Migration Analysis:

Basic Information
Alfred Otieno
Population Studies and Research
Institute
University of Nairobi

Migration Issues
1. Types of Migration
What are the major forms of migration?

2. Selective Migration
Why migration can be considered as a selective process?

3. Brain Drain
What is the extent of movements of skilled labor?

Types of Migration
Emigration and immigration
A Problems or
benefits?

Emigrant

Change in residence.
Relative to origin and destination.

Requires information
People and conditions.
Two different places.
Two different times.

Duration
Immigrant

Problems or
benefits?

Permanent.
Seasonal / Temporary.

Choice / constraint
Improve ones life.
Leave inconvenient / threatening
conditions.

Types of Migration
Gross migration

Immigration
Emigration

Gross migration
Total number of people coming in and
out of an area.
Level of population turnover.

Net Migration
Difference between immigration (inmigration) and emigration (outmigration).
Positive value:
More people coming in.
Population growth (44% of North
America and 88% of Europe).

Negative value:
More people coming out.
Population decline.
Net migration

Types of Migration
International Migration
Emigration is an indicator of economic and/or social failures of a
society.
Crossing of a national boundary.
Easier to control and monitor.
Laws to control / inhibit these movements.
Between 2 million and 3 million people emigrate each year.
Between 1965 and 2000, 175 million people have migrated:
3% of the global population.

Types of Migration
Internal Migration
Within one country.
Crossing domestic jurisdictional
boundaries.
Movements between states or
provinces.
Little government control.
Factors:

Employment-based.
Retirement-based.
Education-based.
Civil conflicts (internally
displaced population).

Types of Migration
Local Migration

Central City

Suburb

No state boundaries are crossed.

Buying a new house in the same
town or city.
Difficult to research since they
are usually missed in census
data.
Based on change of income or
lifestyle.
Often very high levels of local
migration.
Americans change residence
every 5 to 7 years.

Types of Migration
Voluntary migration
The migrant makes the decision to move.
Most migration is voluntary.

Involuntary
Forced migration in which the mover has no role in the decisionmaking process.
Slavery:
About 11 million African slaves were brought to the Americas between
1519 and 1867.
In 1860, there were close to 4 million slaves in the United States.

Refugees.
Military conscription.
Children of migrants.
Situations of divorce or separation.

Types of Migration
Type

Characteristics

International

Crossing a boundary; easier to control; regulated;

difference in income; 2-3 million per year.

National

Between states or provinces; little control; employment

opportunities; education; retirement.

Local

Within a city/region; change of income or lifestyle.

Voluntary

The outcome of a choice.

Involuntary

The outcome of a constraint.

Selective Migration
Context
Many migrations are selective.
Do not represent a cross section of the source population.
Differences:
Age.
Sex.
Level of education.

Age-specific migrations
One age group is dominant in a particular migration.
International migration tends to involve younger people.
The dominant group is between 25 and 45:
Peak age of immigrants is 26.

Studies and retirement are also age-specific migrations:

Emergence of international retirement migration.

Population Pyramid of Native and Foreign

Born Population, United States, 2000 (in %)
Foreign Born
Male

Female

Native
Age

Male

Female

Selective Migration
Sex-specific migrations
Males:
Often dominant international migrations.
Once established, try to bring in a wife.

Females:

Often dominate rural to urban migrations.

Find jobs as domestic help or in new factories.
Send remittances back home.
Filipino females 17-30 to Hong Kong and Japan.

Mail-order bride:

100,000 150,000 women a year advertise themselves for marriage.

About 10,000 available on the Internet at any time.
Mainly from Southeast Asia and Russia.
Come from places in which jobs and educational opportunities for women
are scarce and wages are low.

Selective Migration
Education-specific migrations
May characterize some migrations (having or lacking of).
Educational differences:
21% of all legal immigrants have at least 17 years of education.
8% for native-born Americans.
20% of all immigrants do not have 9 years of schooling.

Foreign students:
Often do not return to their home countries after their education.
Often cannot utilize what they have learned.
Since 1978 some 130,000 Chinese overseas students have returned
while some 250,000 have remained abroad.
Most research-oriented graduate institutions have around 40% foreign
students.

Selective Migration
Immigration and jobs
Related to the economic sector.
High level:
Filling high skilled position in science, technology and education.
Not enough highly trained personnel in the US.
Result in recruiting abroad (see brain drain).

Low level:
Filling low paid jobs (minimum wage) that most people do not want
(agriculture and low level services).
Maintain low wages in low skilled jobs.
Possibility of an informal economy.

Brain Drain
Definition

Relates to educationally specific selective migrations.

Some countries are losing the most educated segment of their
population.
Can be both a benefit for the receiving country and a problem to
the country of origin.

Receiving country

Getting highly qualified labor contributing to the economy right

away.
Promotes economic growth in strategic sectors: science and
technology.
Not having to pay education and health costs.
It costs about $300,000 to educate an average American.
30% of Mexicans with a PhD are in the US.

Brain Drain
Country of origin
Education and health costs not paid back.
Losing potential leaders and talent:
Developing countries lose 15% of their graduates.
Between 15 and 40% of a graduating class in Canada will move to the
US.
50% of Caribbean graduates leave.

Long term impact on economic growth.

Possibility of remittances.
Many brain drain migrants have skills which they cant use at
home:
The resources and technology may not be available there.
The specific labor market is not big enough.

Brain Drain
A reverse migration trend
High costs in developed countries.
New opportunities in developing countries.
Part of the offshoring process of many manufacturing and service
activities.
Qualified personnel coming back with skills and connections:

Migration Explanations
1. Push - Pull Theory
What are the major push and pull factors behind migration?

2. Economic Approaches
How can migration be explained from an economic perspective?

3. Behavioral Explanations to Migration

How can migration be explained from a human behavior
perspective?

Push - Pull
Context
Migrations as the response of individual decision-makers.
Negative or push factors in his current area of residence:

High unemployment and little opportunity.

Great poverty.
High crime.
Repression or a recent disaster (e.g., drought or earthquake).

Positive or pull factors in the potential destination:

High job availability and higher wages.
More exciting lifestyle.
Political freedom, greater safety and security, etc.

Push - Pull
Intervening obstacles
Migration costs / transportation.
Immigration laws and policies of the destination country.

The problem of perception

Assumes rational behavior on the part of the migrant:

Not necessarily true since a migrant cannot be truly informed.

The key word is perception of the pull factors.
Information is never complete.
Decisions are made based upon perceptions of reality at the destination
relative to the known reality at the source.

When the migrants information is highly inaccurate, a return

migration may be one possible outcome.

Economic Approaches
Labor mobility
Labor shortages
High wages

Migration

Surplus labor
Low wages

The primary issue behind migration.

Notably the case at the national level.
Equilibrate the geographical differences in
labor supply and demand.
Accelerated with the globalization of the
economy.

Remittances
Capