittance–induced changes in household
spending varied completely according to the gender of both the sender and the
recipient. Men and women remitted for different types of expenditures, and men
and women who received remittances put them to different uses.55

Return Migration
Return migration, also referred to as remigration, is a difficult concept to operationalize
because of the complexity of many migration patterns. To illustrate, suppose that I move
from nation A to B then later to C. If I go back to B, does that constitute return
migration, or must I go all the way back to A? The answer depends upon a lot of
considerations: Has my family remained in A, or did they also move to B? Is my citi-
zenship in A? How long did I stay in B before moving to C? Most data sets do not
include a level of detail adequate to answer all of the above questions, so studies of
voluntary return migration typically involve a degree of measurement error. When a
nation forces migrants to leave, some data on the deportees are usually collected by
statistical offices, border protection and immigration law enforcement agencies, but
many nations’ records are incomplete. Voluntary returns at a global scale are tracked by
the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and by some nations’ agencies, but
the total number of returnees is almost certainly under-counted.56 Because of the de-
ficiencies with “official” return migration records, most studies rely upon specially de-
signed surveys or datasets that were initially collected for other purposes but include
relevant migration data.

Aspirations and Plans

People who move to a nation different from the one they grew up in frequently hold
on to the idea that they will eventually return home. For those who migrated in
search of better employment opportunities, retirement is often viewed as the time
when they will be able to return. As they grow older, however, many realize that
returning home was a dream they cannot actualize. Some settle for the hope that they
can be buried in their home country, though even this is out of reach for most.
Despite their hopes and long-term aspirations, a number of considerations keep most
migrants from returning. If they had children in the destination nation, remaining
close to them for support may be compelling.57 In addition, many of their extended
families and friends – the people they would return for – may have in the interim
died or moved elsewhere.
Over time, many migrants come to feel that the destination nation is almost home,
while changes in the origin nation make it feel less like the home they have been missing.
Erdal has summarized these alternatives by writing that “home” for the migrant can have
four possible locations: here or there, both or neither. And where home really is can
fluctuate among the four choices.58 So, for people who have migrated, an opportunity to
return to a previous home can present a complex set of issues to consider, as illustrated in
Box 4.6.
88 Origins and Destinations

Box 4.6 Deciding Whether to Return to Liberia

The violence of a prolonged civil war in Liberia during the 1990s resulted in
thousands of people fleeing their homes and traveling about 750 miles west to
Ghana. When the conflict ended the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) began an active assistance program (in 2008) to provide the refugees
with some alternatives. UNHCR offered to help them to better integrate in
Ghana, repatriate in Liberia, or resettle in a third nation. The migrants needed to
weigh their options and make a decision.
A married couple, Jack and Shetha initially argued about whether to stay in
Ghana or go back to Liberia. She was sure she wanted to return and said:

“I am tired of my life here! We are just wasting time … It is better to restart

our new life in Liberia.” 59

Jack was afraid he could not duplicate his current teaching position in Liberia so
Shetha made a month-long “go-and-see” visit where she turned for help from her
family that had remained. They agreed to help the couple find work and housing
so Jack relented and they returned home.
Other migrants with no family or friends remaining in Liberia to assist them
were more reluctant to move back. That was the situation of a 41-year-old single
man who said:

“If I go back I will have to rebuild my network … If I return to Liberia there

will be a big gap in my life.”

Some families hedged their bets, with one member returning to Liberia while the
other remained, and based upon the experience of each the couple would later
make a decision. Still other migrants were enticed by a dream of going to the U.S.
or Canada or Australia, but this was a realistic possibility only for those with family
already in those countries so they could apply for family reunification.

A substantial percentage of all returning migrants appear to be following a plan to return

that they laid out in advance. Some initially left home planning to remain in the destination
nation for only a limited period of time, for example, until they could save enough money to
send their children to school, or buy a farm or a store, or until the violence that led them to
flee is over. In other instances, readmission agreements with countries of origin were ne-
gotiated with the destination nation in advance, stipulating migrants’ lengths of stay. Of
course, many migrants also return home unexpectedly because they face problems in the
destination nation – such as loss of a job or racial-ethnic hostility – or because their family at
home needs them (e.g. due to illness or natural disaster). For some migrants, the return home
is involuntary. In most destination nations they can be expelled if they have been convicted
of a crime or if they over-stayed their visa – or simply because a new political regime does
not want them to remain. For these involuntary returnees reintegration is especially difficult,
as described in the following section.
 Origins and Destinations 89
There are limited data concerning whether migrants’ voluntarily return home in
greater or lesser numbers than they initially expected. Most research on the issue has
been confined to case studies of small groups of migrants from a single nation. A large,
unique dataset on return migration exists for the U.S., though the time period it covers is
1917 to 1924, making its contemporary applicability questionable given how many
dynamics have changed over the past 100 years. Nevertheless, the completeness of the
data makes them difficult to disregard. Zachary Ward, an Australian economist, found
that between 1917 and 1924 the Bureau of Immigration asked migrants entering the
U.S. if they planned to stay permanently or, if not, how long they planned to stay before
returning home. The government also collected information on departures, but again,
only during this time period.
Ward took a 1% random sample of the many ships coming from Europe to the U.S.
between 1917 and 1924, and obtained information on plans and departures for that ship’s
passengers. Comparing what the migrants said they planned on arrival with the actual
departure information, he found that only 15%, or less (depending upon the specific
year) of the entrants initially intended ever to return home. They considered it a per-
manent move. However, 40% or more actually did return. It was single men from
Southern and Eastern Europe whose rate of return most exceeded their initial plans.
They arrived with fewer skills than migrants from Western or Northern Europe and
appeared to return home because they found good-paying jobs more difficult to obtain
than they anticipated.60
Ward’s finding that, on socioeconomic considerations, the return migrants were
negatively selected is consistent with other findings of studies that focused upon more
contemporary groups. For example, an analysis of recent return migration to nations in
the global South from the Netherlands found that the lowest income group had the
highest rate of return. Next highest were migrants in the highest income group. The
middle-income group was lowest, producing what Ward and others have described as a
U-shaped return pattern.61

Generational Differences
Return plans and aspirations have also been shown to vary by immigrant generation. One
of the most relevant studies came from a large survey in France which included a re-
presentative sample over 12,000 immigrants and their offspring, all between 18 and 50
years of age. The survey, among other items, asked about the immigrants’ onward mobility
intentions: Did they think they would move back to their (or their parents’) home country,
or did they intend to go to a third country (i.e. not their ethnic homeland).
Demographer Louise Caron classified the people in her sample according to their
immigrant generation, and then analyzed their onward mobility intentions in relation to
their generation. The analysis showed that foreign-born migrants who were not French
citizens at birth, first generation (G1), were the ones most likely to consider returning to
their ethnic homeland, if they were to move. The offspring of immigrants, G2, who
were raised in France were much less likely to report intentions to return to their parents’
origin country but much more likely to plan to live one day in a third country.
Regardless of generation, those with more educational attainments or/and fluency in
multiple languages were also more inclined to move to a new and different country.
There was also a generational difference in how these people responded to perceived
discrimination. First-generation immigrants responded to feeling discriminated against in
90 Origins and Destinations
France by intending to move to a third country. They were disappointed in France, so
inclined to move, but not back home under these conditions. However, the second
generation, G2, responded to perceived discrimination by intending to move back to
their parent’s country of birth. Caron proposed that this expressed their disappointment
with France and was also a way for them to signify their identification with their
(parents’) homeland.62
Similar findings come from a study of Chinese families in Toronto in which the
investigators concluded that whether and where young people migrate depends upon
their kin networks. When the first generation maintained transnational ties to their
countries of origin the children built upon those networks and these connections became
the pathways back to the nation of their ethnic origins.63 Thus, return migration and
out-migration paths are highly duplicative of each other. They are, according to
Entwisle and associates, “interconnected steps in a migration system.”64
The assertion of ethnic identification in the second generation has been widely de-
scribed in other studies and referred to as, “reactive ethnicity.” The G2 returnees are
often disappointed with what they find in their parents’ homeland, though. For example,
Christou and King interviewed 64 second-generation people of Greek descent. They all
moved back to Greece, from either Germany or the U.S. as a result of having grown up
with a strong Greek identity. They found many conditions in Greece different from
what they expected, and also felt that they were not accepted by natives as being suf-
ficiently Greek. They were considered “hyphenated Greeks.” Disappointed, a number
of the returnees were contemplating going back to their birth nations, i.e. either the U.S.
or Germany.65 Similarly, a group of men of Korean descent who were born and raised in
China then moved to South Korea felt that their Korean ancestry was not fully accepted
in South Korea. They discovered that birth citizenship counted for more than coeth-
nicity, and that where, outside of Korea, people were born strongly influenced the kind
of reception they experienced in Korea. For example, Korean Americans were accorded
higher status and more accepted than Korean Chinese.66

Drivers of Return
A large percentage of voluntary migrants are in pursuit of economic gain. Their im-
mediate gain, as described in Chapter 2, can be in the form of increased wages in the
destination country. However, what can be termed economic migration is often also part
of a long-term mobility strategy. The objective is for migrants to accumulate savings to
enable them to open their own businesses when they return home. In many nations of
the global South, there are elevated rates of self-employment among returning migrants.
Others who migrate acquire technical, social and language skills on their jobs in the
global North which qualify them for higher wage positions when they return.67
On the other hand, of course, some migrants are not successful in obtaining the kind
of wages that they expected before they moved. Whether that leads them to pack their
things and move back home has been examined with inconsistent results. Some studies
report that economic disappointment leads to remigration, but other studies report no
relationship between them. Caron and Ichou have tried to reconcile the different
findings by focusing upon the conditional effects of migrants educational attainments
before they moved, assuming that these attainments would be positively related to their
economic expectations. Their data involved long-term migration out of England and
Wales, and they found that it was migrants who were relatively well educated who were
 Origins and Destinations 91
the most likely to return if they faced employment difficulties in the destination nation.
This educational effect was especially pronounced for males and for relatively new ar-
rivals. Migrants with lesser educational accomplishments, with lower economic ex-
pectations, who could not obtain employment did not experience the same mismatch
between expectations and outcomes, and so were less likely to remigrate.68
In addition to economic considerations, a number of other types of variables have
been shown to effect the likelihood of remigration. In several studies, experiencing
discrimination has been cited by returnees as their reason for leaving. For example, in the
previously discussed study of migrants intentions to leave France, they mentioned dis-
crimination as a reason they would want to leave. In a study of 40 people who actually
returned from Germany to Turkey, Sener found that the migrants stated that dis-
crimination was a major reason for their remigration. The group studied by Sener all had
relatively high socioeconomic status; they were physicians, engineers, professors, etc.
However, they did not feel that their professional status protected them from widespread
discrimination in Germany because of their ethnic identity. Because of their credentials
they believed they could still make a good living in Turkey, but even if returning meant
economic sacrifices they felt it was worth it to “feel at home.”69

Reintegration
Many people who migrate, as we have noted, leave with the intention of someday
returning “home.” For those who do return, there is the question of how well and how
quickly they will be able to reintegrate. The process of reintegrating has usually been
defined in terms of carving out new roles and relationships – at work, in families, etc. –
that fit the returnees based upon how they have changed as a result of their experiences
as migrants. Flahaux defines it as migrants finding their place in society, back in their
country of origin.70
For forced returnees, reintegration can be especially problematic. In a number of
global South nations, including Cambodia, Egypt, Honduras, and others, migrants who
are expelled from the E.U. or the U.S. are regularly detained, imprisoned, put on parole.
In a number of less repressive nations, returnees who were either expelled or forced for
economic reasons to return, are not formally punished, but they are stigmatized, labeled
as lazy failures.71 Even in nations where non-voluntary returnees are neither punished
nor stigmatized, there tends to be few government programs designed to facilitate their
reintegration. They might receive some assistance from family members or from poorly
funded NGOs, but they are largely on their own. In all of these situations, it is extremely
difficult for the returnees to reintegrate and many aspire again to migrate.72
Voluntary returnees include a range of people who were not expelled, but the
“voluntariness” of their return can be highly variable. At the low end of the continuum
are people who felt they had no choice but to return because they felt isolated and
became desperately lonesome or wound up unable to support themselves. At the high
end of this continuum are people who emigrated with a specific objective in mind. After
reaching that objective it was always their plan to return home. While they were away, it
was typical for these people to keep one eye on the people at home, and try to assure that
a comfortable place would be waiting when they returned.
Migrant Filipina domestic workers illustrate the importance of maintaining contacts.
After years of working overseas many return home impoverished, even after years of
earning more than they could have if they remained in the Philippines. The explanation
92 Origins and Destinations
is that they remit a large percentage of their earnings, leaving little for savings. In addition
to relatively large remittances, they return home for visits with their families as often as
they can. After interviewing a small sample of Filipina migrant household workers,
Saguin concluded that they are renegotiating a space for their return from the very
moment that they decided to migrate.73

Notes
1 For an overview of major theories of culture, see Jerry D. Moore, Visions of Culture. Rowman &
Littlefield, 2018.
2 Frederic Docquier, Aysit Tansel and Ricardo Turati, “Do emigrants self-select along cultural
traits?” International Migration Review, 54, 2020.
3 G. Hofstede, “Dimensionalizing cultures.” In Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2, 2011.
4 For further discussion, see Yoshihisa Kashima, Emiko Kashimo and Evan Kidd, “Language and
Culture.” In Thomas M. Holtgraves (Ed), The Oxford Handbook of Language and Social Psychology,
Oxford University, 2014.
5 For further discussion of language families, see James Stenlaw, Nobuko Adachi and Zdenek
Salzmann, Language, Culture, and Society. Taylor & Francis, 2017.
6 A similar measurement procedure was employed by, Alicia Adsera and Mariola Pytlikova, “The role
of language in shaping international migration.” The Economic Journal, 125, 2015.
7 Docquier, et al., op.cit.
8 Iuliana Mikai and Isael Novo-Corti, “Cultural distance and migration patterns in the EU.” European
Research Studies Journal, 23, 2020.
9 Michele Belot and Sjef Ederveen, “Cultural barriers in migration between OECD countries.”
Journal of Population Economics, 25, 2012.
10 For data on the fluency return, see Ying Zhen, “English Proficiency and Earnings of Foreign-Born
Immigrants in the USA.” Forum for Social Economics, 45, 2016; and Abdihafit Shaeye, “Dynamics of
English fluency return for refugees.” Journal of Immigration & Refugee Studies, 17, 2019.
11 Belot and Ederveen, op.cit.
12 Adsera and Pytlikova, op.cit.
13 The term was initially described by, John S. McDonald and Leatrice D. McDonald, “Chain mi-
gration, ethnic neighborhood formation, and social networks.” The Milbank Memorial Fund
Quarterly, 42, 1964. It has been extensively refined by Massey in a series of papers on Mexican
migration to the U.S. See, for example, Douglas S. Massey, “Understanding Mexican migration to
the United States.” American Journal of Sociology, 92, 1987.
14 All of the following quotes are taken from, Mohammad Morad and Devi Sacchetto, “Multiple
migration and use of ties.” International Migration, 58, 2019.
15 Simone Guercini and Diego Ceccarelli, “Passion driving entrepreneurship and lifestyle migration.”
Journal of International Entrepreneurship. Published online: 14 January, 2020.
16 Richard C. Paddock, “She Called Bali ‘Queer Friendly’.” New York Times, 1/21/2021, P A8.
17 Hector Carrillo, Pathways of Desire. University of Chicago, 2017.
18 Barbara Entwisle, Nathalie Williams and Ashton Verdrey, “Climate change and migration.”
American Journal of Sociology, 125, 2020.
19 Anna-Maria Eurenius, “A family affair.” Population Studies, 74, 2020.
20 Jessica Vaughan, “Immigration Multipliers.” Center for Immigration Studies, September, 2017.
21 See Fernando Riosmena and Mao-Mei Liu, “Who goes next?” The ANNALS of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, 684, 2019.
22 Elizabeth Fussell and Douglas S. Massey, “The limits to cumulative causation.” Demography, 41,
2004.
23 Jorgen Carling, “Making and Breaking a Chain.” In Oliver Bakewell, et al. (Eds), Beyond Networks.
Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
24 For further description, see Jorge Durand and Douglas S. Massey, “Evolution of the Mexico-U.S.
immigration system.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 684, 2019.
25 Fussell and Massey, op.cit.
 Origins and Destinations 93
26 Guillermo Paredes-Orozco, “The limits to cumulative causation revisited.” Demographic Research,
41, 2019.
27 Ivan Light, Deflecting Immigration. Russell Sage Foundation, 2006.
28 John Ermisch and Clara H. Mulder, “Migration versus immobility, and ties to parents.” European
Journal of Population, 35, 2018.
29 Brian J. Gillespie, Clara H. Mulder and Michael J. Thomas, “Migration for family and labour
market outcomes in Sweden.” Population Studies, 74, 2020.
30 Nina Glick Schiller, “A comparative relative perspective on the relationships between migrants and
cities.” Urban Geography, 33, 2012.
31 Anju Mary Paul, Multinational Maids. Cambridge University, 2017.
32 Rosa M Giralt, “Onward migration as a coping strategy?” Population, Space and Place, 23, 2017.
33 Jill Ahrens, Melissa Kelly, and Ilse Van Liempt, “Free movement?” Population, Space and Place, 22,
2014.
34 Heavan Crawley and Katherine Jones, “Beyond here and there.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration
Studies, 47, 2021. See also the overview in, Kellynn Wee and Brenda SA Yeoh, “Serial migration,
multiple belongings and orientations toward the future.” Journal of Sociology, 57, 2021.
35 Caroline Bretell, “Marriage and migration.” Annual Review of Anthropology, 2017.
36 International Labour Organization, “Who are the women on the move? ILOSTAT,” December
18, 2020.
37 This pattern has been widely observed and described. See, for example, Maria Aysa-Lastra,
“Gendered patterns of remitting and saving among Mexican families.” ANNALS of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, 684, 2019.
38 Gervin A Apatinga and Faustina A Obeng, “The coping strategies of ‘men left behind’ in the
migration process in Ghana.” Migration and Development, 10, 2021.
39 Eric Fong and Kumiko Shibuya, “Migration patterns in East and Southeast Asia.” Annual Review of
Sociology, 46, 2020.
40 See Elspeth Graham, “Parental migration and the mental health of those who stay behind.” Social
Science and Medicine, 132, 2015.
41 Theodorea Lam and Brenda A. Yeoh, “Parental migration and disruptions in everyday life.” Journal
of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45, 2019.
42 Fong and Shibuya, op.cit.
43 Gracia Fullmeth, et al., “Health impacts of parental migration on left behind children and ado-
lescents.” Lancet, 392, 2018.
44 Patricia Cortes, “The feminization of international migration.” World Development, 65, 2015.
45 For a study of 37 left behind parents of migrating daughters in Indonesia, and a review of the
literature from other nations in the global South, see M. Faishal Aminuddin, et al., “The social and
economic impact of international female migration on left-behind parents in East Java, Indonesia.”
Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 25, 2019.
46 Dirgha Ghimire, Yang Zhang and Nathalie Williams, “Husbands’ Migration.” Journal of Ethnic and
Migration Studies, 10, 2019.
47 Benjamin Penboon, et al., “Migration and absent fathers.” Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 28,
2019.
48 The World Bank, Covid-19. October 21, 2020.
49 Shijun Cao and Sung Jin Kang, “Personal remittances and financial development for economic
growth in economic transition countries.” International Economic Journal, 34, 2020.
50 For further discussion, see Jason DeParle, A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves. Penguin, 2020.
51 Jon Emont, “Countries Lose Billions Sent Home From Workers Abroad.” Wall Street Journal, July
6, 2020, P 1.
52 Ina Zharkevich, “Money and blood.” American Anthropologist, 121, 2019.
53 Selim Raihan, Mahtab Uddin and Saki Ahmed, “Impact of foreign remittances on the household
spending behaviour in Bangladesh.” Migration and Development, 10, 2021.
54 Teresa Randazzo and Matloob Piracha, “Remittances and household expenditure behaviour.”
Economic Modelling, 79, 2019.
55 Aysa-Lastra, op.cit.
56 IOM, “Return Migration.” Migration Data Portal, February 19, 2021.
57 For further discussion of one such exile group – Turkish women in Denmark – see, Anika Liversage
and Gretty M. Mirdal, “Growing old in exile.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43, 2017.
94 Origins and Destinations
58 Marta B. Erdal, “This is my home.” Comparative Migration Studies, 2, 2014.
59 All quotes are from, Maohiko Omata, “The complexity of return decisions.” Journal of Ethnic and
Migration Studies, 39, 2013.
60 Zachary Ward, “Birds of passage.” Explorations in Economic History, 2016.
61 Govert Bijwaard and Jackline Wahba, “Do high-income or low-income immigrants leave faster?”
Journal of Development Economics, 108, 2014.
62 Louise Caron, “An intergenerational perspective on (re)migration.” International Migration Review,
54, 2020.
63 Janet W. Salaff and Arent Greve, “Social Networks and Family Relations in Return Migration.” In
Chan Kwok-bun (Ed), International Handbook of Chinese Families. Springer, 2013.
64 Entwisle, et al., op.cit, p 1476.
65 Anastasia Christou and Russell King, Counter-Diaspora. Harvard University, 2015.
66 Helene K. Lee, Between Foreign and Family. Rutgers Univerity, 2018.
67 For further discussion, see Jacqueline M. Hagan and Joshua T. Wassink, “Return migration around
the world.” Annual Review of Sociology, 46, 2020.
68 Louise Caron and Mathieu Ichou, “High selecttion, low success.” International Migration Review, 54,
2020.
69 Meltem Y. Sener, “Perceived discrimination as a major factor behind return migration.” Journal of
Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45, 2019.
70 Marie-Laurence Flahaux, “Reintegrating after return.” International Migration, 59, 2020.
71 Jacqueline M. Hagan and Joshua T. Wassink, “Return migration around the world.” Annual Review
of Sociology, 46, 2020.
72 Camille Le Coz and Kathleen Newland, Rewiring Migrant Returns and Reintegration. Migration Policy
Institute, February, 2021.
73 Kidjie Saguin, “Returning broke and broken.” Migration and Development, 9, 2020.
5 Undocumented Migrants

In prior chapters, we have touched upon how various events and processes impact
migrants who lack legal status in their destination nation. This chapter is exclusively
devoted to them: the routes they travel, how they are received, and the ways that they
adjust. We will refer to them as undocumented or unauthorized migrants, and use the
terms interchangeably. Some analysts and some agencies also refer to them as irregular
migrants, but regardless of the term used, it is the same group of migrants that are being
denoted. They will not be referred to here as “illegals” because illegal is a descriptor that
should not be applied to people, even if they lack legal standing in a nation.
To complete this picture of migrants’ legal status we should add that some migrants
also violate laws in their origin nations when they leave without proper authorization.
There are a few nations, all of which tend to have authoritarian regimes – examples
include Cuba, Iran and North Korea – that limit the rights of their citizens to emigrate
without the government’s prior approval. If people depart these nations without au-
thorization and later return, they can be fined or imprisoned.1
Whether or not nations should restrict prospective migrants from exiting or entering
raises philosophical questions that could be important to consider, but are not usually
addressed by social scientists. An exception is Political Scientist Sarah Song who notes
that there are potentially strong arguments in favor of open borders. How can nations
morally justify preventing people from moving as they wish, particularly when most of
them are simply trying to make better lives for themselves?2
Those cosmopolitan advocates who support open borders also tend to emphasize
universal norms and supranational authority. In disagreement, people who are opposed
to open borders and want to maintain legal restrictions justify their position by arguing
that immigration threatens a nation’s cultural identity or its racial, ethnic and religious
mix, and the values associated with that mix. And of course there is the familiar argu-
ment that immigration must be controlled to protect a nation’s labor force from unfair
competition. (These claims are systematically examined in Chapter 8.)
While a number of groups claim to fear labor force competition from migrants, the
reality is that in many of the wealthier nations employers need a low-paid group of
workers will to perform the arduous work the native labor force rejects. Admitting
temporary workers has been widely viewed as the best compromise: it makes the migrant
workers available to employers, but the nation preserves the right to reject as permanent
residents those that “do not fit.” In many nations this compromise has resulted in an
increase in the proportion of residents with temporary rather than permanent status; and
as a consequence, agencies have to be empowered to routinely monitor those with
temporary status.3
DOI: 10.4324/9781003158400-5
96 Undocumented Migrants
In Chapter 8 we will examine in detail the costs and benefits of migrants to destination
nations. For now we can simple note that, to date, in virtually every country in the
world, governments have decided that it is both necessary and legitimate to exert control
over their borders. Given widespread public support, without too much debate about
moral or philosophical issues, designated officials go about routinely determining who is
admitted, where and how they are admitted, and placing labels implying varying degrees
of legality upon different categories of migrants.

Estimating Undocumented Populations

Most broadly defined, unauthorized immigrants are people who are living in a nation in
which they are not citizens and are lacking valid entry and/or residency permits. How
they come to occupy this status varies, but there are a few categories that are the most
heavily populated:

1 Migrants who cross a border surreptitiously, without permission. In most instances

they go voluntarily, sometimes without assistance, and sometimes with the assistance
of smugglers. In other cases migrants are trafficked, meaning their exodus is not
voluntary. Regardless of these variations, these migrants are universally considered
to be undocumented, and subject to deportation or imprisonment.
2 People who overstay their visas after legally entering a nation for a delimited period
as students, guest workers, etc. Migrants in this category are also universally
considered to be undocumented, though there are variations in how governments
deal with them.
3 Migrants who are seeking asylum, and in the nation while awaiting an entry
decision. Some nations do not apply an undocumented label to people while they
are in this waiting position, but others do. As a result, comparing figures from
different nations can be misleading.
4 Children born to unauthorized parents are, in many nations (e.g. most of Europe),
also considered to be unauthorized, but in other nations (e.g. the U.S.), anyone born
in the country, regardless of their parents’ status, is automatically given citizenship.
Again, these differences can make it difficult to compare figures across nations.

Migrants who are lacking documentation are typically apprehensive and try not to come
to the attention of government officials of any type because of fear of arrest or de-
portation. The police are the ones they are most likely routinely to encounter, but given
that all kinds of mundane daily activities, such as working and driving, are in many
nations illegal for undocumented migrants, they tend to be generally apprehensive about
the possibility of being under surveillance by anyone in an official capacity.4 Immigration
control responsibilities have also been delegated to physicians, landlords, employers and
others who have varying degrees of responsibility to report residents they believe to be
undocumented. In the UK, for example, Back and Sinha have described how this
widespread policing restricts the spaces in which undocumented migrants can feel
comfortable.5
Furthermore, apprehensiveness is not confined to the unauthorized migrants. It is also
exhibited by their grown children. In a study of thousands of immigrants and their adult
offspring in Los Angeles, a group of sociologists found that the adult children of un-
documented parents were more inclined to avoid “surveilling institutions” than their
 Undocumented Migrants 97
peers whose parents were authorized. Specifically, they were more inclined to avoid
situations in which formal records were kept, so they disproportionately sought informal,
“off the books” employment and were less likely to open bank accounts. Fear of de-
portation because of their family member’s legal vulnerability was their central moti-
vation. The differences between the children of unauthorized and authorized parents,
the investigators found, were not due to more general differences in the offspring’s
institutional attachments. Thus, both sets of offspring were equally likely to belong to
social or religious organizations as long as those records were unlikely to be examined by
government agencies.6
There are also a large number of families whose members’ immigration statuses are
mixed. For example, one spouse-parent may have legal status while the other does not.
Siblings may also have different legal statuses. Under these conditions all of the family
members, regardless of their own status, are usually very careful to protect the family
member(s) who are undocumented.7
The deportation anxieties of unauthorized immigrants and their spouses, siblings and
grown children can even extend to a desire to avoid researchers wishing to interview
them for surveys or censuses. Their avoidance leads to undercounting which obviously
complicates efforts to estimate the number of unauthorized migrants residing in a nation.
A variety of different approaches have been developed to estimate this difficult-to-count
population, and we will briefly review some of the more widely used.
One of the most extensively utilized procedures for estimating the size of the un-
authorized population in a nation is the “residual method.” It has been employed in
studies of the U.S. for many years, and more recently it has been utilized in a number of
European nations as well. This method requires two sets of figures: (1) the total foreign-
born population living in a nation on a specific date and (2) the legally resident foreign-
born population living in the nation on the same date. Then (2) is subtracted from (1)
and the resultant figure provides the estimate of the nation’s unauthorized immigrant
population. The data necessary for the two figures are usually compiled from a variety of
sources including national sample surveys, censuses and administrative records from
government agencies.8
While the final calculation is quite straightforward, preparing the data to get there can
involve a number of complex steps. To illustrate, in the U.S., the Center for Migration
Studies (CMS) relies upon the American Community Survey (ACS) conducted by the
Census Bureau. It is an annual survey of several million people used to describe local
communities and provide a yearly snapshot of the nation. From year to year, the total
for the foreign-born population and the undocumented population is calculated by
subtracting the number of arrivals from the number who left the population (due to
emigration, death, etc.). In addition, CMS estimates how many undocumented residents
may not have been counted in the ACS surveys, and adjusts the number upward according
to weights that have been developed over the years. To evaluate their accuracy, CMS
periodically compares their estimates to those independently developed by government
agencies.9
Alternatively, some nations and some analysts try to rely upon the number of people
apprehended at a nation’s borders to estimate the number of unauthorized migrants
living in a nation. The Internal Organization for Migration has written that apprehen-
sions can be a reliable indicator, even while noting that they are prone to double-
counting because agencies may include multiple captures of the same individuals.10
Furthermore, it is often impossible to derive an overall unauthorized migrant estimate
98 Undocumented Migrants
from apprehensions because in many nations there are a large number of migrants who
entered legally, but overstayed their visas. They no longer have legal status, but they are
not subject to border apprehension unless they go home, and then try to return. In many
nations, these overstayers are the single largest group of undocumented migrants. These
limitations make apprehension data of reduced use in global estimates of the number of
undocumented migrants.
When neither the requisite data for the residual method nor apprehension figures are
available, demographers have improvised a variety of other methods to take advantage of
what data are available. This can entail taking unauthorized migrant figures from the latest
available census, population register, national survey, or the like, and adjusting them with
more up-to-date statistics on new migration, return migration, migrant deaths, etc. Of
course, the updated estimations are no more accurate than the pre-adjusted figures with
which one begins.
When all else fails, there is a “proportional ratio method.” To use it in nation A, an
investigator identifies a more-or-less “matched” nation, B, based upon its historical si-
milarity to A’s migration patterns and for which there is an estimate of its unauthorized
immigrant population. The ratio of unauthorized to authorized immigrants in B is then
calculated, and that ratio is applied to the non-citizen population of A to provide an
estimate of the unauthorized population in A.
In addition to specially formulated methods, such as those described above, there are
a number of sample surveys that have been employed in a number of nations to try to
surmount the estimation problems. Despite methodological innovations, however,
accurate sampling of this population remains difficult. After reviewing a wide range of
methodological alternatives, Massey and Capoferro have concluded that all of them
tend to fall short in providing a completely accurate overall picture of nation’s immigrant
population, and are especially likely to undercount the undocumented population.11 They
recommended “ethnosurveys” of representative origin communities which entail taking a
random sample of the community’s residents and interviewing them in depth concerning
the migration activities and experiences of people in their household, other family
members, neighbors, etc. The objective is to discern how migration out of a community
fluctuates across time, how documented and undocumented migrants compare in terms of
their backgrounds and progress after they arrive. This approach has been followed in the
previously introduced Mexican Migration Project.12 However, in studying migration in
most other parts of the world it has presented an expensive model that takes years to
implement and it has not frequently been followed.

Undocumented Migrants in Leading Destination Nations

In many of the leading destinations of international migrants, the data with which to
describe their current (or even recent) undocumented migrant population is lacking.
With respect to Canada, for example, there does not appear to be any data other than
border intercepts by the police that have been published within the last 15 years (as
this is written in 2021). Where data are available in many other nations, they are
often incomplete or subject to sizeable estimation errors. There are a few nations
with large immigrant populations for which there is relatively reliable and recent data
with which to estimate the size of their undocumented population. Most of this
research has been conducted by the PEW Research Center.
 Undocumented Migrants 99
The U.S.
The U.S., with the world’s largest immigrant population, appears also to have had the
largest undocumented population. Investigators at the PEW Research Center began
with data from the ACS. PEW adjusted the ACS data to account for likely undercounts
in the number of undocumented migrants and then followed the previously described
residual method. The PEW investigators estimated that the total immigrant population
of the U.S. in 2017 was about 46 million, and that just under one-fourth of them were
unauthorized. Looking back, they noted that there was a steady increase in the size of the
undocumented population between 1990 and 2007, reaching a peak of over 12 million
persons. The number then continually declined, falling to just over 10 and one-half
million by 2017. The Center’s estimate in 2017 included about 1.5 million immigrants
who had temporary permission to remain in the U.S. but were liable to deportation by
changes under consideration by the government. The bulk of the drop was due to a
decrease in overall emigration from Mexico, the nation that provided the largest single
group of immigrants and unauthorized immigrants to the U.S. During the decade of
decline, more Mexicans returned home than migrated to the U.S.13
A later study conducted by Robert Warren of the Center for Migration Studies ex-
tended the time period under analysis to 2019. Also relying upon ACS data, he found the
decline in undocumented migrants from Mexico continued, and it was only partially
offset by an increased flow from several other Central American nations.14 A summary of
undocumented migration to the U.S. at selected points in the 2010 decade is presented
in Table 5.1.
The data indicated that undocumented immigrants were employed across every broad
occupational grouping in the U.S., though they were concentrated in a few areas. In
particular, they comprised more than one-third of all U.S. workers in unskilled manual
industries, including agriculture, mining, construction, etc. Further, analyses indicate
that they experienced very little upward mobility out of their less-skill required posi-
tions. Compared to migrant workers with authorization and to their native-born
counterparts, the unauthorized workers showed a relative absence of upward mobility
even when they changed jobs or employers. The investigators describe their transitions as
“occupational churning” in which they cycle between similarly low-status positions.15
Several examples are described in Box 5.1.

Table 5.1 Estimates of the Undocumented Migrant Population in the U.S. 2010–2019

Population in the U.S., 2010–2019 (in millions)

2010 2015 2019

Total 11.7 11.1 10.3

From Mexico 6.6 5.3 4.8
From Other Central America ∗ 1.5 1.6 1.9
From Asia ∗∗ 1.6 1.6 1.7
From All Other 2.0 2.6 1.9

Notes
∗ Throughout the decade, the largest in-flows from Central America, other than Mexico, were from El Salvador
and Guatemala.
∗∗ Throughout the decade the largest in-flows from Asia were from India and China.
100 Undocumented Migrants

Box 5.1 Churning Among Jobs in New York

At the end of 2020, there were an estimated one-half million undocumented

immigrants living in New York City. Lacking legal papers their work opportu-
nities were severely limited. Many had to move among different, but similarly
low-paying jobs in the informal (off-the-books) economy. Some typical examples
follow. 16
Christina, an undocumented Latina, worked folding clothes at a dry cleaning
store. She earned just enough to sublet a room for $60 per week and send a small
remittance back home for her children’s education. When the cleaner’s business
declined, she was laid her off, and had difficulty finding any other job. She went
through her savings, and then was evicted. A friend let her sleep in his living room
couch, and another friend helped to obtain products from a wholesale distributor,
and she became a street vendor.
Manuel worked at several short-term jobs through most of every year. At
income tax season, for example, he dressed in a costume associated with an icon of
a tax preparation firm and stood on a street corner handing out advertising fliers to
passing pedestrians. After the tax season, during a Covid outbreak, he found
someone who would sell him boxes of personal use face masks. He tried with little
success selling them at a few outdoor locations and finally settled under a subway
station where he said he could earn enough to send some money to his children.
When Covid declined and the demand for masks declined with it, he would again
be searching for another way to earn money.

Germany
At the same time that PEW researchers were estimating the undocumented immigrant
population in the U.S., PEW colleagues were tabulating the same figures for Germany,
and a number of other European nations. The time period, again, extended to 2017, and
these were the latest figures available for Germany as this was written. The raw data used
in the analysis came from national labor force surveys from Eurostat, the statistical office
of the European Union (EU), as well as several other affiliated European nations. To
compensate for some likely omissions in the Eurostat data, the PEW researchers added
cases from the German government’s administrative records on asylum seekers who were
in the country waiting for entry decisions on their applications. The number of non-
citizens who were authorized to be in Germany was then subtracted from the total
number of non-citizens – the residual method – to arrive at a final estimate.17
The investigators found that the number of unauthorized immigrants living in Germany
more than doubled between 2014 and 2016, after increasing slowly prior to 2014. The
number then declined between 2016 and 2017 to a total of between 1.0 and 1.2 million
persons. As such, they comprised about 20% of all German non-citizens in 2017, a per-
centage that was a little lower than that then found in the U.S. (24%). The number of
unauthorized immigrants living in Germany appeared to be the largest of any nation in the
E.U. The U.K., then in the E.U., was a close second, and the two combined were home to
about one-half of all unauthorized immigrants that were living anywhere in the E.U.18
 Undocumented Migrants 101
A Hamburg economist, Dita Vogel, estimated Germany’s undocumented population
every few years, and in 2014 placed the figure at between 180,000 and 520,000 people. In
that same year, PEW – using the procedures we have discussed – put the number at between
500,000 and 600,000. The upper limit of Vogel’s estimate was, therefore, quite close to
PEW’s figure. Vogel’s data came from the statistics published by Germany’s Federal Criminal
Agency which show the number of persons without German citizenship or legal residence
who were arrested during the preceding year. Based upon how under- or over-represented
undocumented migrants are expected to be in a particular police data set, Vogel infers a
multiplier to convert the number of undocumented persons arrested to the total un-
documented population.19 If the upper limit of Vogel’s estimate was found to consistently
generate estimates close to PEW’s more cumbersome figures then it would provide a less
complicated alternative. However, further evidence of such consistency is lacking.
The records of the German Federal Police also provide some information concerning
how undocumented migrants enter the country. During 2018, the police caught 38,000
people trying to enter Germany without authorization which the police stated was likely
only a fraction of those without authorization who managed to enter successfully.
However, if we assume that arrest figures are representative and the police figures can be
generalized, then Germany and the U.S. also appear similar in the type of routes un-
documented migrants followed. Almost three-quarters of the undocumented migrants
who were caught trying to enter Germany came by land, the largest group coming from
neighboring Austria. Most of the remainder were apprehended at an airport. The pre-
ponderance of undocumented migrants entering the U.S. also traveled over land routes.
On the other hand, the undocumented German migrants’ countries of origin were more
diverse than those linked to the U.S. No one nation predominated as Mexico did with
the U.S. About one-third of Germany’s unauthorized immigrants came from a number
of Southern and Eastern European nations and nearly another one-third were from
Middle East-North Africa region.20

Australia
In Australia the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) regularly
selects a sample of the visas of migrants, noting whether they have expired, and then
looks for evidence that the holders of the expired visa are still living in the country. From
these figures, they offer a projection of the total number of overstayers which the
government claims is the single largest group of undocumented migrants in the country.
In 2019 DIBP put the number of overstayers at about 64,000, and speculated that as
many as 12,000 of them could be legally over-extended by 20 years or more. Migrants
from Malaysia followed by Chinese nationals were the groups with the largest number of
overstayers.21
Working from the DIBP numbers, the total undocumented population living in
Australia could be estimated at something over 64,000 people; but how much more?
One possible answer came from a government analysis of the labor force which pro-
duced an estimate that there were about 100,000 undocumented people working in
Australia in 2019, and that about three-quarters of them worked in agriculture.22 So
perhaps there were as many as 100,000 people living in the country who lacked proper
documentation, and that was in a nation that had a total of 7.5 million immigrants.
For the overstayers who were able to find jobs in Australia despite their undocumented
status, working conditions were typically very difficult, and wages were often meager. The
102 Undocumented Migrants
migrants who lacked legal standing felt that they had no recourse, though, if they wanted to
remain in Australia; and they did want to stay because conditions were even worse in the
nations they left. Some typical situations are described in Box 5.2.

Box 5.2 Undocumented Workers in Australia

Marie Segrave, an Australian criminologist, sat around a table with eight men who
were unauthorized migrants living and working in Australia. She encouraged them
to talk about their experiences which she later summarized in an article. 23 The
undocumented migrants told her that they were always aware that they had no
legal rights of any kind. They worried that if they were detected they would be
deported, and their employers knew this, and were able to take advantage of their
vulnerability.
Most of the men told Segrave that they originally came to Australia on
(temporary) tourist visas that provided no work rights, but because of their very
limited opportunities at home they remained in Australia after their visas expired.
The primary motivation for most was to earn enough to be able to send money
back home to help support their children or their parents or their siblings, etc.
Work in Australia presented the possibility of earning enough to send remittances.
They had no commitment to the country. Their orientation was purely instru-
mental. As one man said,

“We don’t want to spend the rest of our lives here. We just came here for
money to assist our people back home.”

Segrave reported that she found widespread evidence of exploitation by employers

in the men’s stories. They came for jobs that often turned out not to be as
promised. However, the men recognized that if they complained they could be
reported to DIBP and deported. One man shrugged and explained,

“We just accept whatever wages paid … We have no choice.”

What is missing from the equation that could produce an estimate of the overall size of
the unauthorized population in Australia is an estimate of the number of migrants who
entered Australia without authorization. People who entered under the radar. These data
are missing because Australia refuses to publish them out of concern that the information
will be of value to smugglers. The government of Australia puts substantial restrictions
on the release of capture and detention figures to make it more difficult for smugglers to
monitor the success of various routes and methods. While the numbers are not pub-
lished, Australia has apparently managed to keep the number of illegal entries much
lower than in other major immigrant destination nations.
Australia has managed to keep down unauthorized migration by having its navy vig-
orously patrol the waters off Indonesia, the most likely water crossing to reach the island
nation. Ships carrying migrants are stopped and forced to return. As a further deterrent, the
 Undocumented Migrants 103
government has widely publicized its position of permanently barring “queue jumpers” –
anyone attempting illegal maritime travel – from ever settling in Australia.24
Most of the migrants who slip past the navy patrols and reach the mainland, or who
are taken off of intercepted ships, are moved into offshore detention centers that former
occupants describe as prison-like. They are sometimes kept there for many years in
conditions that are so bad that children have attempted suicide and women have de-
veloped psychosomatic symptoms, becoming paralyzed or blind.25 When migrants in
these detention centers become seriously ill they are often brought to the mainland and
put in hotels where they are under locked guard. A former medical officer said that many
of the migrants did not receive adequate medical care and that their mental health de-
teriorated because they were locked in their rooms for 23 hours a day. He said, “the
government is sending a message.”26

Surreptitious Border Crossing

Migrating to a wealthier nation is often perceived by people in a poor nation as the best,
or only, way to escape from extreme poverty. Given that legal entry into wealthier
nations is frequently blocked or is very limited, many desperate people attempt to cir-
cumvent the legal route, and sneak across a border into a wealthier nation. They hope to
find jobs that pay better than any that are available to them in their current nation. Often
it is one member of a family who makes this attempt, hoping to be successful enough to
help support the family that remained behind. They climb mountains, swim rivers and
go to great lengths to avoid detection at the border, relying upon information from
established social networks, as described in Chapter 4.
A good deal of Mexican migration to the U.S. has historically fit the above pattern:
individuals or small groups, following the advice of previous migrants, attempt to elude
border patrols and enter the U.S. Poor Cambodian farming families, especially those
living close to the Thai border, similarly expect that some members of their families will
risk arrest or physical danger in order to sneak into Thailand with its more prosperous
economy. That nation offers jobs in construction, manufacturing and agriculture that pay
unskilled workers nearly double what they could expect in Cambodia. Those jobs have
been described as exerting a nearly magnetic force on desperately impoverished
Cambodians, even though they know that without documentation they will have no
legal protections and there will be severe restrictions on their movements.27
An unknown percentage of attempts to enter a nation without documentation fail,
mostly due to the migrant being apprehended at the border. A number of nations do not
regularly provide statistics on arrests and detentions, so no global figures are available.
During the second decade of this century, the greatest number of border apprehensions
among reporting nations was in the U.S. where there were about 400,000 in a typical
year. The vast majority were young adult males from Mexico, and their numbers, along
with authorized migration from Mexico, were decreasing.
There has also been a growing number of unaccompanied minors, usually boys be-
tween the ages of 14 and 18, that have been apprehended trying without documentation
to enter the U.S. and a number of European nations. The youth that are designated as
unaccompanied are not traveling with parents, but they are frequently part of a group,
and are often traveling with other relatives, family friends or neighbors. In most in-
stances, unaccompanied minors are traveling to re-unite with members of their families
that migrated earlier. When apprehended at a border crossing they are often holding a
104 Undocumented Migrants
slip of paper containing the phone number of a relative living in the country. However,
desperate families have sometimes sent these youngsters ahead as “pioneers,” with other
family members hoping soon to follow.28

Unaccompanied Minors From Central America

When Joe Biden replaced Donald Trump as President of the U.S. in January, 2021, the
new administration promised a more welcoming reception of migrants and the number
of migrants from Central America substantially increased. There was, in particular, a
surge in the number of unaccompanied minors. During the first six months of the Biden
presidency, an estimated 50,000 children traveling without a parent crossed through
Mexico and reached the U.S.’s southwest borders, at Texas or California, where they
were detained by customs officials who had difficulty figuring out where to put them.
Many of the minors were accompanied by relatives other than their parents, however,
some were being escorted by a paid smuggler. Most of the children were hoping to be
re-united with a parent who had previously migrated to the U.S. but lacked legal status.
As a result, the parent could not apply for family reunification or serve as a migration
sponsor. Paying a smuggler to transport their child was their only recourse, even though
some smugglers had been known to take money then leave children in the desert, let
them drown, or the like. An unknown number of the smuggled children survived the
trip, evaded the border patrol and were re-united with their parents. Many did not get
past the border, though, and they were typically placed in overcrowded and understaffed
shelters designed to be temporary; but they sometimes remained for months until they
were either sent back across the border or permitted to go with parents. Some illustrative
examples are presented in Box 5.3.

Box 5.3 Unaccompanied Minors in U.S. Detention

Maria Ann Mendez left Honduras in 2011 to come to the U.S. to earn money to
better support her then six-year-old daughter, Cindy, who remained with her
grandmother. Ms Mendez regularly sent remittances for 10 years until she was
ready to send for her daughter. She paid a “guide” $8,000 to bring Cindy from
Honduras, a trip of nearly 2,000 miles. Three weeks after they left, she first heard
from Cindy: she had crossed the Rio Grande River near the U.S. border in a raft
and U.S. customs officials put her in a temporary camp in Texas. She had not
showered in days, she told her mother, and was sleeping on the ground, and did
not feel well. Several weeks then passed with no additional contact or information
for the worried mother and then Ms Mendez was notified that she could pick up
Cindy who had been moved from Texas to California. 29
Ann Parades left Guatemala for California in 2014 when her daughter, Melissa,
was three. She regularly sent remittances to help her mother feed and clothe
Melissa and buy some appliances for herself. Seven years later her brother, who
also lived in California, was trying to bring his adult daughter, her husband and
child to the U.S. Melissa, now 10 years old, could join them if Ms Parades paid her
share. She contributed $3,400 to the smuggler who was bringing the group
through Mexico to the U.S. For 10 days they rode in the back of an old truck,
 Undocumented Migrants 105
slept on the floors of filthy shacks and finally reached the U.S. border where they
were apprehended. Melissa was placed in a shelter for a couple of weeks and then
released to her mother’s custody. When she got out she complained about the
crowding – having to share a mattress – limited time outside of the tent, too little
food and too few blankets when they were cold. When Melissa was released she
was not accorded legal status, but placed in “removal proceedings” and it was not
certain whether she would be granted a reprieve. 30

Conditions in the detention centers for unaccompanied minors improved after Biden
became president, but children still remained, for lengthy periods, with 1,000 crammed
in a tent facility, 40 in a partitioned room. The youngest children slept in playpens, the
older ones squeezed together on mats. Border patrol agents gave the children over 14
years forms to sign and notices to appear in court where they will be considered for
deportation or asylum. The children complained that they did not understand what they
were asked to sign.31
Access to the children in the camps was extremely limited so information about
conditions in the camps comes mostly from interviews with the children after they were
released. The descriptions given by the children presented in Box 5.3 are typical of those
provided by children who were released to a parent. A description of conditions in the
shelters for the children who were sent back to Mexico is provided by a group of
academics who in 2016 and 2017 interviewed 97 minors who were apprehended at the
U.S. border and returned to Mexico. Most of these children similarly complained that
they were not adequately fed, endured cold temperatures, did not receive medical care
when they were ill, and some reported having been physically or verbally abused. They
also complained about being forced to sign forms that they poorly understood.32

Smugglers
For people wishing to migrate and enter another nation without prior authorization, some
type of paid, off-the-books assistance is often required. The migrants may plan to request
asylum or seek admittance as refugees, or they may wish to avoid surveillance and enter
surreptitiously. Regardless of their eventual entry plan, they may need transportation,
information about the best routes to travel, help in avoiding dangers, etc. The range of
services offered by smugglers, and their corresponding fees, are highly variable.
At the low end of services provided, part-time smugglers may only offer a river crossing
or a truck ride. The people offering these limited services typically operate alone rather
than as parts of an organization, and their fees are usually small. At the high end of the
services hierarchy are well-organized professional operations, often with international
criminal connections, and their services tend to include transportation plus accommoda-
tions along the route, help in crossing borders, counterfeit documents, etc. They some-
times also provide assistance in resettling in the destination nation. Their fees, as might be
expected, are very high, typically requiring that migrants or their families are willing to
assume long-term debts to pay for the services. There are also a wide range of smuggling
operations that are intermediate to the two extremes.33
Many of the professional, full-time smugglers operate out of hubs, places where a lot
of migrants and transportation routes converge. They may openly advertise their
106 Undocumented Migrants
services, on billboards and social media, and like any other business adjust their fees to
supply and demand. In some cases, smugglers insist upon up-front payment, but an
extended payment arrangement is more common. When the cost is very high, it is
typical for the smuggler to make long-term payment arrangements with the migrant’s
family that remains behind. Another alternative is to rely upon a person trusted by both
parties to guarantee payment when the migrant reaches the destination, or to make pro-
rated payments as the migrant’s journey proceeds. The trusted party is in many parts of
the world referred to as a “hawaladar,” and the arrangement is part of a hawala system.34
In some nations with extensive out-migration there are also special institutions that
provide loans for people who wish to leave, need to pay a smuggler, but are unable to
pay the fees. In Guatemala, for example, there is Banrural: a private bank with ties to the
government. Its green and white storefronts are located throughout the nation.
Borrowers approach the bank requesting a loan to improve their property or buy farming
machinery, the types of loans Banrural is authorized to provide. However, the loaned
money goes straight to a smuggler. As collateral, borrowers usually put up their land,
their only possession of value, which creates a burden for the family that remains behind,
often leading to a downward spiral of debt.35
When the destination nation can be reached by land, smuggled migrants usually
follow land routes. According to U.N. data, the most heavily traveled smuggling route in
the world has been land routes from Central America into North America, and the U.S.
in particular. About three-quarters of a million migrants were smuggled annually along
these routes, with smugglers’ revenue estimated at about $4 billion annually. The only
other routes that were estimated to generate over one billion dollars annually were land
routes from Sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa, and they carried just under one-half
million people annually, according to the U.N. estimate.36
From a large number of studies, published around 2017, the U.N. Office of Drugs and
Crime compiled a list of reported smuggling fees. In the years since these figures were
obtained, the costs have most likely increased. A sample of their compiled findings,
showing origins and destinations as well as routes are presented in Table 5.2.
While land routes are the most common mode followed by smugglers, as border control
measures change or as routes become more dangerous, smugglers often change their modes
of travel: for example, from land to sea or from land to air. For example, the horn of Africa
is a major origin for smuggling migrants into Southern Africa, and the nation of South
Africa, in particular. They can be transported over land or by sea passage along the coast or
by flying to a neighboring country and then traveling over land. The perceived probability
of success at any particular time is the major determinant of the choice.
Some smuggling attempts fail as a result of fatalities on route. Although most migrants
are smuggled on land routes, the most known fatalities occur on sea routes. In 2017, the
latest figures available as this is written, there were about 3,000 deaths globally among

Table 5.2 Smugglers’ Routes and Fees

Origin and Destination Type of Route Reported Cost

Libya to Italy Sea $500 to $2500

Afghanistan to Western Europe Land Around $10,000
Central America to U.S. Land $14,000 to $15,000
Nepal/India to U.S. Air $27,000 to $47,000
 Undocumented Migrants 107
migrants being smuggled that were due to drowning and about 2,000 that occurred on
land routes due to accidents, homicides, etc. If migrants are injured or fall ill along the
way, smugglers often provide little care which increases the fatality rate.37 Worse yet, in
some instances people who hope to make a quick profit buy a boat and pack as many
migrants as possible into it. They demand up-front payment, and offer only transpor-
tation. Once they leave the shore, however, the smugglers have thrown dozens of
migrants overboard in order to reduce overcrowding, even though they deliberately
crowded more people in than the boat could accommodate.38
On the other hand, Icduygu argues that smuggling can be highly functional. It is
often a direct result of crises that cause large numbers of people to try to flee conflict,
persecution, environmental disasters, etc. After studying people migrating between
Turkey and Europe’s Southeast periphery, Icduygu concluded that migrant smugglers
have been invaluable. He also reported that many of the migrants described helpful
exchanges with smugglers, and the establishment of positive relationships. One Afghan
man who migrated to Turkey said, “I even became friends with one of the smugglers;
we shared a lot on the way.”39
Any attempt to smuggle people across national borders is potentially dangerous and its
success is problematic. Many end in failure, for one reason or another, and yet from towns
in Mexico to villages in West Africa people continue to turn to smugglers. Part of the
reason, of course, is that they are desperate, know they will need assistance to migrate, and
legal channels are not available. Additional insight into why failures do not diminish
smugglers’ business comes from an ethnographic study in West Africa. Alpes conducted in-
depth interviews with people who had undertaken risky migrations or who knew about
others who had. From these interviews, she concluded that some smugglers develop re-
lationships with families and with entire communities. These relationships are crucial in
establishing the smuggler as a knowledgeable, caring and trustworthy person. If an attempt
to reach a destination fails, people tend to attribute it solely to bad luck, and it does not
reflect poorly on the smuggler or deter future attempts.40
There are no reliable data showing how smuggled migrants differ from undocumented
migrants who do not travel with a smuggler. Young adult males do again appear to
predominate according to apprehension data, but these data are of limited value because,
in addition to previously noted limitations of such figures, smugglers are often connected
to migrants’ social networks. Apprehended migrants are therefore reluctant in many cases
to admit that they are being smuggled in order to shield the smuggler from arrest. As a
result, apprehension figures of people being smuggled and of smugglers are severely
under-reported.41

Distinguishing Between Smuggling and Trafficking

There is a historical distinction between migrant smuggling and human trafficking with
only the latter involving coercion. However, the distinction sometimes blurs because
people who are being smuggled are in highly dependent situations which introduces the
possibility of exploitation. What begins as a straightforward smuggling arrangement
sometimes winds up with the migrant being deceived and coerced along the way so that
smuggling comes to resemble trafficking. In addition, migrants who start out with
smugglers have on occasion been abducted along the way and then trafficked.42
When children appear to be the victims, trafficking can be even more difficult to
distinguish from smuggling. In the global North, there is a widespread assumption that
108 Undocumented Migrants
children grow up in their parents’ home and attend school until they reach adulthood.
However, across the global South a huge proportion of children are forced, by economic
necessity, to begin to work years before they reach adulthood, and finding work often
means migrating to a higher-wage nation. Because legal entry is limited, these children
who migrate are often undocumented; but are they smuggled or trafficked? When ap-
prehended, officials have often considered them to be the victims of traffickers, based
upon assumptions that may not fit well with children from the global South. For ex-
ample, hundreds of undocumented Vietnamese boys have been apprehended in the UK
working on cannabis farms, in nail bars, in restaurants serving Vietnamese food, etc.
Officials have often presumed that they must be the victims of traffickers, even though in
many cases they were neither lured by false promises nor taken from their homes by
force.43

Trafficking
Human trafficking is widely defined following the UNODC as entailing deception or
coercion in attracting or capturing people who are transported to a place where they will
be exploited. The abuse to which trafficked persons are exposed takes a variety of forms.
They may be forced into prostitution or related sex trades, kept as slave labor, coerced
into an arranged marriage, conscripted into an army, sold for the removal of their organs,
etc.44
While trafficked people are exploited in a wide variety of ways, the two general types
that comprise most of the known cases are sexual exploitation and forced labor. During
the first years of this century, among identified victims, forced labor far exceeded sexual
exploitation as the motive of traffickers. The difference between them further increased
until 2014 or 2015 when forced labor began to decline as a proportion and sexual
exploitation began to increase. By 2016 sexual exploitation became the dominant motive
of traffickers and its ascendance grew in the following years.45
The most complete descriptions of traffickers and of trafficked persons come from
apprehension figures and the accounts of victims, even though these data have very
serious limitations. It is estimated that only a small fraction of trafficked persons are
apprehended and the victims of trafficking, even though they are key witnesses, typically
lack an overall view of the process.46 These shortcomings should be borne in mind as
one reads the figures on the following pages.
During the second decade of this century, over one-half of the detected victims of
trafficking were apprehended in their own countries. Cross-border, as opposed to do-
mestic, trafficking was especially likely coming into high-income European countries
and was more inclined to involve adults (at least 18 years old). The largest group con-
sisted of women who were designated for sexual exploitation. In many parts of Asia in
particular, where trafficking is more likely to be domestic, there are a larger proportion
of child and adult male victims, and they are less likely to be sexually exploited and more
likely to be taken for forced labor.47
About 80% of the apprehended young women – who were the largest group of
victims of inter-nation trafficking – were transported through official border points, such
as airports and border control stations. About two-thirds of them had experienced some
form of exploitation even before they were apprehended at an official border point and
most of the remaining one-third were still unaware of their situation; that is, they be-
lieved they were traveling abroad for new opportunities they had been promised. Fraud
 Undocumented Migrants 109
or deception was commonly employed in order to obtain the initial cooperation of the
trafficked women. Physical violence was rare; recruitment was typically dependent upon
fake and lucrative promises.48
About three-quarters of the persons convicted of trafficking, as recently as 2018, were
citizens of the country in which they were tried. Even the one-quarter who were
foreigners tended to come from the same region in which they were apprehended.
These figures correspond with the previously noted tendency for more trafficking to be
domestic than inter-nation. They also correspond with the use of fraud and trickery to
entice many victims because people are more inclined to trust others from the same
nation. Among those persons convicted of either domestic or inter-nation trafficking in
2018 or 2019, only about one-third were female, but when the victims were female and
the perpetrator’s objective was sexual exploitation, female traffickers were employed in
more than one-third of the cases.49
UNODC identifies several types of traffickers based upon their organizational form
and mode of operating. There are individual traffickers who usually operate on their
own but sometimes work with each other if an opportunity presents itself. They are
especially likely to rely more upon guile that force in recruiting victims. Some common
examples include young males enticing unsuspecting young females into what the fe-
males incorrectly believe is a romantic relationship; poor parents offering a child to a
trafficker falsely believing the child is to be given an economic opportunity that will
benefit the family. Physical force is more likely with criminal organizations, though even
here overt violence is reported in only about one-half of the cases. Also characteristic of
some of the larger trafficking organizations is a high degree of specialization with some
groups focusing upon the recruitment of specific targets and other groups specializing in
their exploitation. For example, one group recruited young women in Hungary and
then sold them for exploitation to a second group in Switzerland.50
There is relatively little information regarding the financial returns to traffickers. What
data there are come mostly from court records, and they report a very wide range of
values. Across the world, a person being trafficked across national borders can be worth
anything from a few hundred dollars (U.S.) to twenty thousand dollars or more, de-
pending upon how the person is to be exploited and the location. Additional profits for
traffickers after the initial sale can also be substantial. For example, one group paid $2,800
for each woman “recruited” out of Southeast Asia with the promise of a job in Belgium.
When they arrived the traffickers insisted that the women had each accumulated a debt
of $12,000 which they had to repay while working under exploitive conditions. To
illustrate further, over a period of several years, thousands of trafficked children were
brought to Europe where they were taught to become pickpockets and forced to work
in the streets. Their criminal activities were estimated to have yielded over one million
dollars for the traffickers who exploited them.51

Sexual Exploitation
As we have noted, the most prevalent form of inter-nation trafficking involves women
and girls as the victims. They are forced into marriages by purchase, or into working as
hostesses or prostitutes or as performers in the pornography industry, etc. The common
element is that they are treated as commodities to be bought and sold, and kept in
positions in which they are subordinate to men. The thread that runs through the ex-
periences of trafficked women and girls is their devaluation. In many cases it is cultural;
110 Undocumented Migrants
families in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and elsewhere have been willing to sell females
who they regarded as expendable.52 In other countries individual females who had
emotional difficulties and/or had been abused were vulnerable to the promises of a
trafficker. They are sometimes manipulated to such a degree by traffickers that they do
not perceive themselves as abused or exploited.53
In many other cases, it is severe economic deprivation that makes females susceptible
to the promises of traffickers or leads their relatives to be willing to offer them for sale.
Particularly notable has been a steady stream of women and girls from Afghanistan that
have been trafficked into Pakistan for forced marriages. Most were sold to traffickers who
in turn sold them to their future husbands. Because they are viewed as commodities they
are usually treated poorly by their husbands and his family. A few manage to escape and
find refuge in a shelter, but because they are undocumented they have few rights, and if
apprehended they are liable to be jailed. The experiences of some representative women
are described in Box 5.4.

Box 5.4 Trafficking Afghan Women for Forced Marriages in

Pakistan

A group of researchers were able to locate and then interview a sample of the
women who had been trafficked from Afghanistan to Pakistan for forced
marriages. The interviewers were especially interested in their earlier experi-
ences when they were trafficked as girls, and upon their current health status. 54
One 32-year-old woman described her trip from Afghanistan to Pakistan
when, as a girl, she was sold for a forced marriage in Pakistan. She believes her
parents sold her for a small amount of money to what turned out to be a group
of traffickers and smugglers. They led her on a difficult trip across the border.
It was an especially arduous trip for her because she suffers from asthma, but
she was given no medical assistance. A lot of the time she thought she would
not survive the trip. Upon arriving in Pakistan she was handed over to a man
who was going to be her husband – an arrangement over which she had no
choice.
One 27-year-old woman stated that as a young girl she had been forced into
marrying an old man, and because she had been sold, her in-laws felt free regularly
to abuse her, both physically and mentally. Her husband condoned their actions,
and personally considered violence as the best way to keep her in line. She now
suffers from headaches, nervousness and insomnia, making her life, as she describes
it, miserable.
A 24-year-old woman explained that she has no national identity. Having been
sold and trafficked as a young girl, she does not know exactly where in Afghanistan
she is from. That excludes obtaining Afghan citizenship or of returning home as an
option. In any case, lacking citizenship she cannot travel. In addition, not having
identity papers meant that she cannot be treated in a hospital or receive the free
health care accorded to Afghan citizens. She is – unhappily – totally dependent
upon her husband.
 Undocumented Migrants 111
Sex Workers
Many trafficked women are forced into prostitution or related sex work. The con-
ventional view has been that these women are coerced into working as prostitutes, strip
club dancers, pornographic performers, or the like, and that they are exploited. They
remain in these positions, according to the conventional view, only because they are
closely monitored or fear reprisals if they try to leave. Sometimes “escorts” oversee their
activities 24 hours a day, and resort to violence, if necessary, to keep them in line.
Sometimes their families back home are threatened if the women do not comply.
One of the more esoteric threats was employed with Nigerian women who were
trafficked into Italy to be sex workers. The traffickers took samples of their hair and/or
nails. The women believed that a voodoo woman back in Nigeria could mix these personal
effects into a powder and then perform a ritual which would ensure that the trafficked
woman would be seized by madness or sudden death if she were to try to leave.55

Agency?
There is little doubt but that many trafficked women have been constrained to remain as sex
workers. On the other hand, there is a feminist perspective that views sex work as being like
other occupations except for the patriarchal-based stigma placed upon it. Some women, they
argue, may view prostitution or performing in pornographic films or the like as a form of
self-employment that can lead to economic independence. To illustrate, after escaping from
a coercive situation with a trafficker, two Mexican women in the U.S. voluntarily turned to
sex work as being their best alternative. It offered more money and more autonomy than
other jobs that were available to undocumented migrants like themselves.56
Sociologist Rhacel Parrenas has proposed a middle ground between constraint and
agency in describing the thousands of Filipina women who have been sex workers in
Japan. She describes their experience as “indentured mobility.” Those women who were
trafficked did work under difficult conditions and were able to keep little money from
their work. However, they felt that they had escaped from worse poverty at home and
while they lived as “invisible aliens” who were subject to exploitation in Tokyo, they
did not see themselves simply as powerless victims. Parrenas, herself, worked alongside
the hostesses she interviewed and wrote that they had some choice in who they had sex
with, did not consider themselves to be prostitutes, and viewed their situation as pre-
ferable to the women like them who were foreign domestics or migrant farm workers
because they had better mobility possibilities.57

Visa Overstays
There are a variety of rules concerning visa requirements for people traveling between
nations. Ordinarily a visa is required that stipulates a reason for the visit (work, educa-
tion, tourism, etc.) and the length of time the visa holder will be permitted to stay in the
country. There are exceptions: Some nations permit visitors from specific nations to stay
for a period of months, without a visa. If the holder of a visa remains in the nation
beyond the stipulated date, then the person’s status changes to undocumented.
Although nations routinely record visa information, most have a limited capacity to
accurately estimate the number of visa overstayers. In the U.S., for example, the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reports on potential status violators, relying
112 Undocumented Migrants
primarily upon entry and exit data. The agency counts these border transactions, not
individual travelers. So, if a traveler who is compliant enters and exits the U.S. three
times in a year, then three is added to the denominator of the overstayers/non-
overstayers ratio. Because most frequent travelers are especially compliant with their visa
requirements, DHS’ calculation of the overstay rate is artificially low.58
Despite the deceptively low official overstay count, the number of overstayers ap-
parently comprises a large percentage of the U.S.’ unauthorized population. In 2017, for
example, people who overstayed their visas were estimated to account for 62% of the
newly undocumented residents. Most of the remaining 38% had initially entered the
U.S. without authorization.59 Note that the 62% estimate is probably understated given
the government’s artificially low count of overstayers.
Some of the figures involved are not as precise as one would hope but suggest that visa
overstays are probably a very large percentage of the undocumented migrants in many of
the leading destination nations. In Australia, for example, we previously reviewed figures
that indicated visa overstayers likely comprised about two-thirds of that nation’s un-
documented population – a figure very close to that estimated for the U.S.
In 2020, an estimated 92,000 migrants overstayed their visas in the U.K. However, this
figure did not include the non-visa visitors from countries whose citizens were able to stay
without visas for up to six months. Their number, in recent years, has been estimated to be
an average of about 250,000 people,60 but the accuracy of this number is unknown, though
their inclusion could bring the yearly total number of visa overstayers to about 350,000. The
latest PEW figures for the UK (2017) put the total unauthorized immigrant population at
between 800,000 and 1.2 million, and that range had been stable for several years.61
The U.S. provides the most complete breakdown of visa overstayer rates. The report
for 2019 indicated that the highest rates were for student and exchange visa visitors
which involved about 1.95 million visitors. About 3% of them overstayed, and about
20% of the overtayers were at least 12 months over their allotted time. The largest
number of student and exchange visa overstayers were from Asian nations.62

Enforcement and Detention

In many nations routine monitoring of overstays by the government agency that keeps
visa records is relatively lax, and limited largely to notifying visitors if their authorization
is about to, or has, expired. In fact, a number of nations rely largely upon ordinary
citizens to notify the appropriate agency if they suspect someone in their country lacks
authorization. For example, both the UK and Australia have run campaigns encouraging
people to anonymously use special hotlines or dedicated websites to report anyone they
think may be living or working illegally in their nation.
On the other hand, enforcement is not usually lax if an overstayer is brought to the
attention of officials. Immigration control agencies in many nations maintain regular
contact with various local enforcement bureaus to learn if anyone on their overstayers list
(or any other unauthorized immigrants) are suspected of having breached any laws, no
matter how minor. For example, a driving-related conviction, or other misdemeanors, has
been adequate to begin removal processes in the U.S. for thousands of cases every year.63
Any routine contact with law enforcement personnel can be a trigger leading to detention
and deportation proceedings, as illustrated in Box 5.5. It is not surprising, therefore,
that unauthorized immigrants – given their precarious legal status – tend to fear and
avoid the police.64
 Undocumented Migrants 113

Box 5.5 An Overstayer’s Detention in Japan 65

Wishma Rathnayaka, a migrant from Sri Lanka, entered Japan with a residency
permit in 2017 and began to study Japanese at a school outside Tokyo. There she
began a relationship with a young man who was also a student and also from Sri
Lanka, and the two moved into an apartment together. Soon after she stopped
attending classes, which school officials reported to immigration authorities who
then denied her request to renew her residency permit, but she was not detained at
the time.
Officials lost track of her until August 2020, when she came into a police station
in central Japan and asked for protection from her boyfriend who she said was
abusing her. The police noted that her residency permit had expired so she was in
Japan illegally. They sent her to a detention center to await deportation, and that
was initially fine with her. While there her former boyfriend, who was now back
in Sri Lanka, wrote and threatened her life if she returned to Sri Lanka. She then
decided to try to stay in Japan but felt that her request only antagonized the staff at
the detention center who did not take her request seriously.
After several months in the center, she fell ill with a fever. The staff told her she
was just anxious, and a nurse suggested she start a diary by writing about
everything she had to be thankful for. She grew progressively weaker, unable to
eat and then unable to walk. She begged to go to a hospital. When they finally
took her, months later, it was too late. Two days later she died, the 24th such
detainee to have died in a Japanese detention center. Months later her sisters in
Japan had still not learned the cause of her death, despite repeated requests.

In most nations, when an unauthorized immigrant comes to the attention of officials

the immigrant is placed in a detention center. Amnesty International and other human
rights groups have been very critical of conditions in most centers, accusing nations of
intentionally maintaining harsh conditions in order to deter unauthorized immigrants
from trying to return after they are deported. For example, in recent years thousands of
Ethiopians have migrated to Saudi Arabia either to find work or escape violence, or
both; and some have entered with authorization and some without. In 2019, at least
one-half million Ethiopians were estimated to be in the country without authorization.
To deter this influx, Saudi Arabia began to place hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians
(and other undocumented immigrants) into one of a dozen detention centers. In 2019
there were nearly two million migrants in these centers where ex-detainees told of being
abused, chained together, and claimed to have witnessed numerous deaths.66
After release from detention, if they are not deported, immigrants sometimes
continue to be monitored electronically. As a condition of release, they are required to
wear an electronic monitor (EM) on their wrist or ankle. In principle, releasing im-
migrants from detention could give them an opportunity to re-integrate into their
communities. However, in-depth analyses of a sample of 30 immigrants released from
detention with EM ankle shackles in Los Angeles led an investigator to conclude that
EM was little more than extended punishment. It marked the people wearing it with a
criminal stigma that led members of their formerly supportive ethnic community to
114 Undocumented Migrants
shun them. Labeled as “undocumented criminal aliens,” they were hardly better off
than when they were in detention.67

Deportation
Non-citizens, whether or not they are authorized residents, are subject to deportation if
they are convicted of a serious crime. However, unauthorized immigrants are especially
vulnerable to deportation because an arrest or conviction brings them (with their un-
authorized status) to the attention of immigration officials. In addition, in most nations
they also lack the legal rights accorded to authorized immigrants in challenging a de-
portation order.
Most nations have laws concerning the removal of authorized non-citizens convicted
of certain types of crimes. In New Zealand, for example, if an immigrant has been in the
country for less than two years, they face deportation if convicted of a crime which
carries a three-month or more prison sentence. A drunk driving conviction could
qualify. In the UK, an unauthorized immigrant sentenced to 12 months in jail faces
mandatory deportation; a less than 12-month sentence is assessed on an individual case
by the immigration agency. A conviction for shoplifting items valued at less than 200
pounds would be sufficient to trigger a recommendation for deportation.
Immigrants convicted of a crime make up a large percentage of the deportees, and
many nations’ statistics include a deported criminals category. Remember, though, that
unauthorized immigrants have usually committed the crime of entering the nation
without documentation or overstaying their visas. For example, the most serious crime
committed by the largest proportion of deported immigrants in the U.S., in February of
2020, was their illegal entry or re-entry. The next most frequent involved driving and
traffic offenses.68
In metropolitan Nashville, Tennessee, for example, beginning in 2006, unauthorized
immigrants were no longer able to obtain driving permits. The following year, the city
and county began to participate in a federal program that allowed local law enforcement
agents to become deputized to enforce federal immigration laws. Then local police
increased the number of routine traffic stops for minor violations. What followed was a
marked increase in the number of unauthorized Latino immigrant drivers who were
arrested following a traffic stop, and then deported.69
In a number of nations that report relevant statistics, deportations increased during the
early decades of this century, but then began to decline around 2015. In the UK, the
number fell to 7,400 enforced returns in 2019, the lowest number the government ever
recorded.70 Similarly, in the U.S., comparing monthly deportations in February of each
year, the number of deportations fell from about 20,000 in 2014 to about 11,000 in
2020.71 Deportation figures also fell in Germany, from over 25,000 annually in 2016 to
20,600 in 2019. However, in Germany, the government intended to deport a much
larger number of persons, but they were unable to locate them or they lacked identity
papers so their home country could not issue travel documents enabling them to re-
turn.72 Similar bureaucratic problems have been reported in Sweden and Switzerland as
well. All three countries acknowledge a deportation gap: the difference between the
number of people who were ordered to leave the country, and the actual number for
whom the government was able to implement deportations.73
When a nation decides to deport a person who lacks travel papers from their home
nation, it can put the person into legal limbo. In Denmark, for example, the government
 Undocumented Migrants 115
decided to deport a number of Syrian refugees, but the Danish government had no
diplomatic relations with Syria which prevented arranging for them to return. The
Syrians were taken to “departure centers” where they were held for months. An official
of the Danish Refugee Council said they would be in the centers, “for the indefinite
future, with no prospect of being sent back forcibly, but no chance of living their lives in
Denmark either.”74
When an immigrant is arrested and faces deportation, the costs to the family that tries
to mount a legal defense can be substantial. There are the lost wages of the person in
detention, and also the out-of-pocket costs of posting an immigration bond and hiring an
attorney. A large percentage of households in parts of the U.S. contain both documented
and undocumented residents so there are a lot of households at risk. These households
have been found to lose about one-half of their income when an immediate family
member is arrested and threatened with deportation.75
In the U.S. where the largest number of immigrants, both documented and un-
documented, come from Mexico, deportation back to Mexico is associated with con-
tinued financial losses for the deportee as well as his or her family, and a long-term
struggle to remain connected with kin who were not deported. The people who have
been removed, in particular, have been found to experience a great deal of psychological
stress over a period of many years as they continue to try to maintain meaningful re-
lationships with their families who remain back in the states.76
While there are laws in most nations that stipulate the conditions under which noncitizens
convicted of a crime are to be removed – the combining of criminal and immigration law
often referred to as “crimmigration” – there are sometimes cases that fall between the cracks
and require judicial review. To understand how judges in the U.S. reach decisions, so-
ciologist Asad L. Asad spent hundreds of hours in Dallas (Texas) Immigration Court in 2015
interviewing judges, prosecutors, private attorneys and family members. From this research,
Asad concluded that the judges justified their removal decisions in one of two ways. There
was a “scripted approach” associated with by-the-book decisions and an “extemporaneous
approach” that entailed digging into the noncitizen’s history. The latter was most commonly
invoked when a judge was looking for ways to grant temporary relief to a person considered
to be deserving. However, the scripted approach predominated and during the year in which
Asad’s research was conducted, the Dallas Immigration Court provided relief in fewer than
five percent of the cases brought before it.77

Notes
1 Jacqueline M. Hogan and Joshua T. Wassink, “Return migration around the world.” Annual Review
of Sociology, 46, 2020.
2 Sarah Song, “Political theories of migration.” Annual Review of Political Science, 21, 2018. See also the
essays in Pieter de Wilde, et al. (Eds), The Struggle over Borders. Cambridge University, 2019.
3 David Cook-Martin, “Temp Nation?” American Behavioral Scientist, 63, 2019.
4 See, for example, Amada Armenta and Rocio Rosales, “Beyond the fear of deportation.” American
Behavioral Scientist, 63, 2019.
5 Les Back and Shamsen Sinha, Migrant City. Routledge, 2018.
6 Sarah Desai, Jessica H. Su and Robert M. Adelman, “Legacies of marginalization.” International
Migration Review, 54, 2020.
7 Heidi Castanada, Borders of Belonging. Stanford University, 2019.
8 For further discussion of the residual method and other techniques, see Phillip Connor and Jeffrey S.
Passel, Europe’s Unauthorized Immigrant Population Peaks in 2016. Pew Research Center, November,
2019.
116 Undocumented Migrants
9 See the Appendix in, Robert Warren, “In 2019, the US undocumented population continued a
decade-long decline.” Journal on Migration and Human Security, 9, 2021.
10 IOM’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre, 2015 Global Migration Trends Factsheet.
11 Douglas S. Massey and Chiara Capoferro, “Measuring undocumented migration.” International
Migration Review, 38, 2004.
12 Jorge Durand and Douglas S. Massey, “Evolution of the Mexico-U.S. migration system.”
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 684, 2019.
13 Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn, “Mexicans decline to less than half the U.S. unauthorized
immigrant population.” PEW Research Center, June 12, 2019.
14 Warren, op.cit.
15 Matthew Hall, Emily Greenman and Youngmin Yi, “Job mobility among unauthorized immigrant
workers.” Social Forces, 97, 2019.
16 The following is taken from, Juan Arrendondo and David Gonzalez, “No Papers And No Jobs.”
The New York Times, November 19, 2020, p A16.
17 See Jens M. Krogstad, “How we estimated the number of unauthorized immigrants in Europe.”
Pew Research Center, 2019, and Phillip Connor, Jeffrey S. Passel and Jens M. Krogstad, “How
European and U.S. unauthorized immigrant populations compare.” Pew Research Center, 2019.
18 Phillip Connor and Jeffrey S. Passel, “Unauthorized Immigrants in Germany.” Pew Research Center,
2019.
19 Dita Vogel, Update Report Germany. July, 2015.
20 DW News, January 29, 2019.
21 M.L. McAuliffe and F. Laczko (Eds), Migration Smuggling Data and Research. International
Organization for Migration, 2016.
22 Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, National Agricultural Workforce Strategy.
2020.
23 Marie Segrave, “What it’s like to live and work illegally in Australia.” The Conversation, July 24,
2017.
24 Jane McAdam, “Australia and asylum seekers.” International Journal of Refugee Law, 25, 2013.
25 Julie Machen, “The melancholic torturer.” Journal of Sociology, 56, 2020.
26 Livia Albeck-Ripka and Tariro Mzezewa, “Australia Detained Refugees in Locked Hotel Rooms.”
The New York Times, January 22, 2021, p A11.
27 Robert Nurick and Sochanny Hak, “Transnational migration and involuntary return of un-
documented migrants.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45, 2019.
28 Ibid.
29 Miriam Jordan, “A Border Overwhelmed and Parents Desperate for News.” The New York Times,
April 10, 2021, p A10.
30 Miriam Jordan, “’Will I Recognize You?’ A Girl’s Long Road to See Her Moher.” The New York
Times, May 9, 2021, p A19.
31 Miriam Jordan, “’No Place for a Child’: Inside a Packed Tent Camp.” The New York Times,
March 31, 2021, p A16.
32 Kiera Coulter, et al., “ A Study and Analysis of the Treatment of Mexican Unaccompanied
Minors.” Journal on Migration and Human Security, 8, 2020. There is anecdotal evidence that con-
ditions improved after Biden became president but still remained inadequate.
33 U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Global Study on Smuggling of Migrants 2018. U.N., 2018.
34 For further discussion and some examples, see Giovanni Legorano and Joe Parkinson, “Following
the Migrant Money Trail.” The Wall Street Journal, December 30, 2015. The hawala system is also
used in various criminal activities, to launder money, smuggle gold and other commodities, etc.
35 Emily Kaplan, “Guatemalans Achieve the American Dream with a Loan and a Smuggler.” The New
York Times, November 8, 2019, p 9.
36 U.N. Office, op.cit.
37 Ibid.
38 Richard Perez Pena and Abdi Latif Dahir, “Migrants Put Overboard By Smugglers.” The New York
Times, March 24, 2021.
39 Ahmet Icduygu, “Decentring migrant smuggling.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 47, 2021.
40 Maybritt J. Alpes, Brokering High Risk Migration and Illegality in West Africa. Routledge, 2019.
41 McAuliffe and Laczko, op.cit.
42 McAuliffe and Laczko, op.cit.
 Undocumented Migrants 117
43 Mike Dettridge, “Between theory and reality.” Anti-Trafficking Review, 16, 2021.
44 UNODC, Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2020. UN, 2020.
45 Migration Data Portal, Human Trafficking. Updated 6 May, 2021.
46 IOM, Traffickers and Trafficking, UN, 2014.
47 UNODC 2020, op.cit.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid.
52 Bandana Purkayastha and Farhan N. Yousaf, Human Trafficking. Polity, 2019.
53 M. Verhoeven, et al., “Relationships between suspects and victims of trafficking.” European Journal
of Criminal and Policy Research, 12, 2013.
54 The following summaries of the women’s interviews are taken from, M.M. Kakar, et al., “Irregular
migration, trafficking into forced marriage, and health insecurity.” Global Regional Review, 5, 2020.
55 Ronald Weitzer, “Human trafficking and contemporary slavery.” Annual Review of Sociology, 41,
2015.
56 Purkayastha and Yousaf, op.cit.
57 Rhacel S. Parrenas, Illicit Flirtations. Stanford University, 2011. South Korean sex workers in
Australia, who migrated voluntarily, have expressed the same advantages of their work. See Julie
Ham, Kyungja Jung and Haeyouing Jang, “Wilence, movility and ‘rational values’.” Sexualities, 19,
2016.
58 Jessica M. Vaughan and Preston Huennekens, “Analyzing the New Visa Overstay Report.” Center
for Immigration Studies, September, 2018.
59 Robert Warren, “US Undocumented Population Continued to Fall from 2016 to 2017.” Center for
Migration Studies, 2019.
60 Daniel Waldron, “UK visas overstayers double in five years.” Workpermit.com, February 25, 2021.
61 “Unauthorized Immigrants in the United Kingdom.” PEW Research Center, November 13, 2019.
62 DHS, Fiscal Year 2019 Entry/Exit Overstay Report, March 30, 2020.
63 Margot Moinester, “A look to the interior.” American Behavioral Scientist, 63, 2019.
64 Armenta and Rosales, op.cit.
65 The following is taken from, Ben Dooley and Hisako Ueno, “Japan Shanken After Detainee,
Wasting Away, Dies Alone in a Cell.” The New York Times, Mary 19, 2021, p A8.
66 Global Detention Project, “Saudi Arabia.” 2020.
67 Miriann G. Martinez-Aranda, “Extended punishment.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46,
2020.
68 Syracuse University, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, 2020.
69 Amada Armenta, Protect, Serve, and Deport. University of California, 2017.
70 The Migration Observatory, “Deportation and Voluntary Departure from the UK.” 07 July 2020.
71 Syracuse University, op.cit.
72 “Germany: Number of asylum-seeker deportations fall in 2019.” DW News, 2020.
73 Lisa M. Borrelli, “They know the procedure.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 47, 2021.
74 Jasminia Nielsen, “After Years in Denmark, Some Syrians are Forced Back.” The New York Times,
April 15, 2021, p A9.
75 Geoffrey A. Boyce and Sarah Launius, “The household financial losses triggered by an immigration
arrest.” Journal of Migration and Human Security, 84, 2020.
76 Beth C. Caldwell, Deported Americans, Duke University, 2019.
77 Asad L. Asad, “Deportation decisions.” American Behavioral Scientist, 63, 2019.
6 The Social Integration of Migrants
and Their Offspring

The social integration of immigrants and their offspring involves the degree to which
they converge with natives on a number of discrete, but inter-related, dimensions. There
is a social structural aspect that entails how closely their attainments match natives in
education, occupation and other aspects. The degree to which an immigrant’s group is
spatially segregated is also included here as a social structural dimension. In addition,
social integration also encompasses cultural aspects involving the values, customs and
lifestyles that people adopt. This dimension is typically measured by such indicators as
people’s acquisition of new language preferences, increased rates of inter-marriage, new
tastes in food, music, etc.1
There are a number of major theorists who prefer to use the term assimilation rather
than integration as the master concept.2 However, the dimensions they include under
the assimilation rubric ordinarily correspond very closely with the dimensions con-
ventionally included under social integration, and because integration is the more widely
utilized term in the migration literature we will favor it here as well.

Conceptualizing Integration
One of the most complete listings of the dimensions of social integration was prepared by
Ager and Strang at the behest of the UK Home Office. The investigators began by
spending time at two British sites that had substantial immigrant populations, conducting
interviews and observations. They also carried out an extensive review of the integration
literature, noting how other investigators had measured the concept. Then they sub-
jected the variables they had identified to a number of statistical analyses to see what
kinds of groupings and linkages there were among the variables. Ager and Strang
concluded that there were 10 “domains” and that they were clustered into four over-
arching areas.3
The first three clusters that they identified correspond mostly with what we have
identified as structural considerations, the fourth is primarily cultural. The concepts
and indicators that they associated with the four most encompassing areas are as
follows:

1 Markers and Means – refers to immigrants’ achievements in various realms, most

importantly in employment. Other important markers of integration include
attainments in education and ability to obtain adequate housing and health care.
2 Citizenship and Rights – involves activities related to attaining inclusion and
equality. Ager and Strang thought that the specific indicators to be employed would
DOI: 10.4324/9781003158400-6
 Migrants and Their Offspring 119
vary according to different nations’ conceptions of citizenship and rights. Ensuing
studies have emphasized such measures as civic participation and enrollment in
citizenship courses.
3 Social Connection – entails the relationships across different racial or ethnic groups;
the bonds, bridges and links among them. The indicators that have often been
employed to measure this domain include the geographical separation of immigrant
groups and immigrant membership in mainstream organizations.
4 Facilitators and Barriers – refers to factors that either encourage or inhibit social
integration. Here the authors included two sub-dimensions: (a) sufficient language
skills to be able to communicate with people outside of one’s own group and the
ability to understand cultural expectations and (b) feelings of safety and security in
one’s community.

The core concepts of integration and assimilation have a long history in anthropology
and sociology. They were originally formulated in studies of pre-industrial societies and
in the small towns of more contemporary nations. These earlier studies focused upon
how well the components of entire societies or communities fit together. For example,
were the society’s religious beliefs compatible with its technology? Contemporary stu-
dies of integration, by contrast, examine individuals and groups of immigrants and their
relationship to their new societies. Because of this difference in focus, Willem Schinkel
argued that the concept of integration is applied inappropriately in contemporary studies.
Integration made theoretical sense in relation to the parts of societies, but not in relation
to individuals, he contended, and claimed that its unsuitability was indicated by con-
sidering its antonym: disintegration. How could an individual be considered to be dis-
integrated, he asked?4
Schenkel made some interesting points, but what he overlooked is that the early the-
orists for whom social integration was a core concept – Durkheim, Parsons and others –
also focused upon the connection of individuals to society; and that connection was, in
fact, central to their conceptions of social integration. Schenkel also raised other serious
theoretical and policy issues with respect to integration, and they warrant consideration,
but they are beyond the scope of this text. More recent studies, at least since the 1990s,
have also noted a number of complex issues surrounding the concept of integration and
they have led contemporary analysts to develop some new terms in order to account for
variations not encountered in the earliest formulations.
The first of the more contemporary issues to be considered concerns the question of:
Into what are migrants integrated? Historically, theories of social integration or ac-
culturation assumed either implicitly or explicitly that there was a mainstream – a single
core or dominant – culture into which newcomers would be more or less absorbed.
Integration was like a melting pot. However, modern societies, and especially those that
are the leading destinations for immigrants, are multi-cultural. They are a pastiche of
many different sub-cultural groups whose customs continue to shape what might be
considered the mainstream. To some degree, in other words, integration is a two-way
street. Immigrant groups take on some of the ways of the core culture at the same time
that they contribute to its continued unfolding. To illustrate, consider the way that pizza,
bagels and egg rolls are staples in the diets of many people, in many nations, but at an
earlier time were largely confined to the diet of one particular immigrant group.
Recognizing this two-way street between immigrant groups and the mainstream made
the earlier melting pot imagery a not very good fit.5
120 Migrants and Their Offspring
In addition, the diversity of modern societies provides newcomers and their off-
spring, in particular, with different paths they could follow. Some will strive to as-
similate into the mainstream, and find that there are few obstacles. They adopt the
practices associated with the mainstream and strive to attain upward mobility.
However, some are pushed or pulled in a different direction because they find the
mainstream path blocked and/or develop an attachment to the values or practices of a
non-mainstream group. For example, some of the dark-skinned children of Haitian
immigrants in Miami, after experiencing racial discrimination, felt an affinity to
lower-class Black culture, and that is the direction in which they assimilated.
Following the writings of Alejandro Portes, the different sectors of a society into
which immigrants and their offspring have assimilated are usually referred to as
segmented assimilation.6 It has been a particularly useful concept in explaining the
downward mobility of some in the second generation.7
Another issue arises because becoming integrated into a new society does not mean
that the first or later generations have to leave behind all facets of their group’s former
ways of life. Because of modern means of travel and communication and the ubiquitous
social media, people are able to remain connected to more than one place, and one
implication of this is that various aspects of their lives are likely to be differentially
integrated in the new society. They may, for example, be active participants in the
politics of their new nation, but continue to be committed members of the church
associated with their former nation. This variability in individuals’ institutional attach-
ments is usually described as selective assimilation or selective acculturation, and it too
has been widely utilized in contemporary studies.8

Dimensions of Integration
Because the most common pattern of global migration involves people moving from
nations in the global South to nations in the global North, migrants typically have less
education and lower occupational standing than natives in the destination nation. Due to
a combination of lower socioeconomic standing and native prejudice, new arrivals also
tend to live in physically segregated communities. While segregation can thereby be a
consequence of low socioeconomic standing, it can also inhibit future socioeconomic
mobility and cultural assimilation. A great deal of research has focused upon how long
immigrants and their offspring remain divergent from the native population, and we will
review this research with special attention to the experiences of the second generation.
We will specifically examine three of the most widely studied indicators of integration:
socioeconomic standing, segregation and inter-marriage.

Socioeconomic Standing
We begin this section with an analysis of integration with respect to socioeconomic
standing, focusing upon occupation and education, the most widely studied dimensions.
We will review relevant research historically, and also examine how socioeconomic
integration is affected by where people live, and by their gender and race. The occu-
pational standing of immigrants and their offspring has been measured in a variety of
ways, the most common of which include: wages or income, amount of unemployment
and blue-collar (lower) versus white-collar (higher) positions. Education has typically
been measured both by educational aspirations and levels of actual attainment. Because of
 Migrants and Their Offspring 121
the high correlation between education and occupation, indices of each have frequently
been used interchangeably.
An important research question concerns how long the consequence of the first
generation’s typical socioeconomic deficit lasts. For example, does it span immigrants’
entire working lives? Does it continue to depress the successes of the second generation?
One answer comes from an interesting historical study that examined the effects of the
pre-migration occupational standing of Italian, German and Russian men who im-
migrated to the U.S. between 1880 and 1900. From the manifests of the passenger ships
that brought them to the U.S., Peter Catron was able to obtain occupational data for a
large number of male passengers. (The ships did not record this information for female
passengers.) From U.S. census records the investigator also obtained occupational data
for both the same men and their sons in 1910 and 1940.9
The 1910 census reports disclosed the then-current occupation of the immigrants who
had arrived between 10 and 30 years earlier (i.e. from as early as 1880 or as late as 1900).
The pre-migration occupational differences among the men from different countries had
been large. For example, many of the Germans were in white-collar occupations
(professionals, managers, etc.) that paid substantially more while many of the Italians had
been concentrated in low-skilled blue-collar occupations (factory workers, laborers, etc.)
that paid substantially less. Analyzing the 1940 records which covered most of the im-
migrant’ working lives showed that most of the pre-migration differences had persisted
among the first-generation men.
There was also a direct correlation between the relative rankings of fathers and their
sons, that is, the further fathers were below their native U.S. counterparts the further
below were their sons; but the magnitude of the differences in the second generation was
much smaller. So, while a gap remained, the occupational standings of the second-
generation sons began to converge with the standing of natives indicating movement
toward integration on this dimension, with little indication of segmented assimilation. For
the descendants of immigrants, Catron concluded, background was not destiny. Note,
however, this conclusion applies to a sample comprised entirely of white males.
Studies of educational integration among first and second generations, in more
contemporary U.S. samples, show a similar pattern in which the second generation closes
the gap between themselves and the native population. For example, focusing upon four
different immigrant groups, Van C. Tran and colleagues put together an interesting data
set from surveys conducted in 2008, 2010 and 2012. Because the data were aggregated,
parents and their offspring cannot be directly compared. However, their data show that
the relative educational rankings of groups of people in the first and second generation
continue to be highly correlated, with the second generation consistently displaying
upward mobility.
Not all immigrants, even those migrating from the poorest nations in the global
South to the wealthiest nations in the global North, enter the destination nation with
educational or occupational deficits relative to the native population. As discussed in
Chapter 2, many immigrants are positively selected with respect to education, oc-
cupation, or the like. This was also the pattern followed by the groups studied by
Tran and his colleagues. These findings, presented in Table 6.1, include educational
figures for people from the same sending countries who did not migrate. Comparing
this set of non-migrant figures (column one) to those of the first generation who did
migrate (column two) shows the self-selection of the migrants with respect to ad-
vanced education.10
122 Migrants and Their Offspring
Table 6.1 Education Across Generations

Percentage Who Are College Graduates or More

Ethnic Group Non-Migrants in Sending Country First Generation in U.S. Second Generation in U.S.

Nigerian 12 64 74
Chinese 4 53 61
Armenian 25 35 58
Cuban 14 24 41

Examining the figures in Table 6.1 shows that migrants from all of the sending
countries included in the study were highly self-selected with respect to education. The
percentage of college graduates who moved to the U.S. far exceeded the percentage of
college graduates in the origin nation’s non-migrating population. (Similar findings were
discussed at length in Chapter 2.) Further, the second generation of co-ethnics appar-
ently benefited from the selectivity of the first generation as reflected by the positive
relationship between the educational rankings of each ethnic group’s first and second
generation. Examining column two in relation to column three shows that the greater
the percentage of college graduates in the first generation of an ethnic group, the greater
the percentage in the second generation.
Given that parents’ educational level is a strong predictor of offspring’s educational
attainments, it is not surprising to observe this inter-generational relationship. We would,
of course, like to know whether the relationship is confined to emigrants to the U.S.
Relevant data were presented by van de Werfhorst and Heath from a study which included
ten destination nations and a large, diverse group of sending countries. The destinations
included the U.S. and Canada, plus eight Western European nations including France,
England, Sweden, Belgium, etc. The investigators examined the relationship between the
educational level of immigrants and the educational aspirations and attainments of their
offspring. For the offspring, they relied upon three indicators: completion of upper sec-
ondary education, tests scores and pursuit of academic or vocational school tracks. 11 (The
choice of an academic track was viewed as indicating higher academic aspirations.)
The data indicated that the offspring of positively selected (i.e. higher in education)
immigrants tended to score higher on all three indicators, with the strongest effect upon
offspring choosing academic versus vocational tracks and the weakest effect upon com-
pletion of secondary school. In other words, the children of relatively more educated
immigrants were highly likely to incorporate their parent’s high aspirations but did not
consistently match those aspirations with attainments.

The “Immigrant Optimism Paradox”

High educational aspirations among immigrants’ offspring have been observed in a
number of studies involving diverse ethnic groups in different nations. Sometimes the
educational attainments of the second generation have matched aspirations, but some-
times, as in the van de Werfhorst and Heath study described above, aspirations have
outstripped attainments. This discrepancy has been labeled the “immigrant optimism
paradox,” and has been explained by the tendency for many first-generation immigrants
to be positively selected educationally (and occupationally). The value they place upon
education is transmitted to their offspring, but neither the parents nor their children
 Migrants and Their Offspring 123
necessarily have a realistic view of how to assess the children’s educational prospects in
their new nation.12 They lack information and as a result they tend to underestimate the
structural barriers that their children, as immigrant minorities, face in schools. Box 6.1
describes the difficulties in school that a group of adolescents born in North Korea faced
when their families moved to South Korea.

Box 6.1 Educational Frustration and Suicide in South Korea

Despite facing a death penalty if they are captured, over the past few decades a
small, but steady, stream of defectors from North Korea has crossed the border into
South Korea. Economic and political motivations predominate as South Korea is a
substantially wealthier and more democratic nation. It also has a more modern
educational system and higher overall levels of educational attainment. North
Koreans’ incomes have increased with the amount of time they have lived in
South Korea, but they continue to lag substantially behind that of the natives. 13
The adolescent children of these emigres, born in North Korea and now attending
school in South Korea (G 1.5s) face educational expectations with which they are
poorly equipped to deal as a result of their backgrounds in North Korea.
In order to examine how adolescents were emotionally impacted by their
educational performance, Choi and Kim analyzed a large national sample of students
in South Korea’s middle and high schools (7th through 12th grade). Of most
relevance here, the survey asked students their place of birth and how they would
subjectively assess their own academic performance. (The investigators also obtained
students’ actual grades.) In addition, the survey included a number of questions
focusing upon self-destructive behavior including suicidal ideas and plans and
whether the student had actually attempted to commit suicide in the past.
The investigators found that the more students were unhappy with their
academic performance, the greater was the likelihood that they had thought about
and attempted suicide. (Variations in their actual grades did not have this effect.)
The researchers concluded that when these adolescent children of emigres believed
that they were performing poorly in school, regardless of their actual grades, that
their disappointment in themselves led to low self-esteem and high stress, and that
self-destructive ideas, plans and actions were the consequence. 14

After analyzing a large Swedish data set, Per Engzell concluded that positively selected
immigrants’ children were especially likely to have high expectations, but not the means
to fulfill them. To explain what he termed an “aspiration squeeze,” Engzell noted that
immigrants typically leave nations with lower overall levels of education than the nations
to which they move. For these migrants to have had a relatively high educational
standing in their origin nations would have required less education than their children
would need, in the destination nations, to emulate their parents relative standing. The
immigrant parents may want their offspring to be considered similarly well-educated, but
not fully appreciate what that would now require.15
On the other hand, for the offspring of immigrant parents whose cohorts in the origin
nation had very limited education or occupational earnings, even modest accomplishments
124 Migrants and Their Offspring
in the destination nation can represent a degree of intergenerational mobility, and be a source
of satisfaction. The children of working-class Mexican immigrants in prospering U.S. cities,
for example, may rather easily surpass their parents’ education and income, and regard
themselves as very successful even if their attainments are relatively modest by U.S. standards.
To illustrate, Lutz and Abdelhady interviewed a sample of Mexican immigrants’ offspring in
Dallas, Texas during a period in which the city’s economy was growing rapidly. They found
that for the children of the second generation to be educationally mobile a high school
diploma was sufficient, and that they were considered successful occupationally if they were
able to find jobs that simply paid them enough to buy some consumer goods and help to
support other family members.16

Place Effects
In order further to clarify the effects of immigrant parents’ educational (or occupational)
selectivity, van de Werfhorst and Heath proposed that selectivity actually has two operating
components: who is most likely to migrate and where do more educated migrants choose
to move. It can be difficult, they noted, to specify how much of the effects associated with
immigrant selectivity are due to the parents’ educational status and how much is due to
features of the places they choose to move.17 The then booming economy of Dallas, for
example, made it a helpful destination for the Mexican immigrants.
We begin this discussion by again turning to the historical study of immigrant pas-
sengers sailing to the U.S. Catron found that where in the U.S. immigrants settled had an
important effect upon the occupational success of men in both the first and second
generations. Those who were situated in the Northeast, for example, fared better overall
than those who settled in the Midwest. It was probably the diversified economies of the
large cities that were located in the Northeast – Boston, New York, Philadelphia, etc. –
that provided more occupational opportunities both to the immigrant fathers and their
sons, enabling them to become increasingly integrated.18
A number of other studies conducted in other nations have similarly reported large
place effects upon immigrants’ labor market integration. To illustrate, in England, the
UK government has taken indices of local areas’ economic deficiencies and combined
them into a deprivation index that includes such variables as the immediate neighbor-
hood’s average wage levels, education and unemployment. An interdisciplinary group of
researchers examined the labor force integration of new migrants to England in relation
to their local area’s overall deprivation index and the index’s individual indices. They
found that even after statistically controlling for numerous other determinants of wages,
the recent migrants’ earnings were higher when they lived in less deprived local areas.
They also experienced less unemployment. The investigators concluded that the areas in
which new migrants initially settled often provided limited opportunities for labor force
advancement, which can result in segmented assimilation. Thus, the occupational in-
tegration of immigrants or their offspring may over time be highly dependent upon their
secondary migration into less deprived local areas.19
Goodwin-White has reported similar results based upon analyses of U.S. census data.
The most relevant finding that came out of this research was that immigrants who re-
mained in their initial location, if that area contained a large immigrant population, often
benefitted from a secondary move. The relative earnings advantages from an internal
move were most pronounced for women and for immigrants with limited education.
 Migrants and Their Offspring 125
The latter were especially likely to become trapped in low-paying ethnic enterprises
when they remained in their initial location.20
As the preceding studies imply, ethnic concentrations are a strong correlate of place
effects. Ballarino and Panichella noted that new immigrants often settle initially in areas
that already house large numbers of their co-ethnics. For their first jobs, they are de-
pendent upon this ethnic network which often means employment in a secondary labor
market: part-time, high turnover jobs that pay poorly, for example, cleaning stores
owned by co-ethnics. As a result, they found that in their sample of male immigrants that
there was little occupational integration for the first generation in a number of European
nations that had dense ethnic networks. The earnings disadvantage tended to continue
into the second generation unless the offspring achieved a level of education comparable
to natives. When they did, the earnings gap between them and natives disappeared.21
The investigators did not examine internal mobility, but it might be expected that
better-educated offspring would be more likely to leave the ethnically dense areas in
which their parents settled.

Gender and Motive

Gender is a potentially consequential variable that has frequently been excluded from
previous studies. Prior research has often only considered male migrants because the data
providers only included males or because women’s name changes with marriage made it
more difficult for researchers to track them and their children over time. A second
frequently overlooked variable concerns the people’s major reason for migrating.
Immigrants for whom the primary motive is economic might be expected to fare better
with respect to occupational or earnings advancement than those who left for other
reasons, such as political persecution or family reunification.
One recent study examined both gender and motive, separately and in conjunction
with each other. Maskileyson, Semyonov and Davidov obtained a large sample of first-
and second-generation immigrants to Switzerland from a National Health Survey. They
compared income gains and losses of immigrants, male and female, in comparison to
natives across both the first and second generations. The results indicated that those
people who migrated primarily in search of economic opportunity were the most
successful. In fact, many male economic migrants were able to earn more than their
Swiss counterparts. It would be reasonable to assume, though the investigators did not
examine it, that these economic migrants tended to be positively self-selected with re-
spect to occupation and related variables. Furthermore, the offspring of these male
economic migrants also tended to outperform their Swiss counterparts. In contrast, first-
generation male migrants whose primary motivations were either political or familial
earned considerably less than Swiss natives with the same qualifications, and their off-
spring did not close the gap.22
Females who migrated in search of economic opportunity, like their male coun-
terparts, fared better than female migrants with other (i.e. non-economic) primary
motivations. The first-generation female immigrants nevertheless lagged behind their
Swiss counterparts economically and over the span of their own careers most of them
were able only to partially close the gap. However, the earnings of children of all
female migrants, regardless of their mothers’ major motive for moving, caught up
with comparable natives in the second generation, again indicating integration on
this dimension.
126 Migrants and Their Offspring
Race, Skin tone and Gender: The New Immigrant Survey
The final conditional variable we will consider with respect to socioeconomic in-
tegration is the race/skin tone of immigrants and we will also consider this variable in
conjunction with gender. While the darkness of people’s skin is only one potential racial
marker, in many nations it has historically been the dominant signifier.23 A major source
of data for studies of skin tone came from a New Immigrant Survey (NIS) conducted in
2003. It questioned a large sample of immigrants who were being granted permanent
residence in the U.S. and as part of the survey interviewers were instructed to assess the
immigrants’(and their spouse’s) skin tone. For this assessment, they referred to a set of
colors arranged from lighter to darker and associated with scores of 0 (lightest) to 10
(darkest). This scale, developed by Massey and Martin, proved to be reasonably precise
and reliable.24 The interviewers also asked immigrants about their occupations both prior
to moving and in the U.S. In the years since NIS was conducted, the data set has been
widely utilized by researchers to study the correlation between skin tone and socio-
economic integration.
In one of the studies most relevant to our current interest, JooHee Han examined the
occupations of the immigrants being given permanent residence at three points in time:
(1) immediately before they emigrated (2) upon first arriving in the U.S. and (3) current.
The difference between (1) and (2) disclosed the initial effect of emigrating to the U.S.
while the difference between (2) and (3) showed whether mobility occurred after ar-
riving. If (3) was higher than (2) it indicated upward mobility, i.e. integration; but if
(3) was lower than (2) it indicated downward mobility, i.e. segmented assimilation.25
Han found that upon arrival, Hispanic and Asian immigrants tended generally to
experience upward mobility, though those with darker skin tone did not move up as
much as those with lighter skin. Blacks overall moved downward initially, and those
with darker skin tones moved down by the largest amounts. He interpreted this finding
as being consistent with prior studies that suggested an association between segmented
assimilation and dark skin tone. The heightened downward mobility, Han speculated,
may have led darker immigrants to redefine the meaning of their color in the cultural
stratification system in the U.S. He also found from comparing (2) to (3) that the dark
skin penalty did not diminish over time. It was an obstacle that the dark-skinned mi-
grants could not surmount, preventing occupational integration.
Working also from the NIS data set, Joni Hersch took a sample of the spouses of
immigrants who were receiving legal status. Not all of them were immigrants,
themselves, and this produced a sample of only married persons, and it included more
females than males. However, despite the sample’s distortions, her findings closely
mirrored Han’s. Specifically, dark skin was found to continue to suppress the spouses’
occupational earnings, and the magnitude of difference in earnings between dark and
light skin respondents was nearly identical to the differences among immigrants as
reported by Han.26
When the same NIS data are examined specifically by gender some distinctions
emerge. Cervantes and Kim found that darker skin had a negative effect upon im-
migrant’s likelihood of finding employment, at least initially, among all three racial
groups (Asians, Hispanics and Blacks), and especially among Asians. However, this effect
was limited to the men in the sample. Within each racial group, the darkness of women’s
skin tone did not adversely affect their likelihood of finding employment in the U.S. The
investigators concluded that stratification based upon color was gendered because the
 Migrants and Their Offspring 127
27
negative effect of color was linked only to males. (Hersch’s study of spouses similarly
found that the earnings disadvantage of dark skin was more pronounced for males than
for females.28)

Time and Place Generalizations

The first issue that must be addressed before findings based upon the NIS data can
reasonably be generalized concerns the time span. Most of the people being granted
permanent residence had been in the U.S. for between six months and three years. So
the mobility measure that compared (2) to (3) covered a relatively brief period in their
working lives. It is not known from these data whether they managed to integrate
further over a longer time span.
A unique dataset, enabling analysis of an extended time period, was compiled by
Villarreal and Tamborini. They were able to link respondents from a large national
survey to their individual tax records. From the survey, they obtained information about
respondents’ immigration history, race-ethnicity, education and other demographic
variables. From tax records, they gathered information about individuals’ earnings in the
U.S. over a period of 20 years. The investigators assumed that convergence between the
earnings of minority immigrants and native whites indicated integration or assimilation.
By contrast, if ethnic or racial minorities lagged behind, but converged with minority
natives of the same race or ethnicity, that would indicate segmented assimilation.29
The study’s findings were consistent with both types of assimilation. Specifically, over
a period of 20 years, white and Asian immigrants largely closed the earnings gap with
native whites, indicating assimilation; Black and Hispanic immigrants largely did not.
However, Black immigrants earned the same as Black natives within 20 years of arrival
and Hispanic immigrants earned only 10% less than Hispanic natives during the same
time period, both findings consistent with segmented assimilation. (They also found that
the age at which people emigrated was a very important variable. The earlier in their
working lives that they moved to the U.S., the greater was their earnings growth. In fact,
the effect of age of migration upon earnings often exceeded the effect of race-ethnicity.)
There is also a second issue to be dealt with before the NIS findings are generalized,
and it concerns the possibility that the dark skin penalty observed in the U.S. is tied to
American culture. Is it also found in other societies? Some data to consider come from a
study conducted in 2015 in Mexico which covered several thousand households. The
sample did not focus upon immigrants, but the intergenerational results have clear im-
plications for the second generation, and the question of the endurance of a dark skin
disadvantage. One part of the questionnaire asked for information about all the adults in
the household concerning employment, education and income; and their parent’s in-
come and education when the respondents were 14 years old. A comparison of the two
yielded a measure of intergenerational mobility. The interviewers were also given skin
color palettes of varying darkness on a scale of 0 (lightest) to 11 (darkest), and instructed
to rate each respondent in a way that closely resembled the NIS procedure.30
The results showed that offspring in the lighter skin categories experienced the
greatest degree of upward mobility. Regardless of their parents’ socioeconomic standing
when they were age14, people with lighter skin ranked 20 percentiles higher in the
Mexican wealth distribution than people with the darkest skin. These findings closely
resemble the results of a number of other studies focusing upon skin tone and ethnic
mobility that were conducted in several different Latin American nations.31
128 Migrants and Their Offspring
Spatial Integration
The degree to which migrants and their offspring, who are part of a distinctive ethnic or
racial group, are physically separated from others, and particularly from the native po-
pulation, has long been a major indicator of the group’s social integration. Both theo-
retical and empirical work in this area, primarily in Sociology and Geography, has been
historically influenced by what has come to be known as the Chicago School.

The Chicago School

A theory of spatial separation and integration of immigrants and their offspring was a
major component of the writings of Robert Park and Ernest Burgess which provided the
initial foundations of “modern” urban sociology during the early decades of the 20th
century. Based upon their observations of patterns of movement in the city of Chicago,
they proposed immigrants initially moved, in concentrated numbers, into ethnic ghettos
that were just outside of the center of the city. That was where the factories that em-
ployed them were located. Because Chicago was their natural observatory and they were
professors at the University of Chicago, the theoretical perspectives and methods of Park,
Burgess and their colleagues in sociology and geography were labeled, “the Chicago
School.”32
The Chicago School’s writings contended that, over time, immigrants and their
offspring assimilated and were able to move up economically. The typical accompani-
ment to economic mobility was movement out of the segregated ethnic concentrations
into which immigrant groups initially moved. Specifically, they moved further out from
the central city to where the more desirable residential neighborhoods were located.
More desirable meant better housing stocks and higher socioeconomic status residents.
Thus, integration was viewed as running along two parallel paths: economic and geo-
graphic. Moving up economically also entailed moving out and up, geographically.
The research carried out during the early decades of the 20th century in Chicago and
in other cities that were major immigrant destinations generally reported findings that
supported the parallel paths contention. By the second generation, people in most ethnic
groups had been socio-economically mobile and left inner-city ghettos to be replaced by
newer arrivals, and a succession continued: Newly arriving Italian immigrants replaced
earlier arriving Irish immigrants who moved up and out, and then Polish immigrants
replaced the Italians who moved up and out, and so on. However, for racial minorities,
and the Black population in particular, what Park and Burgess termed “natural” processes
of mobility and succession were often blocked. Many remained in isolated and segre-
gated central city ghettos.33

New Immigration Patterns

During the last half-century immigrants’ settlement patterns have changed markedly
from the model described by the Chicago School. One major change has entailed many
immigrants being attracted to a different type of destination: smaller towns and cities, and
locations either at the fringe or outside of any metropolitan area. In the U.S. many of
these new immigrant destination sites were located in rural areas of the midwest and
south. The growth of various industries in these areas, such as meatpacking and auto-
mobile assembly, led to huge increases in the demand for labor, and companies actively
 Migrants and Their Offspring 129
34
courted immigrants to fill the positions. These areas typically lacked any history of
ethnic or racial concentrations. However, once fledgling ethnic communities were es-
tablished they tended to grow, as their social networks led to self-sustaining flows from
the same origins (previously introduced as cumulative causation).
This change in destination locations has been especially pronounced in the U.S., but
also found in parts of Europe, though some of the settlement dynamics have been dif-
ferent. In Greece, for example, the government has followed “dispersal immigration
policies” which have involved placing large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers in
state-run facilities. Most of these facilities have been located at the edge of urban centers,
in areas that were no longer being actively used.35
There has also been a marked compositional change in the immigrants, specifically
involving large numbers of non-European, non-white immigrants from parts of Africa
and Asia. This change in immigrant origins has also occurred in many destination na-
tions, but the change has been most dramatic in a number of European nations. Given
these differences in the destination locations and composition of immigrants, a great deal
of recent research has focused upon whether the spatial integration of newcomers still
follows the earlier historical pattern.36
One highly relevant study was conducted by two geographers in Sweden. Vogiazides
and Chihaya utilized a database that contained every (known) international migrant
between the ages of 25 and 55 that arrived in Sweden in 2003. This included over
15,000 people whose socioeconomic positions, housing and neighborhood economic
conditions were updated annually, until 2012. The investigators used a sequence analysis
to study the residential trajectories of this immigrant pool over the nine-year span of the
study.37
The over-riding pattern they found was residential stability: over 80% of all im-
migrants remained in neighborhoods of the same socioeconomic status as their initial
location. Non-European migrants, from Africa in particular, were especially likely to
remain in deprived neighborhoods over the entire time period. There was also a small
number of immigrants who experienced downward neighborhood mobility, going from
middle-income to deprived residential areas. The investigators described this pattern as
“spatial counter-assimilation,” though it also entails segmented assimilation.
Only about 12% of all immigrants moved up to a higher-standing neighborhood
during the nine-year period, going from deprived to middle-income or affluent
neighborhoods. Upward residential mobility was associated with attaining higher so-
cioeconomic status, in support of the parallel paths thesis of the Chicago School.
However, the percentage of immigrants who moved up residentially and socio-
economically was probably less than would have once been expected by the Chicago
School analysts, though it is possible that the time span of the Swedish study was too
truncated for the pattern to emerge.
A small increase in all of the immigrants’ spatial integration, with non-European
immigrants lagging, was also reported in a much longer-term study in France.38 Two
researchers put together a data set from six French population censuses conducted
between 1968 and 2007. They focused upon geographical areas containing about 2500
people that were demarcated by major streets, railroad lines or the like. However, they
only included these small census tracts when they were located in urban areas of
50,000 or more because immigrants in France were largely concentrated in these large
urban areas. To measure segregation they calculated Indexes of Dissimilarity, described
in Box 6.2.
130 Migrants and Their Offspring

Box 6.2 The Index of Dissimilarity

The most widely used measure of the spatial separation of groups is the Index of
Dissimilarity. Originally called the Duncan Index – the names of its developers—it
is used extensively to measure the degree to which immigrants (or income
groups, or racial-ethnic minorities) are geographically separated from each
other, or from a group that does not share their distinctive quality, for example,
native-born. 39
Most applications of the Index begin with the percentage of each group to be
compared that lives in a geographical area, such as a census track or a
neighborhood. Based upon pairwise comparisons, it expresses the percentage
of one group that would have to move to another area for the two groups to
share the same geographical distribution. Index values range from 0 (no
movement necessary because there is total integration) to 100 (complete
segregation). These extreme values are virtually never obtained though; rather,
intermediate scores are typical. Table 6.2 presents a sample of the native-
immigrant Index values in a 2016 sample of European nations. To illustrate the
interpretation of these values: the difference between Poland (34) and Ireland
(8) means that immigrants in Poland were more than four times more separated
from natives than they were in Ireland.

Table 6.2 Native-Immigrant Dissimilarity Indexes for

Selected European Countries 40

Country Index

Belgium 29
Greece 13
Ireland 8
Italy 18
Poland 34
Spain 22
All Europe Ave. 20

The investigators found that in France between 1968 and 2007 there was an increase
in the overall number of immigrants, and of non-European immigrants (from Africa
and Asia in particular). The proportion of all immigrants found to be living in certain
census tracts also increased so that many immigrants were living in ethnically varied
tracts. The greatest concentrations of immigrants involved people from Africa and
Asia. They tended to have the highest indexes of dissimilarity, and most of the tracts
with the highest indexes were located in highly segregated communities in the Paris
region. Over the 40-year span of the study the investigators found that there were
consistent, but small, decreases in the index of dissimilarity. Immigrants became
spatially a little more integrated over time, though the immigrants from Africa and
Asia lagged behind the European immigrants in this respect.
 Migrants and Their Offspring 131
Most of these studies analyzed spatial integration only among the first-generation
immigrants because the datasets did not permit the actual identification of individuals
which would be necessary to pair generations. These studies have cross-sectional data
showing changes in the overall composition of neighborhoods, census tracts or other
micro geographical units, but lack identifying information regarding the individuals or
families who live there. On the other hand, when studies have been able to obtain inter-
generational data they have often lacked detailed information about the geographical
areas so they have had to rely upon measures of spatial integration other than the Index
of Dissimilarity. In an analysis of immigrants in France, for example, McAvay relied
upon residence in public housing and home ownership as indicators of integration. The
findings showed that home ownership disparities between natives and immigrants de-
creased with successive generations, indicating integration, though immigrants from
Africa lagged behind other immigrants. The African immigrants also had the greatest
likelihood of remaining in public housing – indicating a lack of integration – and that did
not decline very much in the second generation. These differences persisted net of
socioeconomic variation; that is. even after people’s socioeconomic conditions were
statistically held constant.41
One conclusion that follows from the studies in France, Sweden, and elsewhere is that
how quickly immigrants become spatially integrated may be highly dependent upon the
composition of the immigrants, themselves. The more non-European their origins, the
slower the integration. A comparison of immigrants’ Index values in 27 European na-
tions further reinforces this contention. In 25 of the 27 nations, immigrants from non-
European countries (mostly in Africa and Asia) were more segregated from natives than
those with European origins. And some of the differences were very pronounced. In five
of the 27 nations, the Index values of non-European immigrants were more than twice
as large as those for European immigrants.42

Intermarriage
If one were to arrange indicators of immigrant groups’ social integration in a ranked
hierarchy, rates of intermarriage with natives would be at, or at least very close to, the apex.
That high placement is due to the fact that for marriages to occur between a native and an
immigrant it is probably necessary for the immigrant’s group to already be integrated along
several dimensions. To begin, intermarriage pre-supposes that the immigrant group is not
highly segregated otherwise it would be difficult for the close contacts with natives that are
typically necessary before people select a spouse. In addition, given the tendency for people
to marry others whose socioeconomic and other characteristics are similar to their own
(homogamy), high rates of intermarriage imply that the immigrant group’s socioeconomic
status has converged with that of the native population. Socioeconomic convergence and
an absence of segregation would also typically be associated with less cultural prejudice
against the immigrant group.43
It has often been difficult, however, for researchers to identify when intermarriage is
the consequence of integration and when it is an antecedent. For example, socio-
economic mobility can lead to increased likelihood of marriage to a native, but at the
same time, marriage to a native can also lead to an immigrant’s socioeconomic mobility.
Interpretation of research findings is often confounded because a typical survey or census
provides data at a single point in time. So, if researchers find a correlation involving
132 Migrants and Their Offspring
intermarriage as one of the variables it can be difficult to be certain of the direction of the
relationship because it is unclear which came first. Complicating matters further, some
datasets fail to show how the date of an immigrant’s marriage corresponds to the date of
emigration. It is not easy, then, to tell whether the immigrant married before or after
emigrating. We will be sensitive to these considerations in the following literature review.
Intermarriage is a complex phenomenon and it is influenced by a number of variables
other than a group’s social integration. To begin, groups have varying preferences for
endogamy, that is, marriage within the group; and the sanctions for violating endogamy in
selecting a mate are highly variable. In addition, because most marriages involve a male and
a female, an unbalanced sex ratio within the migrant or native population can be a con-
straint against endogamy. For example, a surplus of males to females in the group can push
males to marry persons outside of the group – exogamy. In addition, some nations have
laws prohibiting exogamy of certain types, and religious proscriptions on exogamy are
stronger in some groups than others. All of these variables can be thought of as exerting
constraints on a nation’s marriage market, thereby affecting the rate of intermarriage.

Marriage Markets
A marriage market can be conceptualized as being somewhat analogous to a financial
market in that both provide platforms where people come together and the value of
what they bring to the market is determined by supply and demand. Rather than buying
and selling financial instruments, however, a marriage market involves people’s ex-
pectations and the way men and women meet those expectations. To illustrate, if many
men are looking for women who possess certain personal or social characteristics, and
those characteristics are in short supply, then women with those qualities will be more
highly valued in the marriage market. That will put them in a position to expect more in
return from a potential mate.44 For some people, though, their race, religion, or the like
largely excludes them from entering certain marriage markets.
In many cases a marriage market is very local; people are meeting and mating within a
town or city, and perhaps only in a small section of a town or city. At the other extreme,
the market is global as people belong to social circles that cut across several nations.
There is also increased interpersonal connectivity through social media that is not tied to
a locale and can therefore free people from reliance upon one particular place.45 While
these conditions enable people to negotiate and arrange marriages across great distances,
most marriages still involve people making choices in a more local marriage market.
The integration of an immigrant group, with respect to intermarriage, is indicated by
how its members fare in a local marriage market. At the low end, the immigrants’ race,
religion, or other characteristics greatly disadvantage them in the local market, forcing
them to marry only among themselves or else to “import” spouses from their country of
origin. At the high end of integration, members of the immigrant group select spouses in
the market without constraints, and are much more likely to marry natives.

Linguistic and Cultural Proximity

As described in Chapter 4, a nation whose language and culture are similar to one’s own
makes that nation a more attractive destination, and the degree of similarity is associated
with more rapid socioeconomic integration. It would not be surprising, therefore, if
 Migrants and Their Offspring 133
there was also a higher rate of intermarriage between immigrants and natives when their
language and culture were more alike because of the enhanced ability of immigrants to
enter the larger marriage market. Studies have typically reported the expected result with
respect to language and culture, though there is reason to suspect that this relationship
has been exaggerated in some of the past studies.
In Switzerland, two investigators took data from a 2013 survey that included over
10,000 Swiss residents and provided information about their age, education and other
social characteristics. It also identified whether each was a native Swiss, an immigrant
with an annual or permanent residence permit, or a foreign citizen who had been living
in the country for at least one year. The survey also provided detailed information about
the timing of marriages and migrations making it possible to specify whether any im-
migrant’s marriage occurred pre- or post-migration.46
The results indicated that the highest rate of inter-marriage between Swiss natives and
immigrants occurred when the immigrant came from culturally similar, neighboring
nations: Germany, France, etc. The lowest rate of intermarriage involved natives and
culturally more distant immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe: Italy, Yugoslavia,
etc. In a supplementary analysis, the researchers found that the relative size of immigrant
groups and the degree to which their sex ratios were balanced did not alter the ranking of
groups with regard to the likelihood of an exogamous marriage to a native. Thus, it was
apparently sociocultural similarities or differences rather than opportunity that accounted
for the findings. The investigators also reported that the younger the cohort of native-
born Swiss, the greater their likelihood of intermarrying, especially to a spouse from a
culturally similar nation. This might indicate, they noted, a greater willingness of young
people to accept some differences in values and lifestyles compared to less culturally
permissive older generations.
Analysis of intermarriages in a more diverse sample of seven European nations – both
Eastern and Western – reported findings that were congruent with the Swiss study.
Within the Western European nations, including Switzerland, immigrants from cultu-
rally similar Western European nations had the highest rates of intermarriage among each
other and with natives. The investigators surmised that this pattern was due to specific
similarities in partner choice criteria in these countries of origin and destination. By
contrast, immigrants from Eastern Europe or from non-European nations tended to have
high rates of endogamous marriage, with few marriages occurring between them and
either Western European natives or Western European immigrants.47
The offspring of immigrants in the seven European nations all tended to have higher
inter-marriage rates than their first-generation parents, though the increases varied
somewhat among immigrant groups and across nations. The most pronounced inter-
generational decline in endogamous marriages tended to occur among the Eastern
European and non-European populations in Western European nations. A separate
study, examining only the UK, similarly reported than first-generation non-European
immigrants had especially high rates of endogamous marriages and the likelihood of
endogamous marriages declined markedly between the first and second generations.48
In almost all of the studies, the culturally more different immigrants from outside
Western Europe also tended to have less formal education and be in lower earnings
occupations than the Western European immigrants or natives. As a result, it can be
difficult to specify how much the different rates of intermarriage were due to cultural
rather than socioeconomic considerations. In order to examine their relative effects, an
interdisciplinary team of social scientists in Spain conducted in-depth interviews with a
134 Migrants and Their Offspring
sample of immigrants. They selected 58 individuals who were in exogamous marriages to a
Spanish-born person and 36 who were in endogamous marriages where both spouses
emigrated from the same nation. The investigators matched the individuals in both marital
groups on education, age, religion, etc. so that the endogamous marriage sample could be
viewed as a control group. They found that the immigrants in exogamous marriages (i.e.
with natives) had higher language proficiency than their matched counterparts in en-
dogamous marriages. This difference was especially pronounced among females and did
not seem to rely upon any corresponding socioeconomic differences.49
From the lengthy interviews, the investigators reached the familiar conclusion that
language proficiency increased the probability of an exogamous marriage. A number of
immigrants in exogamous marriages stated that they were proficient in the native language
before they met their spouses, and they reported that this fluency was a variable that put
them on a path leading to marriage with a native. However, there were also a number of
intermarried respondents who expressed the belief that their language proficiency was the
result of having married a native. In addition to the native-speaking spouse, it brought them
into their spouse’s circle of native speakers. In other words, intermarriage preceded flu-
ency. So, while it is clear that language fluency and intermarriage are connected, and that
language fluency does lead to intermarriage, one must be cautious in interpreting cross-
sectional studies that cannot temporally order the variables in their dataset because such
studies may overstate the causal role of language fluency.
In the U.S., intermarriages follow a pattern similar to that described in Western
European nations, even though the most prevalent origins of immigrants to the U.S. are
different from those moving to Western Europe. The two dominant panethnic groups in
the U.S. are Hispanic (consisting of migrants from Mexico, Colombia, etc.) and Asian
(consisting of immigrants from China, India, etc.) An exhaustive overview of their
marriage patterns was provided by Daniel Lichter and a team of sociologists who ob-
tained information about more than 85,000 different-sex couples who had married in the
preceding year (which was post-emigrating in all cases).50
Exogamous marriages to natives were found in both panethnic groups of immigrants,
but especially among Hispanics, to be positively related to their English language facility.
Marriage to a native was also related, in both groups, to the length of time they had been in
the U.S. Over one-half of all marriages to a native involved an immigrant who had been in
the country for more than 10 years which the investigators assumed was indicative of
cultural assimilation. They also found that the “color line” that historically separated black
and white natives in the U.S. marriage market operated similarly among immigrants.
Specifically, white immigrants were far more likely to marry natives (mostly white) than
black immigrants who were in turn found to have very high rates of endogamous marriages.
The relative absence of intermarriages between natives and some groups of immigrants
suggests the existence of a marriage market that is racially or ethnically segregated. Black
immigrants in the U.S., Eastern European and non-European immigrants in Western
Europe are among the groups whose ability to select mates is constrained in this market,
and most analysts interpret their endogamous marriage patterns as indicating segmented
assimilation.

Marital Dissolution
In the Swiss study of cultural differences in marriage partners, the investigators also
studied the rates at which marriages were terminated and found that, overall, exogamous
 Migrants and Their Offspring 135
(i.e. native-immigrant) marriages had a higher rate of dissolution than endogamous
marriages. And the probability of a mixed marriage ending in divorce was greatest when
it involved a Swiss native and a spouse from a culturally more disparate nation.
Other investigators have studied separation and divorce in Germany, Belgium, Estonia
and elsewhere and reported congruent results: the likelihood of marital dissolution was
higher in mixed (native-immigrant) marriages than in endogamous marriages between
natives or between immigrants from the same country. After reviewing the studies, Kulu
and Gonzalez-Ferrer offered several explanations for why there are similar patterns across
many nations. When people from different backgrounds marry, they began, it is likely
that they hold a number of different values and norms. This increases the likelihood of
misunderstandings and conflicts between the partners. In addition, by having crossed
social boundaries the partners in a mixed marriage may receive less support from their
spouse’s social (including familial) networks.51
When there are cultural differences there are also likely to be other differences be-
tween the spouses: in education, age, etc. If not taken into account, these differences
could inflate the effects attributed to cultural dissimilarity. All of the studies of marital
terminations have not been able to control all, or even most, of the potentially relevant
contaminating variables. However, where studies have controlled for the effects of some
of the most salient variables, they have reported that the effect of exogamy is reduced,
but that mixed native-immigrant marriages continue to exhibit a significantly higher
probability of dissolution.52
In conclusion, not only does cultural (and linguistic) dissimilarity between immigrants
and natives lead to fewer marriages between them, but when such marriages do occur,
crossing cultural boundaries, they also appear to result in less enduring marriages.

Marital Opportunities
At the micro level, marriages are the result of individuals making choices based upon
some combination of personal and social attributes that they find attractive in a future
spouse.53 A shared nationality is often part of that complex of desired attributes.
However, the mate selection process also occurs within a macro context in which the
demographic structure creates varying opportunities for certain types of matches to
happen.
The size of an immigrant’s nationality group can present either opportunities for, or
constraints against, endogamous marriages, including marriages between immigrants and
natives whose families previously came from the same origin nation. In the U.S., for
example, the single largest national origin of immigrants has, in recent decades, been
Mexico. This creates greater marriage market opportunities for this nationality group
which is largely responsible for the fact that in the U.S. first-generation immigrants from
Mexico have the highest probability of marrying native-born coethnics.54
In most societies, most of the time, the ratio of males to females is approximately
equal, exerting few limits upon people’s opportunities to find a “suitable” spouse.
However, war, gender-specific infanticide and other conditions can alter the “normal”
sex ratio and result in increased intermarriages. Immediately after World War II, for
example, there were an estimated seven million more women than men in Germany.
This imbalance had a number of consequences: more non-marital births, a decline in
endogamous marriages and an increase in German women’s exogamous marriages to
American, British and other occupying soldiers and administrators.55
136 Migrants and Their Offspring
In addition to population size and the overall sex ratio, if a generally desired attribute is
distributed differently among men and women in either the immigrant group or the
native population this imbalance can constrain endogamous marriages. For example, if
within the native population, people prefer a spouse within a certain age range, but there
are fewer women than men in that age range within the group, it may push native men
into exogamous marriages with immigrants or the offspring of immigrants.

Education and Gender

Around the turn of this century, in a number of Western nations, the educational at-
tainments of women caught up to, and in some cases surpassed, those of males. Given
people’s general tendency to select a mate who shares their social characteristics –
homogamy – this educational imbalance might be expected to lead more women to
marrying down with respect to education and place a marketplace premium upon males
with advanced education.56 A review of the recent research follows.
The increase in diverse migration into Spain during the past few decades has made the
nation an interesting one in which to study intermarriage and gendered educational
imbalance. In 2007, a National Immigrant Survey (NIS) was conducted and it included
over 15,000 individuals living in Spain who were born outside the country. The timing
of the survey corresponded with a rapid increase in the nation’s in-migration and it has
proved to be a useful dataset for research in intermarriage in Spain. In one study, a group
of demographers linked NIS data with a Marriage Register that contained information
about all marriages in Spain. They used the Register to examine native intermarriages,
and they supplemented their subject pool with a sample of immigrants from NIS. The
sample included those who were between the ages of 16 and 55 years and had spent at
least one year in Spain before they married, so the temporal connection between mi-
gration and marriage was clear. For every immigrant who subsequently married, they
classified the marriage as either endogamous – involving a spouse from the same country
of origin – or exogamous – involving a Spanish-born spouse. All other alternatives were
ignored. For the natives, all marriages were classified as either endogamous – to another
native – or exogamous – to any immigrant.57
In the Spanish marriage market, the investigators found that educational levels were a
key variable in influencing marriage patterns. Native men who had less than secondary
education (and also tended to be in low-skilled occupations) faced a shortage of potential
native partners because many women were seeking better-educated men. The less
educated native men had a high rate of entering into exogamous marriages with women
who were not natives (i.e. immigrants from diverse nations). Exogamous marriages in
which both partners had less than secondary education were also common. Immigrant
men with higher education had an advantage in this marriage market and for them the
probability of an exogamous marriage to a native increased directly with their level of
education. Among immigrant women, however, their level of education was irrelevant
to intermarriage propensities.
A marriage market premium upon education has also been reported in the U.S. The
previously introduced study by Lichter and associates found that both Asian and Hispanic
immigrants were much more likely to marry natives, either white or coethnics, if the
immigrants were college educated. Unlike Spain, however, in the U.S. marriage to a
native was strongly associated with a college degree for both foreign-born men and
women.58
 Migrants and Their Offspring 137
Asian Americans
A different study focused in more detail upon Asian American marriage patterns.
Qian and Qian reported that marriages among Asian Americans that cut across
generations (especially the first and second generations) increased between 1994 and
2015. Intermarriage with whites was largely confined to highly educated second- and
third-generation Asian Americans. The investigators described educational levels as
leading to highly divergent paths within this group. The more highly educated Asian
Americans became more integrated in workplaces and in residential areas, giving
them more contact with whites and therefore more opportunities to intermarry. The
racial identities among Asian Americans also correlated with levels of education and
probabilities of intermarriage: The more educated thought of themselves as white
and did not view marriage to whites as being interracial. These patterns are illustrated
in Box 6.3.

Box 6.3 Asian American-White Intermarriage

Jay Caspian King, an Asian American writer, has pointed out that the “Asian
American” label was initially presented as a political term by student activists in
the 1960s. It was not offered by Asian Americans and it only resonates, he
claimed, with upwardly mobile professionals who enter mostly white, middle-
class spaces, and find it a convenient term to describe themselves. In claiming a
multi-racial identity (i.e. Asian and American), they do not feel as though they
are rejecting their Asian background, but rather that they are taking a step
toward integrating based upon their assumption that “American equals white.”
For those who are less educated and less affluent, the Asian-American label has
little meaning.
The 20 million people who fall into the Asian American category come from
more than a dozen different nations and are a highly polarized group. They
tend to be either poor and remain largely with co-ethnics or else they become
“assimilation machines.” King observed that he regularly comes across
assimilated coethnic men venting about how one of their white neighbors
mistook them for a delivery man, without realizing they were a doctor, a
lawyer or a hedge fund manager. What mostly offended them, he thinks, is
being mistaken for being poor – hence non-white. The assimilated upper-
middle-class Asian Americans want to be as white as possible, and that includes
marriage to a white spouse. 59
Sociologist Jennifer Lee has written that it is important to remember that racial
borders in the U.S., as in most nations, are open to social definitions. They are not
biologically fixed but are open to negotiation and ultimately rely upon social
constructions. Correspondingly, many Asian-white intermarried couples do not
conceive of their union as being interracial. Only a marriage that crossed the black-
white color line would qualify as being interracial, as they think about their place,
and the meaning of race, in America. 60
138 Migrants and Their Offspring
Assimilability as a Criterion
Around 1900, Canada and the U.S. – which were already large immigrant destinations –
were among the very first nations to adopt immigration policies in which the potential
assimilability of people was an explicit criterion for admission to the country. Canada initially
excluded members of what the government referred to as an “unsuitable” race, but later
changed the wording to focus on the traditional customs of people which would “probably”
prevent them from being readily assimilated. The overt emphasis, in other words, shifted
from race to culture. At roughly the same time, the U.S. instituted English literacy tests as a
proxy for race. Offered in the name of encouraging assimilation, these tests were designed to
exclude immigrants considered less desirable, Chinese in particular. Latin American nations,
including Brazil, Cuba and Mexico, soon followed, enacting similar criteria and procedures
which presumably indicated any group’s potential assimilability.61
Around the turn of this century, as Western European nations became more sought-
after immigrant destinations, many of these nations instituted pre-arrival integration tests,
modeled after those that had been in use in the Americas for the past 100 years. The
Netherlands was the first of this group to adopt the criteria, but they were soon followed
by Germany, France and elsewhere. Fluency in the native language is typically a major
part of the admission tests and they often also attempt to appraise the applicant’s
knowledge and acceptance of a nation’s customs and laws. Germany, for example, asked,
“Can you become German?” 62
These tests are now widely used in Western European nations not only to screen
potential immigrants but to decide which immigrants living in the country will be
granted permanent residence and naturalized citizenship. The consequences of an im-
migrant’s refusal to participate or failure to pass the tests can vary from reduction in
benefits, for welfare recipients, to revocation of visas.
It is assumed that utilizing tests and mandatory instruction to require that newcomers
learn about their new nation will improve immigrants’ integration; but do they? To
answer this question, Michael Neureiter analyzed a large sample of immigrants from 15
European nations. More specifically, he obtained survey data concerning the immigrants’
self-reported employment, satisfaction with their earnings, their involvement with social
organizations and political participation. He correlated these measures of integration
with their nation’s mandatory testing scores. The results indicated that immigrants in
countries with higher overall scores reported higher levels of employment and greater
satisfaction with their financial situation. The investigator attributed this relationship to
the immigrants’ greater success in meeting language requirements which enabled them
to be successful in the workplace. However, immigrants in nations with higher test
scores did not seem to be more socially or politically integrated.63 So, more stringent
testing increased only economic integration, and that was primarily due to the language
component of the test.
At least in large part, one of the objectives of the Western European nations’ screening
is to deter Muslims, and when they have been admitted their integration has frequently
lagged behind that of other immigrant groups across many Western nations. That dif-
ference is apparently due to two factors: (1) the resistance of Muslims to adopting
Western customs with respect to dress, gender roles, etc. and (2) the tendency of natives
to avoid Muslims so the absence of cross-group social ties has limited their ability to
integrate. Both of these forces are illustrated in Box 6.4 which describes the experiences
of a group of Palestinian women who moved to Iceland.
 Migrants and Their Offspring 139

Box 6.4 Palestinian Women in Iceland 64

A group of about 30 women and young children, Palestinian refugees, were re-
settled in a small town in Iceland. For them it was a dramatic transition. The
climate and environment were very different from the place they left. There was
also no Muslim community in the town and no one spoke their language.
Nevertheless, the government assumed the women would soon be integrated by
which the government meant that they would become economically self-
sufficient. More than three years after arriving in Iceland, however, all of the
women were living solely upon welfare benefits, and had hardly assimilated in
terms of adopting Iceland’s language and culture.
From the women’s perspective, the attitudes of the natives were an important
reason for their continued separation from the community. Several of the women
had experienced overt hostility: local children spitting on them, grabbing their
hijabs, making obscene gestures. More subtly, the women felt that locals looked at
them disapprovingly. One of the Palestinian women described the reproachful
look she saw in their faces and how she responded: “You can see it … I do not
care … I do not feel they deserve I have to look or think about them.” 65
At the same time, the women intentionally built symbolic barriers to separate
themselves and their children from the local people and their culture. Some
prohibited their school children from speaking Icelandic in their homes out of fear
that their children would forget their native language. They acknowledged some
things about Iceland that they liked, such as its relative gender equality. This was
new to them. However, the women emphasized that they would only marry a
fellow Muslim and that with respect to raising their children in gender-appropriate
ways, the most important thing to them was to maintain “the Islamic way of life.”

Years after many European and North American nations had enacted integration
requirements for immigrants to enter and/or become citizens, the government of
Australia tried to follow suit. Initially proposed in 2017, and modified over the next two
years, it would have tested immigrants’ knowledge of, and commitment to, Australian
laws and values. The bill passed the lower House in 2017, but failed in the Senate, and
after several additional tries it was dropped. Some lawmakers wanted such a test to
control immigration and to appease anti-immigration public opinion.66
While it has been widely assumed that mandatory testing would increase public
support for immigration, the assumption had gone largely unexamined until Political
Scientists Alarian and Neureiter designed a survey to address the issue. It was adminis-
tered online to a sample of 1651 British adults whose demographic features appeared to
be representative of the larger population. The survey began by describing a possible
immigration test, and some of the British respondents were told it included a language
requirement, some of the respondents were told it had a civic requirement, and some
were told it contained both. The nature of the test was found not to matter, though.
Regardless of the conditions presented to respondents, they tended to want to limit
immigration. When the respondents were also presented with information about the
national origins of the immigrants who would supposedly be tested, they expressed a
140 Migrants and Their Offspring
strong preference for European rather than Middle Eastern immigrants; but regardless of
the immigrants’ origins, the possibility of integration requirements continued to have no
appreciable effect on the public’s acceptance of immigration.67

Transnationalism
Being connected to the society in which one lives is important at many levels.
Psychologically, a feeling of belonging is important to people’s sense of well-being. For
the society, people’s connectedness and their sense of belonging is likely to translate into
more social participation, civic engagement and better citizenship. With the immigrant
population in many nations increasing greatly in size, the study of social integration will
almost certainly continue to be a very important topic, both to migration researchers and
to the people who legislate social policy.
In the future, though, it will probably be increasingly necessary to modify some
traditional conceptions of integration by according transnationalism a more salient role.
Social media and modern transportation greatly facilitate the ability of people to connect
to people and institutions in different nations. In other words, for many migrants be-
coming integrated in a destination nation does not have to mean severing ties in, or
rejecting the values of, their origin nation because they are able to lead what has been
termed dual lives.
Institutions that cut across origin and destination nations also facilitate dual connectedness.
For example, Manglos-Weber has examined how religions can play this role in a study of
native Ghanians in Accra and Ghanian migrants living in Chicago. From her extensive
interviews and observations, she concluded that a global charismatic church based in Ghana
created a sense of community among the migrants in Chicago while simultaneously con-
necting them to the church and its members still in Ghana.68 To illustrate further,
Mutambasere has described how migrants from Zimbabwe who were living in the U.K.
formed an organization to work with NGOs in Zimbabwe. The founding members were
predominantly middle class and largely assimilated to life in the U.K. However, because of
their continuing commitment to Zimbabwe they formed an organization that was designed
to shape their origin nation’s economic development, human rights, etc.69
Not only can migrants keep one foot in each society, but the more firmly they plant
their foot in the destination nation the stronger may remain their tie to the origin nation.
An analysis of various refugee groups in the Netherlands, for example, found an overall
tendency for migrants’ economic integration in the Netherlands to be associated with
more transnational activities, remittances in particular. The positive association between
destination integration and continued origin involvement is termed, “resource depen-
dent transnationalism.” It was supported by the Netherlands study (and elsewhere) at the
expense of an earlier “reactive transnationalism” hypothesis. The earlier view expected
that it was a lack of integration in the destination nation that would lead people to
compensate for what was missing in their lives by maintaining greater involvement in
their origin nation.70
Finally, consider that the dual connectedness described by a number of transnation-
alism analysts implies that migrants’ lives and identities are impacted only by events that
occur in their origin and destination nations. However, Tahseen Shams contends that it
would be better to conceptualize immigrants being in a tripartite arrangement which
introduces how “elsewhere” – nations that are neither their origin nor destination –
affects immigrants’ activities and identities. For example, she shows how terrorist attacks
 Migrants and Their Offspring 141
by Muslims in Europe shape the lives of Muslims living in the U.S. despite the fact that
they have no direct connection to the European actors or events. Thus, in the modern
world, Shams concluded, transnationalism is best conceptualized on a global scale.71

Notes
1 This cultural aspect of integration has historically been referred to as acculturation, and at one time
it was the subject of extensive study by anthropologists and sociologists. Today, its analysis is largely
confined to psychology where it is integral to an active research program. See David L. Sam and
John W. Berry, The Cambridge Handbook of Acculturation Psychology. Cambridge University, 2018.
2 See, for example, Richard Alba and Nancy Foner, Strangers No More. Princeton University, 2015.
3 Alastair Ager and Alison Strang, “Understanding integration.” Journal of Refugee Studies, 21, 2008.
For further discussion of the dimensions, also see the corresponding chapters in, National
Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, The Integration of Immigrants into American Society.
National Academies Press, 2015.
4 For a succinct presentation of his views, see Willem Schinkel, “Against ‘immigrant integration’.”
Comparative Migration Studies, 31, 2018.
5 See the symposium, “Beyond the melting pot,” in City and Community, 2, 2019.
6 See, for example, Alejandro Portes and Ruben G. Rumbaut, Legacies. University of California,
2001.
7 For a discussion of how second-generation Muslim groups have frequently failed to assimilate into
the mainstream in France, see Lucas G. Drouhot, “Cracks in the melting pot?” American Journal of
Sociology, 126, 2021.
8 Portes and Rubin, op.cit.. See also, Yu Xie and Emily Greenman, “The social context of assim-
ilation.” Social Science Research, 40, 2011.
9 Peter Catron, “The melting-pot problem?” Social Forces, 99. 2020.
10 Van C. Tran, et al., “Hyper-selectivity, racial mobility, and the remaking of race.” The Russell Sage
Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 4, 2018.
11 Herman G. van de Werfhorst and Anthony Heath, “Selectivity of migration and the educational
disadvantages of second-generation immigrants.” European Journal of Population, 35, 2019.
12 For a relevant study of students in secondary schools in Madrid, Spain, see Hector Cebolla-Boado,
et al., “It is all about ‘hope’.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1, 2020. See also Zerrin Salikutluk
Immigrants’ Aspiration Paradox. Mannheim Centre Working Paper, n.d.
13 For further discussion of the recent history of the two Koreas, see Theodore Jun Yoo, The Koreans.
University of California, 2020.
14 Sungjoo Choi and Keuntaw Kim, “We don’t belong here.” International Migration, 58, 2020.
15 Per Engzell, “Aspiration squeeze.” Sociology of Education, 23, 2018.
16 Amy Lutz and Dalia Abdelhady, “Working-class children of Mexican immigrants in Dallas, Texas.”
City and Community, 19, 2020.
17 Van de Werfhorst and Heath, op.cit.
18 Catron, op.cit.
19 Ken Clark, et al., “Local deprivation and the labour market integration of new migrants to
England.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45, 2019.
20 Jamie Goodwin-White, “The shaping of selection.” Population, Space and Place, 24, 2018.
21 Gabriele Ballarino and Nazareno Panichella, “The occupational integration of male migrants in
Western European countries.” International Migration, 53, 2015.
22 Dina Maskileyson, Moshe Semyonov and Eldad Davidov, “Economic integration of first- and
second-generation immigrants in the Swiss labour market.” Population, |Space and Place, 1, 2021.
23 For further discussion, see Nina G. Jablonski, “Skin color and race.” Physical Anthropology, 175,
2020. See also, Angela R. Dizon and Edward E. Telles, “Skin color and colorism.” Annual Review of
Sociology, 43, 2017.
24 Douglas S. Massey and Jennifer A. Martin, The NIS Skin Color Scale. 2003.
25 JooHee Han, “Does “Skin tone matter?” Demography, 57, 2020.
26 Joni Hersch, “The persistence of skin color disadvantage for immigrants.” Social Science Research, 1,
2011.
142 Migrants and Their Offspring
27 Andrea Gomez Cervantes and ChangHwan Kim, “Gendered Color Lines.” Paper presented at the
annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, August, 2015.
28 Hersch, op.cit.
29 Andres Villarreal and Christopher Tamborini, “Immigrant economic assimilation.” American
Sociological Review, 83, 2018.
30 Raymundo M Campos-Vazquez and Eduardo M Medina-Cortina, “Skin color and social mobi-
lity.” Demography, 56, 2019.
31 For a summary of relevant research, see Edward Telles, Pigmentocracies. University of North
Carolina, 2014.
32 Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess, The City. University of Chicago, 1982. (Originally pub-
lished in 1925.)
33 See Douglas E. Massey and Magaly Sanchez R., Blocked Boundaries. Russell Sage Foundation, 2012.
34 See, for example, the description of how a meatpacking company enticed immigrants to move to a
small, rural town in the Midwest. Faranak Miraftab, Global Heartland. Indiana University, 2016.
35 For further discussion of these facilties, see Pinelopi Vergov, “Living with difference.” Urban
Studies, 56, 2019.
36 For an overview of the recent research, see Chenoa A. Flippen and Dylan Farrell-Bryan, “New
destinations and the changing geography of immigrant incorporation.” Annual Review of Sociology,
47, 2021.
37 Louisa Vogiazides and Guilherme Kenji Chihaya, “Migrants’ long-term residential trajectories in
Sweden.” Housing Studies, 35, 2020.
38 Jean-Louis Pan Ke Shon and Gregory Verdugo, “Forty years of immigrant segregation in France.”
Urban Studies, 52, 2015.
39 Otis D. Duncan and Beverly Duncan, “A methodological analysis of segregation indexes.” American
Sociological Review, 20, 1955.
40 Adapted from Daniel T. Lichter, Domenico Parisi and Shrinkidhi Ambinakudige, “The spatial
integration of immigrants in Europe.” Population Research and Policy Review, 39, 2020.., op.cit.
41 Haley McAvay, “Immigrants’ spatial incorporation in housing and neighbourhoods.” Population, 73,
2018. Similarly, in Amsterdam, non-European immigrants were found to be most segregated from
Dutch natives across all income and educational levels. William R. Boterman, Sako Musterd and
Dorien Manting, “Multiple dimensions of residential segregration.” Urban Geography, 42, 2021.
42 Lichter, et al., op.cit.
43 For further discussion of the relationship between intermarriage and other indicators of social in-
tegration, see Sayaka O. Torngren, et al., “Toward building a conceptual framework on inter-
marriage.” Ethnicities, 16, 2016.
44 For further discussion, see June Carbone and Naomi Cahn, Marriage Markets, Oxford University,
2014.
45 For further discussion of local and global mate selection, see Daniel T. Lichter and Zhenchao Qian,
“The Study of Assortive Mating.” In The Springer Series on Demographic Methods and Population
Analysis, 47, 2018.
46 Gina Potarca and Laura Bernardi, “Mixed marriages in Switzerland.” Demographic Research, 38,
2018.
47 Tina Hannemann, et al., “Co-ethnic marriage versus intermarriage.” Demographic Research, 38,
2018.
48 Hill Kulu and Tina Hannemann, “Mixed marriage among immigrants and their descendants in the
United Kingdom.” Population Studies, 73, 2019.
49 This bi-directional relationship was reported by Dan Rodriguez-Garcia, “Contesting the nexus
between intermarriage and integration.” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, 662, 2015.
50 Daniel T. Lichter, Zhenchao Qian and Dmitri Tumin, “Whom do immigrants marry?” ANNALS
of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 662, 2015.
51 Hill Kulu and Amparo Gonzalez-Ferrer, “Family dynamics among immigrants and their descen-
dants in Europe.” European Journal of Population, 20, 2014.
52 Ibid.
53 The exception, of course, is when marriages are arranged; but even here, the individuals involve
frequently retain a degree of choice.
54 Daniel T. Lichter, et al., “Whom do immigrants marry?” op.cit.
 Migrants and Their Offspring 143
55 For further discussion, see Elizabeth D. Heineman, What Difference Does a Husband Make?
University of California, 2003; and Dirk Bethmann and Michael Kvasnicka, “World War II,
missing men and out of wedlock children.” The Economic Journal, 23, 2012.
56 See the review of relevant theories in, Jan Van Bavel, “Partner choice and partner markets.” In
Norbert F. Schneider and Michaela Kreyenfeld (Eds), Research Handbook on the Sociology of the
Family. Edward Elgar, 2021.
57 Amparo Gonzalez-Ferrer, et al., “Mixed marriages between immigrants and natives in Spain.”
Demographic Research, 39, 2018.
58 Lichter, et al., op.cit.
59 Jay Caspian King, The Loneliest Americans, Crown, 2021.
60 Jennifer Lee, “From undesirable to marriageable.” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science, 662, 2015. Whiteness appears to be similarly open to social construction in Canada, at
least with the Jewish population. See Tamir Arviv, “Stepbrothers from the Middle East.” Social &
Cultural Geography, 19, 2018.
61 For an historical review, see David S. FitzGerald, et al., “Can you become one of us?” Journal of
Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1, 2017.
62 Ibid.
63 Michael Neureiter, “Evaluating the effects of immigrant integration policies in Western Europe.”
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45, 2019.
64 The following description is based upon, Eria S. Kristjansdottir and Unnur Dis Skaptadottir, “I’ll
always be a refugee.” Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 17, 2018.
65 Ibid., p 396.
66 Heli Askola, “Copying Europe?” International Migration Review, 55, 2021.
67 Hannah M. Alarian and Michael Neureiter, “Values or origin?” Journal of Ethnic and Migration
Studies, 47, 2021.
68 Nicolette D. Manglos-Weber, Joining the Choir. Oxford University, 2018.
69 Thabani Golden Muambasere, “Diaspora citizenship in practice.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration
Studies, 47, 2021.
70 See Linda Bakker, et al., “In exile and in touch.” Comparative Migration Studies, 2, 2014.
71 Tahseen Shams, Here, There, and Elsewhere. Stanford University, 2020.
7 Migrant Settlements

This chapter describes the types of places in which migrants initially settle after arriving in a
destination nation. Some refugees have the most limited choices. As previously defined,
international refugees are people who flee across a national boundary. The driver can be
economic or environmental, and often it is armed conflict within their origin nation that
causes people to run across a border in search of safety. Very large numbers of people are
often involved in a very brief period of time. For example, just for three weeks in 2022,
an estimated three million people fled from Ukraine following Russia’s invasion. Over
one-half of them initially crossed the border into Poland.1
Some refugees who are forced to leave in a hurry are fortunate enough to have family
or friends in another nation that are willing to take them in, or find accommodations for
them. Some refugees have sufficient means to obtain housing on their own in another
nation. However, a large percentage of refugees have no choice but to settle, at least
temporarily, in the refugee camps that the destination nation provides.
Migrants who are not refugees ordinarily have more freedom to select a place to settle in
a destination nation, though they often face economic constraints and/or their nationality,
race or religion might limit where they can reside in the destination nation. Ghettos are
sometimes the only possibility and, as we shall note, refugee camps and ghettos share a
number of features in common. Enclaves are another alternative, and while ghettos and
enclaves also share some commonalities, there are also some marked differences in their
typical geographical locations, the homogeneity of residents’ socioeconomic status, and the
degree to which the community has control over local institutions, such as schools,
charitable organizations, and so on. For the more well-off or better-connected migrants,
there is the possibility of moving directly to an ethnoburb: a suburban community
dominated by their co-ethnics.
In the following pages, we will describe the dimensions along which these types of
settlements differ, and note the social, geographical, cultural and economic features that
distinguish each type. We will also examine the consequences of migrants’ initial set-
tlement type for their long-term social and economic integration.

Refugee Camps
Refugee camps are ordinarily built in response to a crisis in a neighboring nation that
leads to a large influx of migrants. As individuals and families attempt to escape an
untenable situation, host nations tend to erect settlements to accommodate them, usually
assuming it will be temporary, but it frequently turns out to last many years. The camps
are sometimes run by the local government, but the U.N., the Red Cross, and other
DOI: 10.4324/9781003158400-7
 Migrant Settlements 145
non-government organizations are often involved as well. The smallest of the camps
usually hold only a few thousand people, but the largest – such as the Kakuma camp in
Kenya, established in 1992 – held nearly 200,000 refugees as late as 2019. Most of the
people in Kakuma and in Kenya’s other large camps came from South Sudan or Somalia
and the immediate precursors to them leaving their homes were civil wars.2
Migrants seeking refuge in a camp are usually detained initially outside of the camp in
a holding facility where their requests for asylum are processed. There are often long
lines outside of these centers where hungry, often ill, people, with only the clothes on
their backs, may have to wait for months for their refugee status and asylum claims to be
approved. Some may be turned away, and forced to return to a chaotic situation. Some
may be routed to still other sites in the nation. Thousands of people fleeing from civil
war in Myanmar, for example, have sought asylum in Thailand, and most have been
settled in camps, but some of the Kayan, a small ethnic minority from eastern Myanmar,
were moved into bamboo shacks in special villages because Thai officials thought they
could be a tourist attraction.
The Kayan women wear long, decorated and very distinctive neck rings. Tour
companies set up trips for Thais and tourists from China to visit the villages with the
Kayan women on display as the attractions. The women earn a very small amount of
money from the tour companies and by setting up stalls to sell cheaper versions of their
traditional neck rings. Critics have called these villages, “ethnic theme parks.”3 Most of
the Kenyans placed in these villages remained in them for years because they had no
official documents which made them unable to go anywhere else. Further, without such
paperwork they could not even apply for asylum in a third country. While most were
not very pleased with their lives in the villages many thought it might still be better than
living in the main Myanmar refugee camp with tens of thousands of crowded people.
Those refugees who are approved for admission to a camp are transferred to the
facility itself and go through an intake process that resembles a prison or the military.
New arrivals are typically given a health screening, registered and fingerprinted, then
assigned to a space. It may be in a tent or a prefabricated hut, or they may be given
materials with which to construct their own shelter. Physical conditions in most camps
tend to be harsh, at best: access to water for drinking or washing is usually limited, food is
rationed and sanitation facilities are usually very primitive. Medical care also tends to be
very limited and inadequate, as illustrated in Box 7.1.

Box 7.1 Treating Patients in a Greece Refugee Camp

The Moria refugee camp on a Greek island was initially constructed to house
about 3,000 inhabitants, but by 2020 it was home to more than 20,000 refugees. In
early 2020, a London-based physician, Annie Chapman, volunteered to spend
three weeks in the camp treating sick or injured refugees. Each day she recounted
her observations in a diary, and when she returned to London she wrote an article
describing the deprivation and suffering she encountered.
Every day refugees waited for hours in the dark and cold for the clinic to open.
Patients could only enter with police papers that contained their name and
number. Some came with infected wounds, made worse by their minimal access to
clean water in the camp. Many were suffering from flu-like symptoms that spread
146 Migrant Settlements
rapidly in the over-crowded camp. And then there were the refugees struggling
with psychiatric issues. Some were traumatized by events that occurred as they
made their way to the camp or after they arrived. Some, women and children
especially, had been the victims of sexual violence in the camp. Dr. Chapman
described how they cried and screamed, but to her consternation there was little
the clinic was equipped to do for them. “When we send them back to their tents,”
she wrote, “I feel ashamed.” 4
The camp had only limited electricity, so the staff had to carry out their patient
consultations with battery-operated lights. They could not even treat those with the
most serious illnesses or injuries. In those cases, Dr. Chapman would beg for an
ambulance to take them to a hospital outside of the camp. Sometimes one came, and
if everyone was fortunate it would pull up to the clinic so the staff did not have to
carry patients, in the dark and freezing cold, from the clinic to the camp’s entrance.

The administrators of a refugee camp usually provide some type of limited schooling
for youngsters, stores that dispense groceries and medicine, and banking facilities where
residents of the camp can receive funds from outside relatives. In some larger camps the
residents have also created their own markets inside the camp, but more typically they
are totally dependent upon the facilities provided by the administrators of the camp.
In most cases, the residents of the camp are not free to leave it. Again, like prisoners,
they are confined to a place by fences and guards. Many of the distinguishing features of
refugee camps are shared by prisons, as previously noted, but also by some ghettos in that
they all fall at the low end on a voluntary residence continuum and a high end on an
imposed institutions continuum. These similarities have led some theorists to elaborate
on the similarities among refugee camps, prisons and ghettos.5

Ghettos
In the social sciences, much of the research on, and analysis of, ghettos traces its be-
ginnings to the writings of Louis Wirth. He was a University of Chicago-trained so-
ciologist and an influential part of the early Chicago School. His dissertation, which was
published in book form in 1928, was entitled, The Ghetto.6 In this work he focused upon
Jewish ghettos, in Europe and the United States, but he also noted similarities between
them and the ghettos of other racial and ethnic groups. Of most importance, Wirth laid
out some basic features of all ghettos that provided starting points for later analysts,
especially during the first half of the 20th century.
Wirth began by tracing Jewish ghettos back to distinctive settlements in several
European towns in the Middle Ages. They formed, in his view, mostly by the desires of
people who shared religious precepts and rituals to be together so that they could support
communal institutions. At the same time, Wirth noted that Jewish populations were
sometimes ordered into ghettos by people in power and that even when Jews “vo-
luntarily” formed ghettos it was at least partially because they feared having routinely to
deal with non-Jews. They physically separated themselves in order to escape hostilities.
By virtue of their separation, regardless of how voluntary it was, relations between Jews
and non-Jews historically tended to be limited, formal, and impersonal. Neither group
was inclined to trust the other nor did they desire to be socially friendly.
 Migrant Settlements 147
Within the ghetto, by contrast, relationships among Jews tended to be extensive and
highly personal. In fact, intimate relationships, such as marriage, were strictly confined to
the in-group (i.e. endogamous) as demanded by religious teaching and social norms.
When a person from the community nevertheless selected a spouse from outside the
community, the married couple was ordinarily banished, that is, forced to live outside of
the ghetto. Thus, in every respect, it was a closed community. However, Wirth noted
that when, through education or commerce, external contact between Jews and non-
Jews increased, more universal values tended to replace the ghetto’s traditional values,
and intermarriage increased. The eventual result of such assimilation, he concluded,
could be the end of the ghetto, and in the early 20th century, Wirth thought there were
some formerly insular Jewish communities close to disappearing in this manner.
In the United States, and in Chicago, in particular, Wirth described the largely vo-
luntary formation of Jewish ghettos that both resembled and differed from their
European counterparts. One big difference was in their proximity to other similarly
segregated groups. The Jews were one of several immigrant groups that succeeded each
other in forming dense settlements in the inner city. The immigrant waves began
with Germans and Irish, and as they moved out they were displaced by Jews who,
in turn were displaced by Poles and Italians, and they were later succeeded by African
Americans. One could observe the transformations on an almost daily basis as Lutheran
churches became synagogues and then African M.E. churches. At many points during
the process, different ethnic and racial groups lived side by side. The boundaries among
them were maintained in these dense, inner-city neighborhoods, according to Wirth, by
the fact that they generally detested and distrusted each other. What they all shared in
common was poverty status, but this common economic position did not create an over-
arching bond among them. When Jews (or others) attained a degree of economic success
they wanted to escape from their inner-city ghettos. Moving up socially meant moving
out geographically.
For a couple of decades after the publication of Wirth’s book, American Jewish
settlements were the prototype of the ghetto in much of the scholarly literature of the
then dominant Chicago School. At the same time, however, the researchers in this group
(and others) also studied the ghettos being formed by immigrant Italians, Poles, and
others. They examined each of the separate communities in detail and also described
how they were geographically distributed across the city. Robert Park, a senior colleague
of Wirth’s, depicted the constellation of ethnic ghettos in Chicago during this period as
resembling, “a mosaic of little worlds that touch but do not interpenetrate.”7
In sum, for roughly the first half of the 20th century, the key defining features of a
ghetto included: its relative ethnic or racial homogeneity; its separateness, meaning in-
teractions between people living inside of the ghetto and outside of it were very limited;
the distinctive institutions and facilities it offered to residents, including places of wor-
ship, restaurants, food stores, etc. and an emphasis upon the attractive pull of the ghetto
combined with a recognition that decisions to live within it were not entirely un-
constrained.
The last of the above defining characteristics was of particular significance in Mitchell
Duneier’s historical analysis of the concept of a ghetto. Many of the Chicago School
pioneers and their followers, Duneier noted, viewed the northern urban ghettos merely as
“way stations” for newcomers who would assimilate to modern urban life and move up
and out. These segregated communities of initial residence for immigrants were theorized
to be largely the result of voluntary and natural forces and they were viewed as serving as
148 Migrant Settlements
useful and temporary places of residence. It was not necessary, therefore, to be overly
critical of segregated ghettos nor to formulate policies intended to eliminate them.8
During the second half of the 20th century, there was a dramatic change in the way
the social sciences in the U.S. viewed ghettos. The first change was in whose settlements
were considered the prototype of ghettos, and in this respect non-whites replaced Jews.
One reason for this substitution was the Nazi’s enforced encampment of Jews in
Germany, Poland, and elsewhere in occupied Europe before and during World War II.
Hitler justified these actions in part by arguing that he was just putting Jews back in the
ghettos where they had been for centuries. However, it was prison-like qualities that
predominated in the ghettos Hitler designed, and they lacked any of the attractions that
had characterized Jewish ghettos in the past. No one would have voluntarily chosen to
live in them especially because they usually turned out to be stops not on the way to
upward mobility but to Nazi death camps.9
At the same time that Hitler changed the meaning of Jewish ghettos, there were large
migrations of non-white populations, moving within nations (e.g. African Americans from
the rural south to the industrial north in the United States) and between nations (e.g., from
the Caribbean to the United Kingdom). Most of these migrants had limited formal edu-
cations and were relatively unskilled; but, the growing number of factory jobs that were
becoming available in industrializing cities offered comparatively good wages for workers
who entered factories without skills. The factory wages enabled stable, working-class
communities to grow, but then the factory jobs began to disappear – de-industrialization –
and they were not replaced by comparable jobs that the inner city residents could fill.
Unemployment rates increased, entire communities became impoverished and dependent
upon government assistance for housing, food, etc.
The difficulty of finding employment in these cities was especially pronounced for
African American males without high-school diplomas. Studies report that many had no
expectation of ever finding work. As a result, they had little basis for resisting ”street
culture,” which encouraged segmented assimilation: for example, engaging in reckless
behavior that further jeopardizes their chances of being upwardly mobile. Their pessi-
mistic assessment of their future included a belief that they were very unlikely ever to
have a stable marriage, so sexual relations were separated from marital plans and the
communities tended to have high rates of non-marital births. The poor, single mothers
often lacked the means to control their youngsters which contributed to a cycle of school
dropouts, drugs, gangs and crime.10
Danger so suffuses everyday ghetto life that it creates an oppressive climate of fear that,
along with the poverty of the area, results in widespread institutional withdrawal.
Hospitals and public health facilities minimize their community involvement or move
out of the area; public schools, libraries and youth clubs lack facilities and limit their
functions. So just when there was the most pronounced need for assistance – because of
the large number of single-parent families living in poverty – that help and support was
not available.
In order to control crime in these areas, local governments have tended to rely heavily
upon incarceration. A combination of vigilant policing, authoritarian courts, and ex-
panded prisons, according to Loic Wacquant, were specifically designed to control, by
“warehousing.” This resulted in a highly disproportionate number of young, un-
employed black males being in prisons so even if a traditional marriage following
pregnancy was supported by ghetto norms, there would be too few males available as
long-term partners.11
 Migrant Settlements 149
Summary
From the preceding discussion, we can identify five principal characteristics that are now
typically associated with a contemporary U.S. ghetto. The prototype from which these
characteristics are deduced is the African American ghetto found near the center of many
U.S. cities between roughly the 1960s and the present.

1 They occupy a distinct geographical space that is recognized as such both by the
occupants and by outsiders, and also tend to be both physically and socially isolated
from the rest of the city in which they are located.
2 The occupants share a distinctive attribute – race – that is held in low regard in the
society (stigmatized) and subject to negative stereotyping.
3 The ownership or control over most retail establishments, housing and local
institutions lies outside of the community (e.g. absentee business ownership,
government-run housing, etc.)
4 The relationship between residents and the external political system (municipal or
state) is punitive and exploitive, maintaining the marginalized status of residents.
5 They tend to live in deteriorated private housing or crowded public housing in
neighborhoods with high rates of crime and violence that offer few amenities.
People remain in such places not because of any attachment, but because they have
nowhere else to go.

In the U.S. there have been many immigrant settlements that have largely met all the
ghetto criteria as described above. To illustrate, in 1986, a large groups of Cambodian
refugees were resettled in the Bronx section of New York City where they were largely
isolated from the communities around them. It was initially envisioned as a temporary
arrangement. but decades later many of the first-generation immigrants and their off-
spring remained unemployed, in dilapidated housing, in an economically impoverished,
blighted inn-city neighborhood. The poverty and violence that characterized the
community along with its relatively homogeneous ethnic-racial makeup led researcher
EricTang to label it a “hyperghetto”12

Ghettos in European Cities

Outside of the U.S. until recently, the immigrant communities that appeared to most
closely resemble American ghettos were in some of the suburbs of Paris (“banlieues”).
They were formerly manufacturing centers in which factory jobs attracted large numbers
of immigrants from Morocco, Algiers and other parts of Northern and Sub-Saharan
Africa. However, de-industrialization had the familiar consequence of leading to high
unemployment and the communities became impoverished. Wacquant described them
as having a number of ghetto-like conditions, including deteriorated public housing,
stigmatized minorities and high rates of poverty; but, he also argued that the French
housing projects were less isolated than their American counterparts – here he focused
upon the south side of Chicago – and that they were less disadvantaged by policies of the
larger political system. He also stated that the problems of crime and poverty were less
pronounced in the suburbs of Paris than in the Chicago (or other United States) ghettos.
Wacquant concluded that it was incorrect to equate the worst parts of the banlieus with
American ghettos. However, some analysts have argued that both the prototypical
150 Migrant Settlements
Chicago ghetto and the Paris banlieus have been changing, and growing more alike.
Most notable, perhaps, has been the rising levels of unemployment, crime and social
marginality in parts of the French suburbs, making them increasingly like U.S. ghettos.13
During the late 20th century social scientists around the world wrote so much about
the American ghettos that some analysts believe that European researchers were overly
influenced by the concept and imagery. As a result, researchers may have been predis-
posed to view poor communities in European cities as ghettos, even though many of the
distinguishing features of ghettos were lacking.14 Following the immigrant surge into
Europe during the early decades of this century, however, the more recently formed
immigrant communities in many European cities do seem to qualify as ghettos.
In Madrid, Spain, for example, San Cristobal is a geographically isolated area in which
over one-half of the residents are either first or second-generation immigrants, largely
having come from Morocco and other non-European nations. Due to factory closings, the
community is characterized by high unemployment and young people dropping out of
school at high rates. The major way in which this community appears to differ from the
prototypical American ghetto is that there is less everyday violence in San Cristobal.
Nevertheless, as in recent American ghettos, and unlike the historical ghettos described by
Wirth, except for those who have to live there, “it is a place no one would go to.”15
According to researchers and officials in Denmark, the growth of ghettos in that country
has been pronounced. Beginning in 2010, Denmark has compiled an annual “ghetto list.”
In 2020 there were 29 communities on the official list. The criteria for a community’s
inclusion are the familiar characteristics by which ghettos are now usually defined. Over
one-half of the residents must be first or second-generation immigrants. Most of those now
in Denmark left Lebanon, Pakistan, and other non-European, Muslim nations so they
share a distinctive attribute that tends to be stigmatized in their new nation. Other criteria
for determining whether a community is placed on the ghetto list in Denmark include high
rates of: school drop-outs, unemployment and crime. Denmark’s criteria show the obvious
influence of descriptions of ghettos in the U.S.

Dispersal Policies
As the number of officially designated ghettos has grown in Denmark, the government
has concluded that the ghettos should be eliminated by demolishing the public housing
in which many residents have been living. The government not only wants to knock
down many of the public housing units and replace them with private housing but to bar
people with low incomes from living in the new buildings.16 The objective, of course, is
dispersal.
The assumption that usually underlies government attempts to disperse immigrants is
that it will hasten integration. Theoretically, breaking up an immigrant concentration
could have this effect in two ways: (1) the ghetto neighborhood is likely to offer residents
only limited opportunities. They may do better if forced to live elsewhere, and (2) living
with fellow immigrants may discourage learning the host nation’s language and cultural
skills which, as we have noted in prior chapters, is negatively related to integration.
For a number of years, Sweden has tried to disperse immigrants from the places in which
they first permanently settled if these neighborhoods were dominated by co-ethnics. To
examine the consequences of this government policy, a group of social scientists examined
all the immigrants from Iraq, Iran and Somalia who entered Sweden between 1995 and
2004. From a number of administrative registers they obtained data on their port of entry,
 Migrant Settlements 151
and followed them until 2014, noting their incomes, education, etc. The final sample
included over 25,000 immigrants who were between 25 and 59 years after the 10-year
follow-up.17
The analysis initially indicated that immigrants from the nations listed above who settled
in neighborhoods with high concentrations of co-ethnics were less likely to be employed a
decade after they arrived. When the investigators dug deeper into the data, though, they
discovered that the negative effect of co-ethnic concentrations was entirely due to the
female refugees. It was only women who were strongly impacted. These immigrant
women, particularly those with children, were presumably more subjected to neighbor-
hood social pressures, and when traditional patriarchal norms predominated, the result was
fewer women being employed outside of the household. However, the degree to which
women’s labor force participation was adversely impacted by the size of the co-ethnic
concentration depended upon neighborhood patterns. Specifically, the higher the rate at
which co-ethnics were employed in the neighborhood, the less were female employment
prospects reduced by the co-ethnic concentration. In other words, it was in concentrations
of traditional immigrants that over the years had lower overall employment rates than
women who were newcomers were especially likely to not be employed.
The above finding with respect to employment – that ethnic concentrations, per se,
have little effect – has been reported in a number of other realms as well. For example, in
a study of refugees in Sweden’s larger cities, the size of the ethnic concentration in which
they settled was found, in and of itself, not to affect the likelihood of immigrants voting.
Rather, their political participation depended upon the degree of political participation
that had been occurring among previously settled co-ethnics.18
The take-away from this body of research is that the integration of immigrants that
most nations seek is not necessarily retarded by their living in communities with con-
centrated numbers of co-ethnics. It is the predominant behavioral patterns among co-
ethnics rather than their size that is most consequential. It therefore follows that to
promote integration governments should not pursue blanket dispersal policies, but rather
focus upon routing newcomers away from those concentrated ethnic communities in
which immigrant integration has not been occurring.

Enclaves
The existence of concentrated numbers of people of the same race or nationality is one
of the principal criterion for designating a neighborhood either a ghetto or an enclave.
Deciding which classification better describes a specific place can, as a result, sometimes
be problematic. However, there are a number of other features that can be utilized to
distinguish between an enclave and a ghetto.
The difference between them that has most frequently been cited in the literature
involves where ghettos and enclaves are placed along an attractiveness-to-residents
continuum. At the high end of this continuum a community forms and remains by the
choice of residents because it has qualities that they find appealing; it is where they
choose to live. At the low end, residents are relegated to a place because external pre-
judices cut them off from more desirable alternatives or because they cannot afford to
live elsewhere. They are not there by choice. Enclaves and ghettos can be mixed in this
respect, that is, all of their residents are neither entirely voluntary nor entirely con-
strained. However, enclaves are, by definition, closer to the apex of the continuum
while ghettos are closer to the base.19
152 Migrant Settlements
A major reason for the relative attractiveness of an enclave is the presence of grocery
and clothing stores, pharmacies, restaurants and bakeries, funeral parlors, hair salons and
so on that serve the specialized needs of the immigrant community. Many of these
establishments tend to be owned and/or managed by local co-ethnics who understand
the unique preferences of the residents. In a typical ghetto, by contrast, there are usually
few establishments that cater to the specialized needs of residents, and few that are locally
owned. Most of the grocery stores, pharmacies, and so on that are found in ghettos tend
to be parts of national chains that are headquartered in distant cities, and the products
they offer are mostly the same everywhere. The absence of facilities tending to the
immigrant community’s specialized needs is one of the reasons that most residents of a
ghetto find it an unattractive place to live.
It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of such local businesses to the
daily lives of enclave residents. If, for example, the immigrants are Muslims it would only
be in an enclave (and not in a ghetto) that they would be able to follow traditional
Muslim practices in arranging marriages, observing religious rites, properly burying the
dead, etc. People with the necessary technical skills and facilities would be difficult to
find in a ghetto. The way co-ethnic establishments meet the specialized needs of an
immigrant community is illustrated by the role of grocery stores in a Chinese enclave in
the suburbs of Toronto, as described in Box 7.2.

Box 7.2 Grocery Stores in Toronto’s Chinese Enclave

On the northern edge of Toronto there are several large concentrations of immigrants
from Mainland China and Hong Kong. Across several towns recent figures estimate
that there were an estimated total of 140,000 ethnic Chinese residents, and in some of
the communities the Chinese comprised approximately 50% of the population. As
defined by Statistics Canada, the largest group were economic migrants, and the
smallest group were refugees. 20
Throughout these communities, there are a large number of strip malls that are
typically anchored by a supermarket that caters to Chinese shoppers. These small
clusters of stores also typically contain Chinese restaurants serving authentic Chinese
dishes, banks with tellers that speak with customers in Cantonese and Mandarin, and
so on. The parking signs are in Chinese as is much of the lettering in store windows,
giving these strip malls an immediately visible ethnic identity. The communities
contain both Chinese and “mainstream” shopping venues, but the Chinese make their
purchases mostly in the stores with co-ethnics that specifically cater to them.
Geographer Lucian Lo interviewed a sample of 800 local residents, asking them
where they shopped, how and why. Focusing upon supermarkets, she found that
among the Chinese residents adherence to cultural traditions strongly influenced
their consumption patterns. For example, many shopped at the Foody Mart which
offered shelves of salted duck eggs, live fish in tanks (to be considered fresh by the
Chinese, they must be alive) and poultry intact with head and feet (as preferred by
the Chinese). While the Chinese shoppers moved their carts through the isles,
Shanghai pop played over the store’s speakers. Lo concluded that the Chinese
supermarkets in the enclave were the place that Chinese residents could buy the
proper ingredients to prepare their meals and feel comfortable doing it. 21
 Migrant Settlements 153
Many of the residents of an enclave work at diverse jobs under highly variable con-
ditions in the enclave. They are local store owners, managers and employees. Some are
self-employed with most of their clients living in the enclave. Some work at a variety of
jobs outside of the enclave. As a result, there tends to be substantial income differences
among residents of an enclave while the residents of a ghetto tend to be uniformly poor.
The Cuban enclave in Miami, for example, was formed by three distinctly different
waves of migrants from Cuba. The earliest group to leave was largely comprised of
professionals and business owners, most of whom were able to bring financial assets with
them. The third group was poorly educated and uniformly poor. The immigrants in the
second wave were intermediate. The immigrants in the first group accessed start-up
capital and opened a variety of businesses, many of which served the local Cuban
community, and the latter arriving groups provided abundant labor.22
Entrepreneurship is found in both ghettos and enclaves, but the existence of more
assets and stronger ethnic bonding in enclaves results in entrepreneurship taking a dif-
ferent form. At the lowest level of entrepreneurship, according to Portes and Martinez,
independent workers are part of the informal economy and primarily work outside of the
enclave. They are street vendors selling contraband, men seeking casual day work as
laborers and women who were willing to work as maids to clean the homes of middle-
class families. Their work is usually “off the books” so they lack any legal safeguards, and
they are primarily interacting with people from outside of their ethnic community
making it easier for them to be cheated and exploited. The informal and temporary
nature of their employment has been termed “precarious labor” and it also entails shifting
of the risks from employer to employee.23 If they are injured on the job, for example,
they bear the costs of medical treatment.
Immigrant entrepreneurship carried out within an enclave, by contrast, relies upon
more cohesive ethnic networks. Here co-ethnics provide start-up capital based upon
trust to entrepreneurs who could not get credit from mainstream banks. To illustrate,
Portes and Martinez point to the economic growth of the Cuban enclave in Miami
which was based largely upon ethnic solidarity between lenders and recipients, and the
successful start-up of Chinese garment firms in Northern Italy which was similarly de-
pendent upon ethnic solidarity.

Leave or Stay?
There is a long history of research into whether immigrants are economically better off
in the long run if they remain in the enclave or seek their fortunes outside of it. A
number of early studies concluded that enclaves often acted as “traps” in which co-
ethnics provided initial employment to new immigrants, but it was in jobs that offered
very limited mobility opportunities. Immigrants would, presumably, be better off if they
left the enclave.
A unique program enacted during the early 20th century provided a group of geo-
graphers with an opportunity to assess the costs or benefits of remaining in an enclave. A
relocation program, in 1910, provided funds to 39,000 poor Jewish households in New
York City enclaves. The funds were used to relocate them to several highly integrated
neighborhoods around the country. Historical documents enabled the researchers to
mimic an experimental design because they provided data on the occupation and income
of those who moved and their original neighbors who did not move. The investigators
matched the two groups in 1910 and then compared their incomes in 1920. Those who
154 Migrant Settlements
left the enclave in 1910 had more income than those who remained, even if they later
returned, and the income differences were still greater among those who left and did not
return. Further, 30 years later (i.e. in 1940) the sons of the program participants who
were relocated were found to earn more than the sons from comparable households that
did not relocate. Finally, those that relocated in 1910 were less likely to marry Jewish
spouses. The investigators concluded that leaving an ethnic enclave facilitated economic
advancement and assimilation into the broader society.24
A recent trend, in several nations, has involved migrants initially moving to new,
historically atypical, locations. In these new destinations, as introduced in Chapter 6,
they are geographically separated from their larger co-ethnic communities, and tend to
be in places that historically received few migrants; for example, rural areas. However, in
some cases economic ties have been forged between workers living in the enclave and
businesses established in the new destinations. These situations provide another lens with
which to compare the monetary differences between working in and out of an enclave.
An international team of social scientists described how the linkages between rural
businesses and co-ethnic workers from an urban enclave can be maintained. They focused
specifically upon Chinatown in New York City, which like its counterparts in other major
cities, has been a traditional settlement location for Chinese immigrants. It has also been the
primary locus of employment for new migrants, at least initially. In recent years, a number
of Chinese entrepreneurs have moved to areas far outside of the city and opened restau-
rants. Their clientele is mostly non-Chinese and they hire some local employees, but for
most of their help they rely upon co-ethnics who commute from Chinatown. Dozens of
specialized employment agencies and bus companies have been established in Chinatown
to connect immigrant workers living in the enclave with jobs in the Chinese restaurants
located outside of the city. The workers who leave Chinatown to commute to these
restaurant jobs appear to do better economically than those who continue to live and work
in Chinatown’s restaurants. Chefs, for example, are paid over 10% more in the distant
locations than their city counterparts.25
While most of the research indicates that migrants benefit from seeking employment
outside of the enclave, there is some recent research focusing upon immigrant en-
trepreneurship which suggests that remaining in the enclave can be economically beneficial.
The difference in conclusions is at least in part probably due to the fact that economic
activities in enclaves have more recently tended to involve transnational business linkages
between firms in original and destination nations. Examples include import-export en-
terprises, specialized travel agencies, and so on. These linkages have benefitted co-ethnics
who remained in the enclave. However, as that type of activity increases, enclaves are
transformed into ethnoburbs, which are discussed at length in the following section.

Tourism
There is sometimes an additional source of income coming into enclaves in the form of
tourism expenditures. Unlike ghettos, enclaves often become tourist attractions, creating
employment opportunities for residents and support for local establishments. Enclaves
are frequently interesting to outsiders because the people and places they contain look
different than mainstream communities. The residents often look and dress differently
and the commercial centers tend to be comprised of small, non-chain, family-owned
stores, and restaurants. This sets them apart from typical communities dominated by the
same big-box retailers (e.g., Walmart) and the same fast food restaurant chains.
 Migrant Settlements 155
Building upon their uniqueness, many cities actively market enclaves as exotic and
authentic components of a tourist’s experiences. Examples of such promotions include
the Arab Quarter in Paris, the Caribbean enclave in Brixton (London) and Chinatown in
New York. Tourist expenditures help to support enclave restaurants, bakeries, souvenir
shops, and so on. However, there is a downside to a community being promoted as a
tourist attraction. Decisions concerning where to invest in the community may be likely
to be selected according to their probability of generating a tourism-related return rather
than according to their potential contribution to the lives of residents. Elementary
schools that are currently in use, for example, are not typically included in the agendas of
tourists while historical theaters usually are included. As a result, theaters may be more
likely to attract investment than schools, though most residents would probably not share
those priorities.26
Associated with tourism there is also a breaking down of a community’s separation
from the rest of a metropolitan area. To promote tourism, a city may improve access
roads connecting the enclave to the rest of the city or add mass transit stops convenient
to an enclave. Its attractions can then lead tourists and other city residents to become
frequent visitors. This lack of separation between an enclave and the rest of the city in
which it is located stands in marked contrast to the social and physical isolation of
ghettos, which is one of their most distinguishing features.

Summary
In sum, while ghettos and enclaves are both dominated by a single ethnic or racial group,
we have identified a number of ways in which enclaves can be differentiated from
ghettos. The major distinctions include the following:

1 Although both are segregated communities, the segregation of an enclave is based

more upon its attractiveness to a particular group of people while the segregation of
a ghetto is more involuntary. (Note in this respect, the Jewish ghetto described by
Wirth would be closer to what we now describe as an enclave.)
2 The income of residents in an enclave tends to be highly variable compared to the
more homogeneously poor residents of a ghetto.
3 Enclaves often become tourist attractions while ghettos rarely do, and when enclaves
become tourist attractions they usually become better connected to the city of
which they are apart while ghettos tend to be socially and physically isolated.

It is also important to recognize that the above-noted differences are sometimes matters
of degree rather than categorical; for example, some enclaves can be almost as isolated as
a typical ghetto. Further, the distinction between these two types of communities is not
necessarily fixed permanently. In some case a community can move from being more
enclave-like to being more ghetto-like, and vice versa.27

Becoming Cross-National
By the end of the 20th century, a number of immigrants in ethnic enclaves in destination
nations established business relations with co-ethnics in their origin nation. One factor
responsible for the increase in these small companies was the widespread tendency for
immigrants to be entrepreneurial. In Britain and Ireland, for example, studies have found
156 Migrant Settlements
immigrants to be substantially more likely to start businesses than native-born people.
Second are the assets that accrue to immigrants that can be essential for the survival of
cross-national start-ups, but do not require capital which many immigrants lack.
Specifically, sharing an ethnic identity generates trust and reduces uncertainty in cross-
nation negotiations while also improving access to local markets. These assets based upon
shared ethnicity may also help to keep large corporations from competing in these
markets.28
One of the most significant differences between an enclave and an ethnoburb – our
next topic – is the extent of cross-national business activities begun in the enclave that
serves the local ethnic market by linking it to ethnically-oriented goods and services from
the origin nation. When this type of business activity reaches a certain level, a com-
munity is designated to be an ethnoburb rather than an enclave, as far as this criterion is
concerned.

Ethnoburbs
Ethnoburbs are a more recently developed classification for communities, initially in-
debted largely to a series of articles and books by Wei Li.29 The major model of an
ethnoburb in her research was the concentration of ethnic Chinese in suburban Los
Angeles, the San Gabriel Valley, and the city of Monterey Park, in particular. From Li’s
research, Monterey Park became the prototype of how an ethnoburb can form, and later
in this chapter we will briefly describe its historical development. However, it is im-
portant to note that while a great deal of ethnoburb research has focused upon Chinese
immigrants (especially from Hong Kong and Taiwan) – because they have been the
group most likely to form this type of settlement – other Asian groups as well as some
non-Asian groups are also living in communities that largely fit the ethnoburb model.
These studies have also been conducted in U.S. states other than California, and in the
suburbs of cities in Canada, New Zealand, and elsewhere.30
One major limitation to where ethnoburbs can form lies in the nature of a city’s
peripheral areas. To be suburban in this context implies that the peripheral location
consists of newer, higher status and low-density construction, and it is in such suburbs
that ethnoburbs are situated. However, defined in that way, the areas outside of Beijing,
for example, would not qualify as suburban. It would also not fit many of the banlieues
outside of Paris, as previously described. Where such suburbs do not exist neither, by
definition, could ethnoburbs, although a neighborhood could resemble an ethnoburb in
other respects.
In order to further differentiate between ethnic enclaves and ethnoburbs, Christina
Tan employed diverse methods in a study of neighborhoods in suburban Los Angeles,
partially overlapping the area studied by Li. It contained communities that Tan (and
many residents) considered to be either enclaves or ethnoburbs. She obtained demo-
graphic data on their ethnic composition, population density and socioeconomic status.
She also interviewed a sample of people from the neighborhoods, asking them to de-
scribe and evaluate the different neighborhoods in the study area. Two of the variables
that best distinguished between ethnoburbs and enclaves were population density (it was
lower among ethnoburbs) and socioeconomic status (which was higher in ethnoburbs).
These are the differences that would be expected.
Because of its convenience, a number of respondents said they would remain in their
enclave or would move back to it if they had left after they retired. Living in the suburbs,
 Migrant Settlements 157
the alternative, they said would routinely require a lot of driving; but in the enclave
food, clothing, all basic services are “just a bus away.” Other informants, however,
looked down on the relative poverty of the enclave, stating “It’s not a great place for
kids.” And others explained that if you wanted your mother and other family members
to be able to live with you, then you needed a sizeable house and you could not get that
in the smaller, inner-city housing of an enclave.31
The features that Li and others have emphasized in distinguishing an ethnoburb from
other types of communities, in addition to their suburban location, include a significant
concentration of one ethnic group, often Chinese, and the simultaneous presence of sub-
stantial numbers of other ethnic groups. In Monterey Park, there were three major groups.
There were the Anglos who moved there first, when the town had been a more typical
homogeneously white suburban community. Many of them reacted with anger to the influx
of Chinese residents and their conspicuous restaurants and businesses. A third group in the
community was Hispanic, from Mexico and other Central American nations. They too
initially resented the Chinese “invasion,” though they later formed a coalition with the
Chinese in opposition to the Anglos. The ethnic diversity that typically characterizes an
ethnoburb is illustrated in some of Melbourne’s suburbs, described in Box 7.3.

Box 7.3 Diversity in Melbourne’s Suburbs

In the northern suburbs of Melbourne, since the last decades of the 20th century,
there has been a substantial in-migration of affluent and well-educated immigrants.
Many of the migrants came from Hong Kong and other Asian nations, but their
origin nations were highly diverse. The influx of ethnic Chinese has led to the
growth of Melbourne’s traditional Chinatown, located in the central city, and it
has also directly increased the population of several suburban communities that are
now comprised of high-status migrants from China and a number of other nations.
Observers have described them as, “super-diverse ethnoburbs.” 32
Because Chinese restaurants, groceries, boutiques, etc. are conspicuous in the
suburban shopping areas, the neighborhoods seem to many non-Chinese residents to
be predominantly Chinese, and they disapprove. They fear that the Chinese
population may completely dominate their neighborhood, both economically and
politically. Many of the long-term residents of these neighborhoods express nostalgia
for the old days when the local stores were Australian and not Chinese-owned. In
fact, ethnic Chinese usually comprise less than one-quarter of any neighborhood’s
population. Especially to non-Asians, however, there is a tendency to view
immigrants from Japan, Korea, and other Asian nations as Chinese which has the
effect of attributing an exaggerated Chinese presence to these places.
Despite inflated perceptions of Chinese domination, the highly diverse residents
of these suburban neighborhoods tend to be multi-cultural in their outlooks and
tastes. For example, many non-Chinese prefer to eat traditional Chinese foods, in
traditional Chinese restaurants; and much of the help in these establishments is not
Chinese. Unlike the economic organization of enclaves, ethnic solidarity is less
important to the success of these suburban Melbourne businesses. 33
158 Migrant Settlements
Los Angeles and Monterey Park
The Chinese population in the Los Angeles area was originally concentrated in an inner-
city area known as Chinatown. Settlement in the community began in the late 19th
century and its population grew into the early 20th century. While the original
Chinatown had some enclave-like features (for example, it offered a variety of specia-
lized goods and services specifically for co-ethnics), it largely resembled a ghetto because
people moved to the community mostly in reaction to the anti-Chinese hostility ex-
pressed by the surrounding white population and the community was comprised almost
entirely of relatively poor residents. The primary tie between the residents of Chinatown
and their homelands involved correspondence with family and a small amount of family-
related travel. There were very few business connections.
When a large part of the Chinese population in Los Angeles lived in Chinatown, the
area that later became the City of Monterey Park (it was incorporated in 1916) was still a
sparsely settled agricultural area. It grew slowly, initially viewed by its developers as a
potentially high-end community, partially because its hilly landscape resembled Beverly
Hills, a wealthy suburb with high-end shopping located just east of the city of Los
Angeles. By the end of World War II, however, it had become a typical, middle-class
suburban town, almost all white, with fewer than ten Chinese residents.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the movement of Chinese from various parts of Los
Angeles to Monterey Park increased, and there was a very large influx of international
migrants, especially from Taiwan to the Los Angeles area, including Monterey Park. This
led to one of the city’s nicknames “Little Taipei.” (Taipei is the capital of Taiwan.) During
the 1970s, as relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China
(PRC) were normalized, many wealthy families in Taiwan feared that their country would
be reclaimed by the PRC. This fear prompted a capital and migrant outflow from Taiwan
to the United States, with the Los Angeles area the favored destination of both capital and
immigrants. They were joined by an exodus from the PRC, and their combined presence
had a dramatic effect upon Monterey Park as well as the greater Los Angeles area: airlines
added numerous nonstop flights from Los Angeles to Taipei and Beijing; the PRC opened
a consulate general office in Los Angeles to promote trade and cultural exchanges; the
number of Chinese-owned banks proliferated; and greater Los Angeles became the U.S.
metropolitan area with the largest concentration of Chinese-owned firms. Two of the hilly
sections of Monterey Park became favored locations for all of the ethnically Chinese
migrants, both from other parts of Los Angeles and abroad. This led to the city’s other
nickname, “the Chinese Beverly Hills,” and that was one of the ways it became widely
known, both in the Los Angeles area and abroad.34

Cross-National Enterprise
Many of the international migrants, from Taiwan and from Hong Kong, were en-
trepreneurs who wanted to open businesses in Monterey Park, and they came with the
resources to purchase homes and start local businesses. Using the capital they brought
from China or could get from Chinese-owned banks in the Los Angeles area, new
arrivals from Taiwan and Hong Kong established import-export business that tied their
local community to the places the immigrants had left. They also built malls and con-
dominiums, developed commercial strips and opened travel agencies specializing in
connecting parts of China with Los Angeles and Monterey Park.
 Migrant Settlements 159
Historically, immigrants tended to settle in the center of cities, then with assimilation
and economic attainment, many experienced social and geographical mobility, moving
to suburban areas. Those who left Los Angeles’ Chinatown for Monterey Park fit this
model. In most ethnoburbs, this historical type of migration has been combined with a
second pattern that features transnational movement directly to the suburban area. The
Taiwanese migrants to Monterey Park followed this form, and they were the ones
primarily responsible for establishing economic ties to their homeland.
These changes in the destination locations of emigres have been widespread, and are
one of the main reasons for the increase in ethnoburbs. To illustrate further, in Chicago,
Polish enclaves formed in the city since the turn of the 20th century. They were among
the ethnic neighborhoods described by researchers in the Chicago School. These
communities were predominantly comprised of Poles, and these immigrants typically
lacked much formal education and worked at low-paying, unskilled jobs. Many worked
in the meat processing plants that were tied to Chicago’s stockyards. Over time, many of
them and their offspring moved up and out. More recently, however, thousands of
people have left Poland and emigrated directly to suburban areas north of Chicago.
Many of them are entrepreneurs and professionals, with economic ties to Poland. And
like other ethnoburbs, the communities into which they are now moving contain a mix
of other racial and ethnic groups, in addition to the Polish concentration.35
The direct movement of migrants to the fringes of metropolitan areas has also involved
small numbers of people not connected to a migrant stream. These small clusters of mi-
grants have become parts of diverse suburban communities that at first glance could appear
to be ethnoburbs. However, they are lacking two of the major features that define eth-
noburbs. Specifically, no one ethnic group predominates in the local mix nor are there
local businesses, operated by members of an ethnic group that have transnational ties to co-
ethnic enterprises in the homeland. Illustrative of these suburban towns is Almere.
Located 30 km east of Amsterdam, Almere is a satellite suburb that in recent years has
attracted migrants from Portugal, the U.S., Germany, and other nations. It has been
selected by a growing number of young immigrants because of its relatively affordable
housing (especially when compared to Amsterdam). It is a community in which a lot of
residents value its diversity and display a cosmopolitan outlook which Tzaninis argues has
been viewed, erroneously, by urban theorists as confined to city dwellers. However,
despite its suburban location and ethnically heterogeneous population, Almere lacks a
dominant ethnic group and transnational enterprises that are necessary for a community’s
designation as an ethnoburb.36

Comparing Settlement Types

There are a number of apparent similarities between ethnoburbs and enclaves, especially
in comparison to ghettos. Living in either an enclave or ethnoburb tends to be based
upon attraction more than external constraints while living in ghettos usually involves a
lack of choice. The income of residents in both enclaves and ethnoburbs also exceeds
that of ghetto residents, but the average income in ethnoburbs tends to be higher than in
enclaves. In addition, both enclaves and ethnoburbs are typically more connected to the
urban area of which they are a part in contrast to ghettos which tend to be more isolated.
While enclaves and ethnoburbs share some similarities in relation to ghettos, there are
some clear differences between them. Enclaves can be located anywhere, in a city or its
periphery, but ethnoburbs are confined to suburban areas and they are less likely than
160 Migrant Settlements
enclaves to become tourist attractions. Ethnoburbs also tend to be less segregated, less
homogeneous communities. Finally, there is an important distinction that entails the
amount of transnational economic activity that is conducted. It is much higher in an
ethnoburb than in an enclave.
The strong ties that business people in an ethnoburb establish with counterparts in
their nation of origin can expand their notion of “home,” to encompass both here –
their current place and there – their former place. This bilocal conception of home can
lead to estrangement, however, according to Waldinger. Other people in their current
place of residence may find their attachment to their former nation to be disconcerting,
especially if relations between the two nations are strained by international events. At the
same time, having emigrated certainly sets them apart from their former cohorts who
remained. These people with bilocal conceptions of home may, as a result, be in a
marginal position in which they do not fully fit in anywhere, except with each other.37

Notes
1 Patricia Cohen, “Europe Braces For High Costs of Refugee Aid.” The New York Times, March 16,
2022, p A1.
2 UNCHR, Global Report 2020. 15 June, 2021.
3 Hannah Beech, “Tradition becomes tourism.” The New York Times, December 15, 2020, p A7.
4 Annie Chapman, “A doctor’s story.” The Guardian, February 9, 2020.
5 For further discussion of the overlap between refugee camps and ghettos, see Andrew M. Jefferson,
Simon Turner and Steffen Jensen, “Introduction,” in Simon Turner and Steffen Jensen (Eds),
Reflections on Life in Ghettos, Camps and Prisons. Routledge, 2020.
6 Louis Wirth, The Ghetto. University of Chicago, 1928.
7 Robert E. Park, “The City.” In Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess (Eds), The City. University
of Chicago, 1984. (Initially published in 1925.)
8 Mitchell Durneier, The Ghetto. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2016. For further discussion of the long-
term history of the term, see also, Daniel B. Schwartz, Ghetto. Harvard University, 2019.
9 Durneier, op cit.
10 Especially relevant are two books by William J. Wilson: The Truly Disadvantaged, University of
Chicago, 1990 and When Work Disappears, Vintage, 1997. See also, Harold Wolman, et al., Coping
With Adversity. Cornell University, 2017.
11 Loic Wacquant, Punishing the Poor. Duke University, 2009.
12 Eric Tang, Unsettled. Temple University, 2015.
13 See for example, Ernesto Castaneda, “Places of Stigma.” (Chapter 7) In Ray Hutchinson and Bruce
D. Haynes (Eds), The Ghetto. Westview, 2012.
14 H. Julia Eksner, “Revisiting the ‘Ghetto’.” Social Anthropology, 21, 2013.
15 Cecilia Eseverri Mayer, “A Spanish ghetto?” Migraciones Internacionales, 9, 2017, p 2.
16 Ellen Barry and Martin S. Sorensen, “In Denmark, Harsh New Laws for Immigrant ‘Ghettos.’” The
New York Times, July 1, 2018; and Fergus O’Sullivan, “How Denmark’s ‘ghetto list’ is ripping
apparent migrant communities.” The Guardian, March 11, 2020.
17 Roger Andersson, Sako Musterd and George Galster, “Port-of-entry neighborhood and its effects
on the economic success of refugees in Sweden.” International Migration Review, 53, 2019.
18 Henrik Andersson, et.al., “Effect of settlement into ethnic enclaves on immigrant voter turnout.”
The Journal of Politics, 84, 2022.
19 For an early and influential statement of this difference, see Peter Marcuse, “The Enclave, The Citadel
and The Ghetto.” Urban Affairs Review, 33, 1997. For a more recent application of the perspective, see
Raphael Susewind, “Muslims in Indian Cities.” Environment and Planning A, 49, 2017.
20 These figures are from, Xuanxiao Wang, Suburban Chinatowns in Canada. School of Urban
Planning, McGill University, 2019.
21 Lucia Lo, “The Role of Ethnicity in the Geography of Consumption.” Urban Geography, 30, 2009.
Description of the Foody Market is from, Sadiya Arsari, “Everybody fits in.” The Guardian,
September 4, 2018.
 Migrant Settlements 161
22 For further discussion, see Silvia Pedraza-Bailey, “Cuba’s Exiles.” International Migration Review, 19,
1985; and Alejandro Portes and Aaron Puhrmann, “A bifurcated enclave.” Cuban Studies, 43, 2015.
23 Alejandro Portes and Brandon P. Martinez, “They are not all the same.” Journal of Ethnic and
Migration Studies, 46, 2020. They describe a hierarchy of entrepreneurship and relate it to differences
in the strength of co-ethnic bonds. They do not utilize a ghetto-enclave distinction, but such a
distinction is very congruent with their theory. The term precarious labor is associated with Arne
Kalleberg, Precarious Lives, Polity, 2018.
24 Ron Abramitzky, Leah Boustan and Dylan Connor, Leaving the Enclave. Working Paper 20-031,
Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, July, 2020.
25 Zai Liang, et.al., “From Chinatown to every town.” Social Forces, 97, 2018.
26 For further discussion of ethnic tourism, see Jarkko Saarinen and Sandra Wall-Reinius, “Enclaves in
tourism.” Tourism Geographies, 21, 2019.
27 These changes are discussed in, Mark Abrahamson, Globalizing Cities. Routledge, 2020.
28 Large corporations may also be deterred by the low-profit margins that are often associated with
these markets. For further discussion, see Osa-Godwin Osaghae and Thomas M. Cooney,
“Exploring the relationship between immigrant enclave theory and transnational diaspora en-
trepreneurial opportunity formation.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46, 2020.
29 Wei Li, Ethnoburb. University of Hawaii, 2009.
30 See, for example, Daniel Fittante, “The Armenians of Glendale.” City & Society, 30, 2018; and
Noriko Matsumoto, Beyond the City and the Bridge. Rutgers University, 2018.
31 LingLing Gao-Miles, “Beyond the ethnic enclave.” City & Society, 29, 2017.
32 Shilpi Tewari and David Beynon, “The rise of the super-diverse ‘ethnoburbs.’” The Conversation,
February 5, 2018.
33 Gao-Miles, op.cit.
34 Li, op.cit.
35 Jason Schneider, “From urban enclave to ethnoburb.” Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, 15, 2014.
36 See Yannis Tzaninis, “Cosmopolitanism beyond the city.” Urban Geography, 41, 2020.
37 See the discussion in, Roger Waldinger, The Cross-Border Connection. Harvard University, 2015.
8 Immigrants’ Contributions and
Natives’ Perceptions

During the past decade there has been a marked increase, in many nations, in the number
of prominent politicians whose policy positions have prominently featured a negative
stance toward immigrants and immigration, in general. They have advocated strict
limitations and fanned fears of cultural degeneration, rampant crime and economic ca-
lamity if the “hordes” of immigrants are permitted to continue to “invade.” The appeals
to their potential supporters have combined hostility to foreigners – xenophobia – with a
devotion and loyalty solely to their nation – nationalism – and a tendency to attribute
negative qualities to members of other racial-ethnic groups – racism. Much of the mass
media has often explicitly or implicitly supported xenophobia, nationalism and racism by
presenting negative accounts of immigrants’ behavior that would justify closing national
borders.1
It would be a mistake, however, to infer that xenophobia, nationalism or racism first
appeared in the 21st century. Fifty years ago there were popular nationalistic movements
with racist undertones in Scotland, Ireland, Catalonia (in Spain), Quebec (in Canada),
etc. In the U.S., as early as in 1750, Benjamin Franklin publicly expressed concern that
foreigners were “overwhelming” American society, and in the 19th century an American
political party (the Know Nothings) promoted ethnic hatred as their centerpiece and
wanted to deport all of the “foreign beggars.”2
In contemporary Britain, sociologist Sivamohan Valluvan has described how populist
nationalism, and its attendant outlooks, has been increasing, strongly resembling de-
velopments in Russia, the U.S. and elsewhere. The driving force behind this na-
tionalism, he asserted, is race, white nationalism, in particular. It is the centerpiece that
marginalizes all non-white groups. On the political left is an identification with the
white working class that was impoverished by de-industrialization. On the political
right is a nostalgic look back to when Britain was a white nation, largely without
foreigners. The common strand in both political positions is race.3 While Valluvan
focused upon Britain, his conclusions could largely apply also to the contemporary
U.S. and other nations as well.4

Misperceptions About Immigrants

The treatment of immigrants in their everyday lives, by native neighbors, police and
other government officials, clerks in stores, and so on depends largely upon how the
immigrants are viewed, that is, the personal and social characteristics that are attributed
to them as a group. These views also shape government policies concerning the granting of
visas, integration programs, deportation policies, etc. The accuracy of people’s attributions
DOI: 10.4324/9781003158400-8
 Immigrants Contributions 163
is therefore important, but a number of studies have raised questions about their veracity.
We will review a wide range of these studies in the following pages.

Fear of Crime
One of the threats most commonly associated with xenophobia is a fear of crime. When
immigrants are accused of committing crimes their status as immigrants, especially if they
are undocumented, is typically highlighted in the media. This can help lead the public to
believe that immigration is associated with increased crime, and justify their fear of
opening their nation’s borders to foreigners.
In Chile, for example, the foreign-born population (largely from Venezuela) roughly
doubled between 2010 and 2020. A group of social scientists examined crime-related
news in Chile’s television and newspapers, and found that there was a highly dis-
proportionate amount of coverage of immigrant-perpetrated homicides in relation
to their actual involvement in murders. The investigators also found that the media
coverage led to heightened security concerns, especially in municipalities with strong
media presence. The frightened population increased their expenditures on home
security systems, and the years in which Chile had the largest immigration increases
were the years in which such expenditures most increased. However, when the in-
vestigators examined annual rates of immigration and annual crime rates (as indicated
by victimization surveys), they found no relationship at all. They concluded that any
correlation between immigration and crime in Chile was illusory, but that increased
migration clearly did trigger public apprehension.5
A number of studies on immigration and crime have been conducted in European
nations, including the UK, Switzerland and Germany. There have been some exceptions,
but for the most part these studies have reported no increases in violent crime, that is,
crimes against persons such as assault and murder; but they have sometimes reported small
increases in property crimes (e.g. burglary) – which have been attributed to immigrants’
slow economic integration.6 There has been some uncertainty about how to interpret this
apparent increase in some nations because almost all of the studies have relied exclusively
upon “official” crime records. These data compile figures on the number of people who
were arrested and then successfully prosecuted. The uncertainty arises because the people
whose actions create these data – the police decisions to arrest, the judges’ guilty verdicts,
etc. – may be influenced by stereotyping and prejudice.7
Continuing the focus upon property offenses, Andresen and Ha present Canadian data
that show the complexity of the immigration-crime relationship. Focusing upon census tracts
in Vancouver, they obtained data on immigrant populations (mostly ethnic Chinese) and
police-recorded data, that is property crimes reported to the police. In all, they had figures
on one-half dozen types of property crimes: residential burglary, theft of a vehicle, etc. For
each census tract they also had descriptive information on residents’ incomes, types of
housing, etc. They found some tendency for immigration and property crimes to be po-
sitively related in Vancouver’s census tracts. However, the positive relationship was confined
to certain types of property crimes and the relationship between immigration and all types of
property crimes varied in relation to differences in census tracts’ housing and socioeconomic
characteristics.8 So, while there was an overall tendency for immigration to be associated
with increased property crime, the relationship was conditional and complex.
In the U.S., a number of studies have examined the possible link between immigration
(sometimes including undocumented immigration) and crime. None of the studies have
164 Immigrants Contributions
reported a very strong relationship, either positive or negative, between them; but the
results have not been completely consistent, and methodological differences among
the studies have made their findings difficult to compare. To be specific, there has
been variation among studies in whether investigators take into account: features of
the communities in which immigrants live (its SES, overall crime rate, etc.); the
composition of the immigrant group studied (its age and sex distributions, etc.); the
migration motives of immigrants in the study (economic, family reunification, etc.).9
This listing includes just a few of the considerations that could substantially alter the
results of any research project.
After noting a number of methodological differences among studies and reviewing the
literature, Ousey and Kubrin have offered the tentative conclusion that the relationship
between immigration and crime in the U.S. is very weak, and tends to be negative,
meaning that geographical units with larger immigrant populations actually tend to have
slightly lower overall crime rates.10 One of the relatively few studies to include detailed
information on the status of immigrants has also reported findings congruent with this
tentative conclusion. Michael Light and associates had complete data on the immigrant
status of everyone arrested in the state of Texas between 2012 and 2018. They found that
undocumented immigrants had lower arrest records for all types of crime than either
documented immigrants or native-born U.S. citizens. And most of the differences were
large. For example, compared to undocumented immigrants, the native-born citizens were
twice as likely to be arrested for violent crimes.11 Given that undocumented immigrants
would not only face criminal charges in the U.S., but face deportation as well, it is perhaps
not surprising that they would be less inclined to commit crimes. The consequences of a
conviction for an “aggravated felony” are described in Box 8.1.

Box 8.1 Consequences of Criminal Convictions for Noncitizens

An aggrevated felony is a legal category containing a number of individual

offenses, many of which would be considered relatively minor especially in
relation to the implications of the category’s title. It was initially defined by the
U.S. Congress in 1988 to include the serious offenses of murder and trafficking of
drugs or weapons. Over the years, however, additional crimes were added to the
list and it expanded to encompass over 30 offenses, including failure to appear in
court, filing a false tax return, and other relatively minor crimes. If noncitizens are
convicted of any crimes in the aggravated felony category they are subject to
immediate deportation, and they are without any legal protections; for example,
they can be deported without a removal hearing in immigration court. 12
If noncitizens convicted of an aggravated felony are imprisoned rather than
deported, federal authorities are required to detain them after their release from
prison. After their release they are ineligible to apply for asylum or other forms of
relief that could delay or prevent their deportation, even if they are being returned
to a nation in which their safety is imperiled. Finally, after they are deported they
are permanently inadmissible to the U.S. If they nevertheless are able to reenter
illegally, and are apprehended at any time, they are subject to being imprisoned for
up to 20 years.
 Immigrants Contributions 165
In sum, the findings concerning the relationship between immigration and crime are
complex and inconsistent. It seems reasonable tentatively to conclude that no increase in
violent crime has been associated with increased immigration. Some increases in
property crime have sometimes been associated with increased immigration, likely due
to immigrants of low socioeconomic standing; but decreases in property crime have also
been reported, and sometimes there is no relationship at all.13

Crime in Sanctuary Cities

A small number of cities (and sometimes larger geo-political entities) have instituted
what is termed, “sanctuary policies.” Precisely what such a designation includes is
variable, but it typically entails two sets of actions. First, it involves enacting helpful local
policies such as issuing driver’s licenses to immigrants, documented or not, training court
personnel on the immigration consequences of convictions, etc. Second, it involves
policies or resolutions concerning the locale’s limited cooperation with federal autho-
rities charged with enforcing immigration laws. This often includes restrictions on the
ability of local police to enforce federal immigration laws, limiting the access of federal
officials to immigrants in detention in local jails, etc. This second set of policies, focusing
upon the relationship between local and federal officials is often regarded as the centerpiece
of sanctuary policies.14
There are estimates of the number of cities and larger geo-political entities that have
instituted sanctuary policies. A 2020 survey of the largest 95 cities in Europe reported
that there were 28 sanctuary cities in this grouping.15 In the U.S., a 2018 survey esti-
mated that there were nearly 200 sanctuary cities, counties or states, but unlike the
European estimate, this figure was not derived solely from a sample of large entities so
some of the U.S. sanctuary cities were very small.16 The places included in these surveys
also differed substantially from each other in the number of sanctuary policies that they
implemented; varying from as little as one, to more than one dozen.
Sanctuary policies are strongly associated with cosmopolitan outlooks which re-
gard all people, including documented and undocumented immigrants, as citizens of
the world and thereby entitled to fundamental rights regardless of where they happen
to be living. However, critics contend that by imposing restraints on the police, cities
or other geo-political entities with sanctuary policies in place will experience higher
rates of crime.
A number of studies have reported no association between rates of crime (both property
and violent) and sanctuary policies. To reach this conclusion, research has generally
compared overall crime rates in cities or counties that have some sanctuary policies in place
to areas without such policies.17 Their conclusions are somewhat weakened, however, by a
lack of controls in their research designs. The cities or counties being compared may differ
from each other in a number of other ways that may affect crime rates, but these potentially
confounding variables have not usually been adequately controlled.
By contrast, an especially thorough analysis of the relationship between crime in
sanctuary versus non-sanctuary locales was reported by Gonzales, Collingwood and El-
Khatib. They obtained data for all types of crime in 55 U.S. cities that passed sanctuary
policies and compared the cities’ crime rates the year before such policies were im-
plemented with the rates the year following. If sanctuary policies led to increased crime,
then the rate would be higher the year after. The investigators found that in some cities
the rates went up a little, in some they went down a little, and in a number they stayed
166 Immigrants Contributions
the same. There was no overall pattern which led to the conclusion that a sanctuary
policy does not lead to more crime.18
As a second test, the investigators carefully matched the 55 sanctuary cities with a sample
of non-sanctuary cities that were the same with respect to: population size, racial distribution,
income, education, etc. This was designed to prevent variables that could be related both to a
city’s crime rates and its likelihood of implementing sanctuary policies from affecting the
study’s results. When they compared crime rates in the matched cities, the investigators
found no differences between the two pairs. They concluded, again, that sanctuary policies
in cities had no positive or negative impact on cities’ rates of crime.

Welfare Benefits
In public debates in many countries in the global north people express fear that immigrants
will be more likely than natives to be dependent upon welfare benefits. To conservative
critics, in particular, their “freeloading” will jeopardize the benefits of the citizenry who
were originally intended to be the beneficiaries. The central question that researchers have
addressed is whether immigrants rely upon welfare more than natives.
There are a number of potentially confounding variables that are related to how much
immigrants and natives are seen to benefit from welfare, and studies have not typically
been able to take all of these variables into account. The potentially most important of
these confounding variables include: immigrants’ demographic composition (e.g. age and
sex distribution, education and income levels); types of welfare benefits examined in the
research (e.g. old-age, unemployment, dependent children); the generosity of destination
nations’ different types of benefits; the destination nation(s) included in the sample. To
illustrate how these variables can confound an analysis consider the potential effect of a
compositional variable such as educational level. If immigrants have less formal education
than natives they may, as a result, have a higher propensity to apply for certain types of
welfare assistance. A higher level of education would have the opposite effect.
There have been a number of studies addressing the welfare question conducted in
both Europe and the U.S. By a small margin, the studies appear to suggest that im-
migrants tend to rely upon welfare less than natives, but the results have been mixed.19
The primary cause of the variation in findings seems to be discrepancies in how the
studies were conducted. One recent U.S. study attempted to take most of the potentially
confounding variables into account, and in so doing helped to clarify why some of the
differences in past findings occurred. The study covered a lengthy time period – 1995 to
2018 – which enabled the investigators also to note how macroeconomic fluctuations
impacted immigrant and native welfare use.20
The investigators found that there was an elevated utilization by immigrants, com-
pared to natives, of a variety of safety net programs. However, when they statistically
adjusted the characteristics of immigrants to match those of natives, the differences went
in the opposite direction; that is, with the same characteristics, immigrants would have
relied less upon welfare than natives. (The higher proportion of immigrants with high
school degrees or less was particularly relevant here.) They also found that immigrants
were more sensitive than natives to periods of recession, so studies that were conducted
during economic downturns in the U.S. (e.g. 2008–9) would have been more likely to
find higher welfare use among immigrants.
Another study that attempted to take a number of potentially confounding variables
into account was conducted by Igor Jakubiak, a demographer in Warsaw. Included in his
 Immigrants Contributions 167
sample were 17 European nations, each of which was analyzed separately, and data on
immigrants’ origin nations. Jakubiak also had extensive information regarding the
composition of immigrant groups, including educational attainment, marital status, age,
etc. Note that with this data set he was able, in his analyses, to take into account most of
the potentially confounding variables.21
The overall conclusion that best fit all of the data was that immigrants were less likely
than natives to rely upon welfare, and that when they did, they tended to receive lower
benefits. This was the pattern in 13 of the 17 nations included in the sample. However,
there were no differences between immigrants from EU nations and natives in three of
the nations and in one – France – the immigrants received more welfare benefits than
natives, especially when they were from non-EU nations. Most of the differences in
welfare participation rates between immigrants from EU nations and natives were due to
differences in their characteristics (age in particular) so if there had been no composi-
tional differences their reliance on welfare would have been the same in both groups.
There was one limited set of conditions in which immigrant reliance upon welfare did
exceed that of natives in most of the 17 nations. When old-age benefits were excluded
from the analysis – a type of welfare the non-EU immigrants did not often qualify for –
then the non-EU immigrants in most of the nations relied more on welfare than EU
immigrants or natives.
In sum, welfare dependence is seen to vary in relation to a number of highly specific
variables including immigrants’ country of origin, age and other compositional variables,
destination nation and types of welfare benefits. That variability could certainly account
for many of the differences in the results reported by previous studies. Nevertheless,
transcending these variations is the over-riding generalization that differences between
immigrants and natives in welfare reliance are small, but that where there are differences,
immigrants probably tend to be less welfare reliant than natives.

Economic Impact: Low-Skill Workers

Critics of lenient immigration policies contend that an influx of immigrants will lead to
increased competition for jobs, resulting in lower wages and/or fewer jobs for natives.
Because most migration flows are dominated by low-skill workers – farm laborers,
construction workers, domestic help, etc. – the immigration-fueled job and wage losses
would be expected to be most acute among low-skill native workers. On the other hand,
a large percentage of the less skilled migrants take jobs that are widely perceived to be
dangerous, difficult or unpleasant. These are jobs that natives typically shun. If not for the
migrants the fruit would simply not be picked, households would have to get by without
domestic help, and so on; and there would be no loss of native employment or wages
because natives are not interested in these jobs.
One recent and extensive study in the U.S. examined the wages of a large sample of full-
time, private sector workers aged 25 to 65. Covering the time period between 1990 and
2015, investigators Lin and Weiss calculated the proportion of foreign-born persons in each
state who could be classified as either low-skilled (because they had no more than high
school education) or high-skilled (because they had completed at least some college).22
Their analysis found that an increased number of low-skilled immigrants in a state was
associated with a small wage loss for low-skill, low-wage natives. The negative effect, the
investigators surmised, was due either to an over-supply of labor because both natives
and immigrants were seeking the same kind of work, or because that competition with
168 Immigrants Contributions
immigrants squeezed natives into less competitive sectors of the economy where they
suppressed wages in these areas. Similar results, that is, an influx of low-skill migrants
leads to wage reductions for low-skill natives, have also been reported in studies in
Mexico and Canada,23 and in several Asian nations.24
It is also worth noting that in the U.S. study, increased numbers of foreign-born, low-
skill workers were especially likely to increase competition for jobs among immigrants
themselves, and the wages of low-skill immigrants were suppressed by the competition
more than that of low-skill natives. Other studies conducted both in the U.S. and in
several European nations also found that the strongest suppressing effect of low-skill
immigrants was upon the wages of other immigrants like themselves.25
On the other hand, an influx of low-skill immigrants has been shown, in a number of
nations, to have a positive effect on the wages of high-skill natives. The most frequently
offered explanation for this effect stresses the complementary contributions that low-skill
immigrants are able to make, and how they enhance the productivity of high-skill workers.
For example, studies in Italy and the U.S. have found that low-skill immigrants provided
household services, such as childcare and housekeeping. They lowered the cost of these
services, enabling high-skill female workers to increase their workplace hours and pro-
ductivity.26 (Were these gains perhaps at the expense of native household workers?)
In addition, there are a number of studies that suggest a positive effect of low-skill
immigrants on nations’ economies. Especially when a nation’s fertility rates are low and
there is strong demand for labor that natives cannot adequately supply, an influx of low-
skill migrants can lead to diverse benefits as well as overall economic growth (e.g. in-
creased GDP).27 New Zealand’s seasonal worker program, originally introduced in
Chapter 2, provides an interesting illustration of the potential benefits.
During the busy agricultural season, New Zealand admits a number of low-skill
workers from nations in the global south. They are brought in to help meet the demand
for agricultural labor that natives either cannot or will not meet. Some years this seasonal
influx has displaced some native New Zealand workers from farms and orchards that
were growing kiwi, grape and other products. However, there is some evidence that the
added immigrant labor enabled farms to expand, later increasing the total number of jobs
that were available in the agricultural field to both immigrants and natives. The im-
migrants’ labor also led to improved grape harvests which later created more low-skill
jobs in New Zealand’s wine industry.28

Economic Impact: High-Skill Workers

Across many nations of the global north there has been an excess of demand over the
supply of high-skill workers. Governments have responded by modifying their im-
migration policies to encourage more in-migration of qualified people. In Germany, to
illustrate, officials stated in 2021 that they would like to recruit 400,000 skilled im-
migrants every year: from college professors to electricians. In order to facilitate that
inflow, nations have lowered barriers to entry for high-skill workers, reduced im-
migration paperwork and promised permanent status to those who wanted it. Some have
even offered subsidized housing and salary inducements.29
The implicit assumptions behind these recruitment efforts are that high-skill workers
will make large contributions to a nation’s economy and, because there is an acute
shortage of such workers, an influx of high-skill immigrants will not adversely impact
high-skill natives. The data supports their position. For example, the Lin and Weiss study
 Immigrants Contributions 169
in the U.S. found with respect to high-skill immigrants that an influx did not suppress
the wages of high-skill natives. In fact, an increased number of either high or low-skill
immigrants resulted in substantial wage gains for high-skill natives. In addition, while
low-skill immigration led to depressed wages for low-skill natives, high-skill immigra-
tion led to wage gains for the low-skill natives, but their gains were smaller than those
that accrued to high-skill natives. The wage increases that were associated with high-skill
immigration may be due to the foreign capital that some bring with them or to their
entrepreneurial contributions to a nation’s economy, either of which produces income
that could go to wage increases.30
The contributions of immigrant scientists, engineers and other researchers have been
especially well researched. Primarily from studies in the U.S., but to a less extent from
Germany and the U.K. as well, foreign-born PhD holders were found to have high rates
of scientific publications, patenting of new ideas and the invention of breakthrough
technologies. And they were found to be about twice as likely as natives to form new
engineering and technology firms. Their innovations and entrepreneurship obviously
have strong positive effects upon national economies.31
The recruitment of many highly skilled professionals often begins by attracting students
to a nation’s graduate programs. Foreign, or international, students comprise a large per-
centage of all students enrolled in the post-graduate programs of many of the leading
destination nations. And the more advanced the academic program, the higher the typical
percentage of foreign students. Specifically, in six of the eight leading destination nations,
there was a higher percentage of foreign students in Doctoral than in Master’s programs.
From data collected between 2016 and 2018, Table 8.1 shows the percentage of all
Master’s and Doctoral graduate students who came from another country and are enrolled
in academic programs in the nations with the largest numbers of international students.32
Foreign students make a number of contributions to the nations in which they receive
academic training. To begin, especially in scientific fields, in many nations of the global
north there is a shortage of native professors so foreign students increase the demand for
foreign-trained faculty. After completing their degrees, many of these highly skilled
students remain in the country in which they earned their degrees where they are then
well-positioned to contribute to local economies and the nation’s GDP.33

Table 8.1 Foreign Students in Graduate Programs

Nation Total International % Foreign Students in Programs at

Students (Rank)
Master’s Level Doctoral Level

Australia 3 46 34
Canada 7 18 32
France 5∗ 13 40
Germany 5∗ 13 9
Japan 8 7 18
Russia 4 4 5
U.K. 2 36 43
U.S. 1 10 40

Note
∗ These nations are tied in number of foreign students enrolled.
170 Immigrants Contributions
In sum, immigration appears to have mixed consequences for natives in the labor
force. Low-skill immigration suppresses the earnings of low-skill natives while both low
and high-skill natives benefit from high-skill immigration. High-skill immigrants also
make positive contributions to the host nation’s economy.

Community Effects
Beginning in the last decades of the 20th century and continuing to the present, millions
of refugees to the U.S. have been settling in smaller cities, suburban and rural areas. This
represented a marked departure from historical patterns in which most immigrants settled
in major urban centers, often in close proximity to co-ethnics and other immigrants. In
these smaller towns, by contrast, the refugees are typically located in the midst of a native
population from whom they are very different with respect to race, religion, language
and dress. The initial reception of the refugees has been mixed, with some natives fearing
that these different strangers will take their jobs and ruin their neighborhoods.
The small city of Missoula, Montana, for example, in 2016 became a resettlement
destination for refugees from Congo, Iraq and Syria. Right before they arrived, over 100
people rallied outside Missoula’s courthouse to protest. They carried signs with messages
such as, “Refugees or Terrorists?” and “They rape, kill, destroy.” During the summer of
2017 Lauren Fritzsche spent several months interviewing and observing the refugees, native
residents and government officials. She and Lise Nelson later concluded that the Syrians,
who were Muslims, were the primary targets of the native’s distrust. One local native ex-
plained that the distrust was because they believed the Muslims did not understand American
culture. “All they know is what they come from.” Another resident focused upon their fear
of Muslims. “There are things that I hear that frighten me about … this particular group of
people … and I want to preserve my society.”34
(There were also a lot of Missoula residents, who were more cosmopolitan and
multicultural in their outlooks, who went out of their way to welcome the newcomers.)
In most of the small cities in which refugees have been settled, the newcomers have
economically integrated. In Missoula, the refugees almost immediately began to develop
business skills, selling homemade foods, such as injera (flatbread) and Iraqi baklava, at the
local farmer’s market. Over time, many of the small town immigrants have also politically
integrated. In several small cities in mostly rural areas of Arkansas, for example, in 2020 the
first Latino and the first Indian American were elected to their City Councils.35 In order to
provide a wider overview, geographer Pablo Bose interviewed over 250 mayors, resettle-
ment officials and city managers in smaller U.S. cities and towns. He asked them to assess the
effects of the immigrant influx. A sample of their responses is presented in Box 8.2.

Box 8.2 Refugees in Small Cities 36

Of special concern to Bose was how refugees were adjusting to life in small cities
and towns where they were typically marked as racially, religiously and/or
ethnically very different from the native population. How did the refugees adjust
to life in these places, and how did natives come to view them over time? One of
the main themes that the officials he interviewed stressed concerned how the
refugees had been drivers of urban renewal. With respect to housing, one
informant offered an assessment that many others echoed.
 Immigrants Contributions 171
“Our recent refugees have … had a lot of home purchases … And they fix up
these homes, they really fix up the whole street.”

The newcomers typically moved into the worst parts of town, areas that
had been loosing residents and had deteriorated. They helped to reverse the
downward trend:

“When the refugees first start coming, X avenue was pretty run down. But
they moved into it and they really fixed it up.”

Most of these smaller cities had been losing population and businesses, and were
eager to attract newcomers, even if they were refugees. As one put it:

“I don’t care where we get people from … Syria … Africa … Mexico …

We’re losing people … they’re all moving out and I am afariad there’ll be
more empty houses and boarded up businesses … I’ll take who’ll make my
city look lived in again.”

Businesses as well as people had left the areas into which the refugees settled. The
newcomers were also viewed as having given these areas a commercial boost.

“We have quite a few ethnic restaurants grocery stores, and … other
businesses … We have increased the tax base, economically … It’s a big
part of how we make the neighborhood … which was kind of falling apart,
come back to life.”

To Change Misconceptions
The literature reviewed here has shown some consistent discrepancies between the
characteristics popularly attributed to the immigrant population and their characteristics
as described by carefully done research. And these incorrect perceptions have been as-
sociated with antagonism to immigrants. Some investigators have taken their research a
step further and designed studies from which they could infer the conditions under
which people’s perceptions of immigrants could be changed. One specific issue that has
received a lot of study concerns people’s misconceptions about the size of the immigrant
population.

Perceptions of Size
A pattern that has been observed in a number of nations is for an increased foreign inflow to
be associated with increased hostility toward immigrants. This relationship is most pro-
nounced in global north nations when the migrant inflow is from the global south (which
is the dominant pattern). A number of social scientists including sociologist Christian
Czymara have interpreted this relationship as due to various perceived threats, including
the risk of increased crime, concern that there will be an economic cost of supporting
refugees and the threat that foreigners pose to the continuation of traditional culture.
172 Immigrants Contributions
Using data from the European Social Survey, he examined hostility toward refugees across
a large sample of European nations. The long-term differences among nations, which
tended to be stable, did not explain more recent changes in nations’ attitudes nearly as well
as recent changes in the number of in-migrants to a nation. For example, the increased
foreign-born population in Germany and Sweden was significantly associated with con-
temporaneous increases in those nations’ hostility to foreigners, despite their historically
relative openness to in-migrants.37
There is also a widespread tendency for natives to exaggerate the size of the foreign-
born population in their nation, and to correspondingly exaggerate the threat they pose.
This has led a number of social scientists to conduct experiments to see if they could
alleviate those size misconceptions and thereby reduce hostility to immigrants. In the
U.S., political scientist Daniel Hopkins and associates have found that providing subjects
with accurate information about the size of the foreign-born population does lead them
to reduce the magnitude of their size over-estimation; but it leads to only a trivial re-
duction in their unfavorable attitudes. Perhaps, the investigators concluded, people’s
negative attitudes are a cause rather than a consequence of their magnified perception of
the size of the immigrant population.38 In other words, it may be hostility to foreigners
that leads people to over-estimate their size, and not vice versa. Correcting their size
misconceptions would not, under these conditions, be expected to reduce their un-
favorable attitudes.
Leading political figures in the U.S. and elsewhere have encouraged the public to
believe that the size of immigrant groups is larger than it actually is, and therefore,
poses a greater threat. The officials have advocated policies and regulations based
more upon racism and nationalism than upon any empirical evidence. This has led
some social scientists to argue that these immigration policies are “fact-free,” as
described in Box 8.3.

Box 8.3 The U.S.’s Fact-Free Immigration Policy

The Mexican Migration Project (MMP), introduced in Chapter 4, contains

information concerning over 175,000 individuals from a sample of 170 representative
Mexican communities. In addition to providing basic demographic characteristics,
household heads describe migration histories for themselves and their spouses in detail.
One primary purpose of MMP is to provide detailed and unbiased data on Mexico’s
documented and undocumented migration to the U.S. The reliability of its data has
been attested to by a number of professional associations, and it has been used in
hundreds of published migration studies.
MMP data are made available to everyone – and yet the directors of MMP have
noted that U.S. immigration policy toward Mexico remains “disconnected from
reality” and involves a “willful denial of facts and evidence.” 39 They have offered a
number of examples, including the following:

1 In 2018 then President Trump demanded millions of dollars to build a border

wall to keep what he described as dramatically increased numbers of
undocumented Mexicans from entering the country. In fact, however,
MMP data indicated that between 2007 and 2018 more undocumented
 Immigrants Contributions 173
Mexicans left the U.S. than arrived, and border apprehensions at this time
were at their lowest level in nearly 50 years.
2 There was an enormous increase in funding for border patrols, but MMP data
showed that it had no effect upon the number of undocumented Mexican
who tried to cross the border or on the number who were apprehended at the
border. The border patrol enhancements also had no effect upon the
likelihood of undocumented migrants successfully crossing the border.
Paradoxically, because it did make unauthorized border crossings more
difficult, it led to a decline in rates of return migration, opposite to the
policy’s objectives. 40

Changing Attitudes
At least with respect to native’s exaggerated perceptions of the size of the immigrant po-
pulation, the previously discussed Hopkins’ study indicated that when people were presented
with factual information that contradicted their perceptions that most people would adjust
their incorrect perceptions accordingly. However, their antagonism to immigrants was
hardly reduced by such specific factual adjustments. Should we then conclude that negative
attitudes toward immigrants can hardly be changed by presenting people with factual in-
formation to correct their misconceptions?
A team of social scientists wondered whether the public’s attitude toward immigration
might change if people were presented not only with information to correct mis-
conceptions about that population’s size but also given information that accurately de-
scribed other characteristics of the immigrant population. To begin, the investigators
asked a sample of respondents how worried they were about immigration, assuming that
to be very worried indicated a negative attitude toward immigrants. Next the in-
vestigators asked them to estimate various characteristics of the immigrant population,
such as their unemployment and incarceration rates. Most of the study’s subjects had
exaggerated assumptions about these negative attributes.41
One group of subjects was given detailed, correct information about all of these
immigrant characteristics, and the investigators found that these people updated their
beliefs accordingly. Further, the changes in their perceptions had persisted to the last
time that the respondents were re-questioned, one month later. Of special significance,
these changes in perception were associated with the respondents’ more positive views
on immigration. A second set of subjects was given correct information about the size of
immigrant groups, but not their other characteristics. The analysis of this set of re-
spondents indicated, as in Hopkins’ study, that correcting size misconceptions alone did
not have much effect upon respondents attitude toward immigrants. So, it may be that
many of people’s assumptions must be simultaneously challenged for people’s negative
attitudes toward immigrants to change.
International sport has in recent years provided a highly visible realm in which
many immigrants have excelled and that may be one area in which the racism, na-
tionalism and xenophobia that produce hostility to immigrants can be reduced. A
dramatic example is provided by the way the star Egyptian football (soccer) player
on the Liverpool team has helped to break down negative stereotypes. It is discussed
in Box 8.4.
174 Immigrants Contributions

Box 8.4 Egyptian Soccer Player in Liverpool Changes Attitudes

Mo Salah is an Egyptian and a Muslim who is also considered one of the best
football players in the world. He is the star of the Liverpool team. After scoring a
goal, which he often does, he regularly celebrates by dropping to his knees
and touching his forehead to the ground in an Islamic prayer position. The
predominantly British (and non-Muslim) fans in the Liverpool stadium have
embraced Salah, both as a soccer player and as a Muslim. They regularly respond
to Salah’s mode of celebrating by chanting, “If he scores another few, then I’ll be
Muslim too.” 42
Hate crimes, especially involving Muslim victims, had generally been increasing
across the UK, Liverpool included, since the World Trade Center bombings in
New York in 2001. After Salah signed with Liverpool FC in 2017, however,
hate crimes in and around Liverpool declined by about 19% according to police
reports. A group of political scientists further analyzed the police figures and
reported that the decline in hate crimes was larger in Liverpool than in other
areas of Britain. The investigators also conducted a survey in the Liverpool area
and found that fans of the Liverpool team had reduced by one-half the number
of anti-Muslim tweets that they posted. They also found that the soccer star had
broken down the fans’ previously held stereotypes of Muslims as “threatening”
figures Perhaps most noteworthy, among fans of the team there was a significant
increase in the proportion of people who believed that Islam was compatible
with British values. 43

Notes
1 For an overview, see Neeraj Kaushal, Blaming Immigrants. Columbia University, 2019.
2 For a history of xenophobia in the U.S., see Erika Lee, America for Americans. Basic Books, 2019.
3 Sivamohan Valluvan, The Clamour of Nationalism. Manchester University, 2019.
4 See the relevant essays in David C. Bretherton and Philip Kretsedemas (Eds), Immigration Policy in an
Age of Punishment. Columbia University, 2018.
5 Nicolas Ajzenman, Patricio Dominguez and Raimundo Undurraga, “Immigration, Crime, and
Crime (Mis)Perceptions.” IZA Discussion Paper Series, January, 2021.
6 See the review of studies in Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes, Cynthia Bansak and Susan Pozo, “Refugee
admissions and public safety.” International Migration Review, 55, 2021.
7 For further discussion, see Arjen Leerkes, Ramiro Martinez and Pim Groeneveld, “Minority
Paradoxes.” British Journal of Criminology, 59, 2019.
8 Martin A. Andresen and Olivia K. Ha, “Spatially varying relationships between immigration
measures and property crime types In Vancouver census tracts.” British Journal of Criminology, 60.
2020.
9 For a discussion of these methodological differences, see Graham C. Ousey and Charis E. Kubrin,
“Immigration and Crime.” Annual Review of Criminology, 1, 2018; and Michael Clemens, et al.,
Migration Is What You Make It. Center for Global Development, May, 2018.
10 Ibid.
11 Michael T. Light, Jingying He and Jason P. Robey, “Comparing crime rates between undocumented
immigrants, legal immigrants, and native-born US citizens in Texas.” Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, December, 2020. On the positive side, this study had particularly complete data on
immigrant status, however it was confined to the state of Texas, with its distinctive immigration
profile.
 Immigrants Contributions 175
12 American Immigration Council Fact Sheet, “Aggrevated Felonies: An Overview.” March 16, 2021.
13 For a review of studies conducted in several nations with a focus upon how immigration policies affect
crime, see Fransesco Fasani, et al., Does Immigration Increase Crime? Cambridge University, 2019.
14 For further discussion, see Loren Collingwood and Benjamin G. O’Brien, Sanctuary Cities. Oxford
University, 2019.
15 David Kaufmann, et al., “Sanctuary Cities in Europe.” British Journal of Political Science, (letter), June,
2021.
16 Center for Immigration Studies, “Sanctuary Cities.” November, 2018.
17 There is a summary of this research in American Immigration Council, “Sanctuary Policies.”
October, 2020.
18 Benjamin Gonzalez O’Brien, Loren Collingwood and Stephen Omar El-Khatib, “The politics of
refuge.” Urban Affairs Review, 55, 2019.
19 For a review of studies in the U.S., see Tim O’Shea and Cristobal Ramon, “Immigrants and Public
Benefits.” Bipartisan Policy Center, November, 2018; for Europe, see Antonio Conte and Jacopo
Mazza, Migrants and Welfare Dependency. JRC Technical Reports, 2019.
20 Xiaoning Huang, Keeraj Kaushal and Julia She-Huah Wang, “What explains the gap in welfare use
among immigrants and natives?” Population Research and Policy Review, 40, 2021.
21 Igor Jakubiak, “Are Migrants Overrepresented Among Individual Welfare Beneficiaries?” International
Migration, 58, 2020.
22 Ken-Hou Lin and Inbar Weiss, “Immigrants and the Wage Distribution in the United States.”
Demography, 56, 2020.
23 Abdurrahman Aydemir and George J. Borjas, “Cross-country variation in the impact of interna-
tional migration.” Journal of the European Economic Association, 5, 2007.
24 See the review in, Eric Fong and Kumiko Ahibuya, “Migration patterns in East and Southeast
Asia.” Annual Review of Sociology, 46, 2020. Annual.
25 Giovanni Peri, “Immigrants, productivity, and labor markets.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 30, 2016.
26 For a review of these studies, see Marie McAuliffe and Adrian Kitimbo, “Reflections on Migrant’s
Contributions.” Chapter 5 in, UN World Migration Report 2020.
27 Ibid.
28 John Gibson and David McKenzie, “Development through Seasonal Worker Programs.” In Robert
E. Lucas (Ed), International Handbook on Migration and Economic Development. Edward Elgar, 2015.
29 Parag Khanna, Move. Scribner’s, 2021.
30 Lin and Weiss, op.cit.
31 See Max Nathan, “Ethnic diversity and business performance.” Environment and Planning A, 48,
2016; and McAuliffe and Kitimbo, op.cit.
32 Figures from, OECD, 2019 International Migration and Displacement Trends.
33 Peri, op.cit.
34 Description of Missoula and quotations are from, Lauren Fritzsche and Lise Nelson, “Refugee
resettlement, place, and the politics of Islamophobia.” Social & Cultural Geography, 21, 2020.
35 Miriam Jordan, “Immigration Decline and Some Regions Sputter.” The New York Times, August
11, 2021, p A16.
36 All of the following quotes are from, Pablo Shiladitya Bose, “Refugees and the transforming
landscapes of small cities in the U.S.” Urban Geography, 1, 2020.
37 Christian S. Czymara, “Attitudes toward refugees in contemporary Europe.” Social Forces, 99, 2020.
38 Daniel J. Hopkins, John Sides, and Jack Citrin, “The Muted consequences of correct information
about immigration.” The Journal of Politics, 81, 2019.
39 Jorge Durand and Douglas S. Massey, “Debacles on the border.” ANNALS of the American Academy
of Political and Social Science, 684, 2019.
40 It had previously been common for undocumented Mexicans to cross the border surreptitiously,
work for a period of time, return home, then repeat the cycle. But the pattern was interrupted by
the cost and risk of returning to the U.S.
41 Alexis Grigorieff, Christopher Roth and Diego Ubfal, “Does information change attitudes toward
immigrants?” Demography, 57, 2020.
42 Kate Whiting, “How Mo Salah may have reduced Islamophobia in Liverpool.” World Economic
Forum, June, 2019.
43 Ala’ Alrababa’h, et al., “Can Exposure to Celebrities Reduce Prejudice?” Stanford University
Immigration Policy Lab, Working Paper, 2019.
Glossary

American Community Survey (ACS) Conducted annually by the U.S. Census

Bureau, it provides extensive data on specific communities, and is used to describe the
nation.
Arranged Marriage Families or paid agencies select mates and set up marriages with
the couple involved having varying influence over the decisions.
Chain Migration A stream of migrants, comprised of families or friends, that share the
same origin and destination.
Chain Multiplier The increase in a nation’s migrants due to family reunification po-
licies that permit other family members to follow an initial immigrant.
Churning When a migrant keeps changing one low-paying job for another.
Culture Involves people’s social institutions and their values, norms and technology.
Their language is sometimes utilized as a specific indicator.
Cumulative Causation The tendency for rates of emigration to continue in a self-
sustaining process.
Emigrate Refers to people who leave a country; the out-flow.
Enclaves Community with a distinctive racial or ethnic composition whose specia-
lized needs are served by co-ethnic-run establishments.
Endogamy Marriages between persons from within the same group.
Ethnoburb Suburban areas with diverse populations and one predominant ethnic-
racial group that maintains cross-national business connections.
Exiles Migrants who usually left their homelands for political or religious reasons with
a continuing commitment to return. Also used to refer to migrants’ separation from
their home, as “in exile.”
Exogamy Marriages involving people from two different ethnic-racial groups.
Expatriate, or Expat Very similar to exiles, and they typically retain citizenship in the
nation they left.
Foreign Student A non-citizen who is enrolled in formal degree program.
Ghettos Communities with concentrated numbers of predominantly poor members
of a minority group, usually with high rates of school drop-outs, non-marital births
and crime.
Global North Contains nations that are wealthy and, for the most part, politically
stable. Most are in Europe and North America.
Global South Contains nations that are poor and often politically unstable. Many
were former colonies.
 Glossary 177
Homogamy People’s tendency to marry others whose social characteristics are
similar to their own.
Immigration Multiplier When citizens sponsor the in-migration of other family
members, thereby increasing the total number of immigrants.
Immigrant Optimism Paradox The discrepancy between immigrants’ aspirations
and their likely attainments.
Index of Dissimilarity Measures segregation by calculating the percentage of one
group that would have to move for two groups to have the same residential
distribution.
Informal Economy Transactions involving low-earning workers, paid in cash, not
recorded in official records.
International Labor Organization (ILO) A specialized agency of the UN that as-
sembles data on migrant workers.
International Organization for Migration (IOM) An agency that compiles mi-
gration statistics and regulations and provides various services.
Internationally Mobile Student Anyone who moves to a different nation to pursue
educational activities.
Macro Analysis Focuses upon large in scale social structures and processes, with little
attention to individual agency.
Marriage Migration The movement of one spouse to the country of the other, when
the other spouse is a citizen or legal resident.
Marriage of Convenience When the desire of a spouse to move to the other spouse’s
nation is an important motive in marrying.
Medical Tourism When people travel from their home country to seek medical care;
it is typically combined with conventional tourist activities.
Meso Analysis Intermediate to macro and micro, it tends to focus upon individuals in
relationship networks.
Mexican Migration Project (MMP) An ongoing survey in Mexican towns and
cities that focuses upon out-migration to the U.S.
Micro Analysis Focuses upon individuals in small groups or in small geographical
areas.
Migrants People who move to a country other than the one in which they usually
resided, and remain for at least three months.
Migrant Workers People who are currently employed, or seeking employment,
other than the one in which they hold citizenship.
New Immigrant Survey (NIS) Conducted in 2003, it rated the skin tone of U.S.
immigrants and obtained data on their occupations.
Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD) A voluntary organization of 37 mostly economically
advanced nations.
Purchasing Price Parity (PPP) The cost of a basic package of goods in relation to
average hourly earnings.
Refugees Migrants who were in peril and were forced to flee the country in which
they had been residing.
Reintegration The process of establishing new roles and relationships when migrants
return to their origin nation.
Relative Deprivation Emphasizes that people evaluate their situations relative to that
of others.
178 Glossary
Remittances Funds sent by migrants back to family members in their origin nation.
Residual Method Estimates the undocumented population by subtracting the legally
resident foreign-born in a nation from the nation’s total foreign-born population.
Sanctuary Cities Provide benefits to and enact protections for undocumented im-
migrants living in their boundaries.
Segmented Assimilation When some members of an immigrant community in-
tegrate into a non-mainstream group, often resulting in little upward mobility.
Selective Assimilation When immigrants integrate in some aspects of the desti-
nation society while retaining commitments to some parts of their origin nation.
Selectivity Involves the way people who migrate self-select in terms of education,
occupation, motivation, etc.
Sex Tourism When a sexual fling is expected to be part of the tourist experience.
Also referred to as romance tourism.
Social Integration The degree to which an immigrant group’s socioeconomic attain-
ments converge with natives; their degree of spatial segregation; and their adoption of
the nation’s culture and language.
Socioeconomic Status (SES) People’s standing in a social hierarchy, typically in-
dicated by educational level and/or occupational status.
Stepwise Migration Describes the tendency for migrants to move to several different
destination nations. (Also referred to as serial migration.)
Trafficking (or Human Trafficking) Recruiting and moving people when coercion or
deception is involved.
Transnational Corporations (TNCs) Enterprises with facilities in countries other
than the one in which they are headquartered.
Transnational Professionals Credentialed specialists who move often between
projects in different nations.
Undocumented Migrants Migrants who lack legal status in their current country of
residence. Also referred to as “irregular” migrants.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) Collects data on,
and provides emergency services for, refugees.
Xenophobia Hostility toward foreigners.
Index

Abdelhady, D. 124, 141n16 Ayedemir, A. 175n23

Abdurrahman, A. 175n23 Aysa-Lastra, M. 87, 93n37, 93n55
Abel, G. 65, 67n54
Abrahamson, M. 161n27 Bach, H. 23n22, 67n2
Abramitzky, R. 161n24 Back, L. 96, 115n5
Abreu, A. 35, 46n31 Bakewell, O. 46n4, 92n23
Aburn, A. 47n56 Bakker, L. 143n70
Adachi, N. 92n5 Ballarino, G. 125, 141n21
Adaptation 65–67 Bansak, C. 174n6
Adelman, R. 115n6 Barry, E. 160n16
Adler, G. 21, 25n77 Beech, H. 160n3
Adsera, A. 92n6; African-American 148–149 Beine, M. 53, 67n18
Agadjanian, V. 64, 69n53 Belanger, D. 24n66
Ager, A. 118, 141n3 Belot, M. 73, 74, 92n11
Aggarwal, P. 69n57 Berlemann, H. 68n19
Ahibuya, K. 175n24 Bernardi, L. 142n46
Ahmed, S. 93n53 Bernzen, A. 68n46
Ahrens, J. 93n33 Berry, J.W. 141n1
Ajzenman, N. 174n5 Beynon, D. 161n32
Akay, A.O. 47n56 Bhai, M. 47n60
Alarian, H.M. 139, 143n67 Biden, Joe 104–105
Alba, R. 141n2 Bigwaard, G. 94n61
Albeck-Ripka, L. 116n26 Bilsborrow, R. 68n27
Alpes, M.J. 116n40 Bloom, D.E. 34, 46n24
Alrabab’h, A. 175n43 Borjas, G.J. 37, 47n38, 175n23
Ambinakudige, S. 142n40 Borrelli, L.M. 117n73
American Community Survey 97–99 Bose, P. S. 170, 175n36
Aminuddin, M.F. 93n45 Boterman, W.R. 142n41
Amuedo-Dorantes, C. 174n6; and migration 2–4 Boustan, L. 161n24
Andersson, H. 160n18 Bowen, A. 47n57
Andersson, R. 160n17 Boyce, G.A. 117n75
Andresen, M. 163, 174n8 Braun, B. 68n46
Apatinga, G.A. 93n38 Bretherton, D.C. 174n4
Arcaya, M. 68n38 Brettell, C. 24n66, 24n71, 82, 93n35
Armenta, A. 115n4, 117n64, 117n69 Brzozowski, J. 47n50
Arrendordo, J. 116n16 Burgess, E. 128, 142n32, 160n7
Arsari, S. 160n21
Arviv, T. 143n60 Caldwell, B.C. 117n76
Asad, A.L. 117n17 Campbell, D.T. 39, 47n42
Ashenfelter, O. 36–7, 47n36, 47n37 Campbell, I. 47n53
Askola, H. 143n66 Campos-Vazquez, R. 142n30
aspirations 31–33, 44, 87–89 Cao, S. 93n49
Atos, M. 69n56 Capoferro, C. 98, 116n11
180 Index
Carbone, J. 142n44 de Haas, H. 46n3
Carling, J. 46n16, 92n23 De Valk, H.A. 47n40
Caron, L. 89–90, 94n68, 94n69 Deichmann, U. 68n28
Carrillo, H. 76–77, 92n17 DeJong, P.W. 37–38, 47n40
Castanada, H. 115n7 DeParle, J. 93n50
Castaneda, E. 160n13 deportation 114–115
Castle, S. 23n7, 23n8 Desai, S. 115n6
Catron, P. 121, 124, 141n9, 141n18 Dettridge, M. 117n43
Cattaneo, C. 54, 68n20, 68n29 DeWaard, J. 68n34
Cebolla-Boada, H. 45, 47n62, 141n12 dispersal policies 150–152
Ceccarelli, D. 92n15 DisSkaptadottir, U. 143n64; distances between
Cervantes, A.G. 126–127, 142n27 73–74, 132–135
chain migration 75–80 Dizon, A.R. 141n23
chain multiplier 78 Docquler, F. 73, 92n2
Chapman, A. 145–146, 160n4 Dominguez, P. 174n5; downward mobility
Charmes, J. 24n37 43–44
Chen, J.J. 67n13, 68n24, 68n26 Dramski, P. 47n60
Chicago School 128–129 Drouhot, L.G. 141n7
Chihaya, G.H. 129, 142n37 Duncan, B. 142n39
Choi, C. 24n57 Duncan, O.D. 142n39
Choi, S. 123, 141n14 Duneier, M. 147–148m
Christou, A. 90, 94n65 Durand, J. 92n24, 116n12, 175n39
churning 99–100
Citrin, J. 175n38 Ederveen, S. 73–74, 92n9, 92n11
civic conflict 64–65 Eksner, H.J. 160n14
Clark, K. 141n19 Elejalde-Ruiz, A. 47n57
Clemens, M. 30, 33, 46n13, 46n29, 46n33 El-Khatib, S.O. 165, 175n18
Clemons, M. 174n9 Emont, J. 93n51
Clibborn, S. 23n25 enclaves 151–156
Cohen, P. 160n1 Engzell, P. 47n55, 123, 141n15
Cohn, D. 116n13 entrepreneurship 153–156
Cohn, N. 142n44 Entwisle, B. 54, 68n21, 90, 92n18, 94n64
Collingwood, L. 165, 175n14, 175n18 Erdal, M.B. 87, 94n58
competition for jobs 167–170 Erdel, M. 23n34
Connor, D. 161n24 Ermisch, J. 93n28
Connor, P. 115n8, 116n17, 116n18 Eroglu, S. 46n32
Conte, A. 175n19 ethnoburbs 156–160
Cook, T.D. 39, 47n42 Eurenius, A.M. 46n18
Cook-Martin, D. 115n3 Eurenius, A.M. 77–78, 92n19; European
Cooney, T.M. 161n28 149–150
Corrales, J. 46n6 exiles 12–13
Cortes, P. 93n44 expatriate 13
Cosson, C. 69n59
Coulter, K. 116n32 family migration 15–16
Crawley, H. 82, 93n34 Farrell-Bryan, D. 142n36
Creighton, M.J. 46n16 Fasani, F. 175n13
Crime rates 163–166 fast-onset events 48–53
culture 70–75, 132–135 Feliciano, C. 39, 40, 47n45
cumulative causation 41, 78–80 Feng, E. 175n24
Current, G.B. 24n52 Fernandez, N.T. 24n69, 24n70, 24n72
Curtis, K.J. 68n34 Fernandez-Reino, M. 47n61
Czymara, C. 171n37 Ferriera, C.M. 46n25
Fink, D. 23n19
Dahir, A.L. 116n38 Fitzgerald, D.S. 143n61
Dao, T.H. 33, 46n21 Flahaux, M.L. 91, 96n70
Davadson, R. 23n24 Flippen, C.A. 142n36
Davidoff, E. 125, 141n22 Foner, N. 141n2
 Index 181
Fong, E. 93n39, 93n42 Heineman, E.D. 143n55
forced marriage 110; see also sexual exploitation Henderson, J.V. 68n28
Ford, K. 69n52 Hendrix, C.S. 64n51
foreign students 14–15, 169–170 Henroth-Rothstein, A. 24n51
Fritzsche, L. 175n34 Hersch, J. 126–127, 141n26,141n28
Fullmeth, G. 93n43 Heslin, A. 67n10
Fussell, E. 59, 68n34, 68n36, 79, 92b22, 92n25 high skill workers 6–7
Hobbs, A. 12, 24n46
Galster, G. 160n17 Hofstede, G. 92n3
Gao-Miles, L.L. 161n31, 161n33 Hollified, J.F. 46n1
Garcia, A.S. 24n47 Holloway, S.R. 68n35
Geiger, M. 24n43 Holtgraves, T.M. 92n4
Georgi, F. 24n43 Hooper, K. 24n58
ghettos 146–151, 155–156 Hopkins, D. 172–173, 175n38
Ghimire, D. 93n46 Huang, X. 175n20
Gibson, J. 36, 42, 47n34, 47n54, 175n29 Huennekens, J.M. 117n58
Gignoux, J. 68n40 Hutchinson, R. 160n13
Gillespie, B.J. 80, 93n29
Giralt, R.M. 93n32 Icduygu, A. 116n39
Glaser, S.M. 64, 69n51 Ichou, M. 47n55, 94n68
Glennon, R. 68n23 Ietto-Gillies, G. 23n3
Global North 16, 24n61, 49, 53, 58–60, 82 immigrant generation defined 89–90
Global South 16, 24n61, 49, 53–59, 82 immigrant optimism paradox 44, 122–124
globalization 1–4 index of dissimilarity 129–131
Gonzales, D. 116n16 intermarriage 131–137
Gonzales-Ferrer, A. 142n51, 142n51, 142n59 international migrants defined 3
Goodwin-White, J. 124, 141n20 inverted U 32–33
Gorina, E. 64, 69n53 Issar, S. 68n37
Graham, E. 93n40
Gray, C.L. 52, 67n16, 68n24, 68n27 Jablonski, N.G. 141n23
Greenman, E. 141n8 Jakubiak, I. 166–167, 175n21
Greve, A. 94n63 Jampaklay, A. 64, 69n52
Grigorieff, A. 175n41 Jang, H. 117n57
Groeneveld, G. 174n7 Jefferson, A.M. 160n5
Guercini, S. 92n15 Jenkins, C. 68n46
Guichard, L. 40, 47n49 Jensen, S. 160n5; Jewish 146–148, 155
Gutierrez, J. 67n2 Jones, K. 82, 93n34
Jordan, M. 166n30, 116n31, 175n35
Ha, O.K. 163n8 Jordan, M. 46n28, 46n29
Haemmerli, G. 24n66 Jung, H.K. 117n57
Hagan, J.M. 94n67, 94n71, 115n1
Hak, S. 116n27 Kabo-bah, A. T. 68n43
Hall, M. 116n15 Kakar, M.M. 117n54
Hamilton, C. 24n68 Kalleberg, A. 161n23
Han, J.H. 126, 141n25 Kang, S.J. 93n49
Han, X. 24n56 Kaplan, E. 116n33
Hannemann, T. 142n47, 142n48 Karabell, Z. 23n6
Harrington, B. 23n28 Karasaapan, O. 24n38
Hartmann, B. 67n6 Kashima, Y. 92n4
Hartnett, L.A. 24n48 Kashimo, E. 92n4
Haver, M.E. 68n35 Kaufmann, D. 175n15
Hayes, M. 25n80 Kaushal, K. 174n1, 175n20
Haynes, B.D. 160n13 Kelly, M. 93n33
He, J. 174n11 Kelman, I. 67n3
Healy, J. 23n18, 23n20, 23n21 Khana, P. 175n29
Heath, A. 122, 124, 141n11, 141n17 Kidd, E. 92n4
Hedstrom, P. 46n10 Kim, C.H. 142n27
182 Index
Kim, K. 123, 141n14 Manting, D. 142n41
King, J.C. 143n59 Marcuse, P. 160n18
King, R. 90, 94n65 marriage markets 132, 136
Kitimbo, A. 175n26 marriage migration 16–18
Kitroeff, N. 68n30 Martin, J.A. 126, 141n24
Klineberg, E. 69n56 Martinez, B.P. 161n23
Kolbel, A. 23n9 Martinez, R. 174n7
Koslov, U. 69n56 Martinez-Aranda, M.G. 117n67
Kramer-Mbula, E. 24n37 Marx, M. 46n11
Kretschmer, D. 46n32 Maskileyson, D. 125, 141n22
Kretsedemas, P. 174n4 Massey, D. 41, 46n, 23n26, 79, 92n13, 92n22,
Kreyenfeld, M. 143n56 93n24, 98, 116n11, 126, 141n24, 142n33,
Kristjansdottir, E.S. 143n64 175n39
Krogstad, J.M. 116n17 Matsumoto, N. 161n30
Kubrin, C.E. 164n8 Mayer, C.E. 160n15
Kulu, H. 135, 142n51 Mazza, J. 175n19
Kvasnicka, M. 143n55 McAdam, J. 116n24
Kwok-bun, C. 94n63 McAuliffe, M. 175n26
McAuliffe, M.I. 116n21, 126n41, 126n42
Laczko, F. 116n21; language as proxy 71–72 McAvay, H. 142n41
language, measures of 72 McDonald, J.S. 92n13
Launius, S. 117n75 McDonald, L.D. 92n13
Lee, E. 174n2 McKenzie, D. 175n28
Lee, E. 46n15 McKenzie, D.M. 36, 47n34
Lee, H.K. 94n66 McLeman, R. 68n33; measures of 70–71
Lee, J. 137, 143n60 Medina-Cortina, E. 142n30
Leerkes, A. 174n7 melting pot 119
Leghtas, I. 24n39 Menendez, M. 68n40
Levy, B.S. 69n50 Mensa, C. 68n43
Li, W. 156–157, 161n29, 161n34 meso theories 34, 70
Liang, Z. 161n25 Mexican Migration Project 79, 98, 172–173
Lichter, D.T. 137, 142n40, 142n42, 142n45, Meyer, F. 46n22
142n50, 142n54 micro theories 29–31, 33, 70
Lieberson, S. 39, 47n43 Migali, S. 46n17
Light, I. 79–80, 93n27 migrant selectivity 38–45; methodological issues
Light, M. 164, 174n11 39–40; personality traits 44–45; socioeconomic
Lin, K-H. 167, 175n22, 175n30 status 40
Lindstrom, D.P. 47n51, 47n58 migrant workers 4–6
linguistic distance 74–75, 134 migration stages 41
Liu, C.C. 46n11 Mikai, I. 73, 92n8
Liu, M-M. 92n21 Miraftab, F. 142n34
Lo, L. 152, 161n21 Mirdal, G.M. 93n57
Logan, J. 59–60, 68n37 Moinester, M. 117n63
Long, K. 46n4 Montenegro, C. 46n13
low skill workers 8 Moore, J.D. 92n1
Lucas, R.E. 47n34,175n28 Morad, M. 92n14
Lucht, H. 68n42, 68n45 Mortey, E. 68n43
Lunt, N. 25n79 Mu, Z. 24n65
Lustgarten, A. 67n5, 67n6 Muambasere, T.G. 143n69
Lutz, A. 124, 141n16 Mueller, V. 52, 67n16, 68n24, 68n26
Mulder, C.H. 80, 93n29
Mach, K. 64, 69n49 Munshi 68n44
Mach, K.J. 69n49 Musterd, S. 142n41, 160n17
Machen, J. 116n25
macro theories 26–19, 32–33, 46n1, 70 Nathan, M. 175n31
Madison, A. 22n2 NELM 34–35, 90
Manglos-Weber, N.D. 140, 143n68 Nelson, L. 175n34
 Index 183
Neureiter, M. 138, 143n63, 143n67 Raker, E. 52, 60, 67n12, 68n38, 68n39
New Immigrant Survey 126–127 Ramirez, A.L. 47n51, 47n58
Newland, K. 94n72 Ramon, C. 175n19
Nielsen, J. 117n74 Ramos, M. 47n61
Novo-Corti, I. 73, 92n8 Randazzo, T. 86, 93n54
Nurick, R. 116n27 Rangel, C. 46n7, 46n9
Ravenstein, E. 46n2
Obeng, F.A. 93n38 refugees 8–11, 144–145, 170–171
Obokata, R. 68n33 relative deprivation 34–35
O’Brien, B.G. 175n18 remittances 30, 84–87
Oda, T. 68n35 Rendall, M.C. 47n47
Oeppen, C. 23n34 residual method 97
Omata, M. 94n59 return migration 87–91
Ormend, M. 25n78 Riosmena, F. 92n21
Osaghae, O.G. 161n28 Robey, J.P. 174n11
O’Shea, T. 175n19 Rogers, A. 24n60
Ousey, G.C. 164, 174n9 Rosales, R. 115n4, 117n64
Roth, C. 175n41s
Paddock, R.C. 92n16 Rumbaut, R.G. 142n6
Palinkas, L.A. 67n11
Panichella, N. 125, 141n21 Saarinen, J. 161n26
Parades-Orozco, G. 79, 93n26 Sacchetto, D. 92n14
Parisi, D. 142n40 Sachs, J.D. 22n1
Park, R.E. 128, 142n32, 160n7 Saguin, K. 94n73
Parker, S.W. 47n47 Salaff, J.W. 94n63
Parrenas, R. 111, 117n57 Salah, M. 174
Parsons, C. 53, 67n18 Salant, B. 24n58
Passel, J.S. 115n8, 116n13, 116n17, 116n18 Salikutluk, Z 141n12
Paul, A.M. 24n40, 81, 93n31 Salzmann, Z. 92n5
Pecoud, A. 24n43 Sam, D.L. 141n1
Pedraza-Bailey, S. 161n22 sanctuary cities 165–166
Pellander, S. 24n64 Schatral, S. 24n43
Peltier, E. 67n9 Schewel, K. 46n16
Pena, R.P. 116n38 Schiller, N.G. 81, 93n30
Penboom, B. 93n47 Schinkel, W. 119, 141n4
Peri, G. 54, 68n20, 175n25 Schneider, J. 161n35
Perkins, G. 47n46 Schneider, N.F. 143n56
Phillips, T. 46n7, 46n9 Schwirtz, M. 24n41
Piracha, M. 86, 93n54 Seabrooke, L. 23n28
Polavieja, J.G. 45, 47n61 Seagrave, M. 102, 116n23
Polek, E. 47n59 segmented assimilation 120, 127
Ponce, A. 47n39 selectivity, see migrant selectivity
Portes, A. 120, 141n6, 141n8, 161n22, 161n23 Semyonov, M. 125, 141n22
Potarca, G. 142n46 Sener, M.Y. 94n69
Pozo, S. 174n6 Serpa, S. 46n25
Prazeras, L. 24n55 sexual exploitation 109–111
Pritchett, L. 46n13 Shaeye, A. 92n10
proximate drivers 61–62 Shams, T. 140, 143n71
Puhrmann, A 161n22 Shibuya, K. 93n39, 93n42
purchasing price parity 35–36, 47n35 Shon, J.L. 142n38
Purkayastha, B. 117n52, 117n56 Singha, S. 96, 115n5
push-pull theory 27, 70 slow-onset events 48–53, 56, 61
Pytlikova, M. 74, 92n6, 92n12 smugglers 105–108
socioeconomic status and; integration 120–122;
Qian, Z. 137, 142n45 selectivity 122–124
Song, S. 95, 115n2
Raihan, S. 86, 93n53 Sontag, K. 23n29
184 Index
Sorensen, M.S. 169n16 van Schendel, W. 68n22
Soysal, Y.N. 45, 47n62 VanLiempt, I. 93n33
Stark, O. 34, 46n24 VanOudenhoven 47n59
Steinhardt, M.F. 68n19 Vaughan, J. 24n59
step-wise migration 11, 80–82 Vaughn, J. 92n20, 117n58
Storeygard, A. 68n28 Verdery, A. 68n21, 92n18
Stouffer, S.A. 46n30 Verdugo, G. 142n38
Strang, A. 118, 141n3 Vergov, P. 142n35
Su, J.H. 115n6 Veronis, L. 68n33
Sultianti, D. 25n78 Villarreal, A. 127, 142n29
Susewind, R. 160n19 visa overstays 111–113
Switzer, D. 67n15 Vogel, D. 101, 116n19
Vogiazides, L. 128, 142n37
Tamborini, C. 127, 142n29 Voigiazides, L. 142n37
Tansel, A. 92n2
Tavaro, M.F. 23n30 Wagner, I. 23n32
Taylor, J.S. 24n67 Waldron, D. 117n60
Telles, E.E. 141n23, 142n31 Ward, Z. 89, 94n60
ten Berge, J.M. 47n59 Warren, R. 99, 116n9, 116n14
Tetteh, B.K. 67n14 Wassink, J.T. 94n67, 94n71, 115n1
Thomas, M.J. 80, 93n29 Waters, M.C. 68n38
Todaro, M. 29–31, 46n12 Weitzer, R. 117n55
Torngren, S.O. 142n43 welfare dependence 166–167
tourism and; enclaves 154–155; medical welfare magnet 37–38
treatment 21–22; migration 19–21, 154 Werfhorst, H.G. 122, 124, 141n11, 141n17
trafficking 11–12, 107–111 Wesselbaum, D. 58, 67n4, 67n31, 67n32
Tran, V.C. 47n48, 121, 141n10 Williams, N. 68n21, 92n18
transnational corporations 1–2 Wunch-Vincent, S. 24n37
transnational professionals 7–8
transnationalism 140–141 xenophobia 162–163
Tumin, D. 142n50 Xu, Z. 68n37
Turkewitz, J. 46n8
Turner, S. 160n5 Yeung, W.J. 24n65
Tzaninis, Y. 161n36 Ylikoski, P. 46n10
Yeoh, B.H. 93n41
Ubfal, D. 175n41 Yousaf, F.N. 117n52, 117n56
Ueno, H. 117n65 Yoo, T.J. 141n13
Undurrago, R. 174n5
Zehn, Y. 92n10
Valluvan, S. 174n3 Zelinsky, W. 32, 46n19
van de Worfhorst, H.G. 122, 141n11, 141n17 Zharkevich, I. 85–86, 93n52
van der Geest, K. 63n17, 68n47 Zimmerman, C. 38, 47n41
Van Hear, N. 46n4 Zug, M. 24n63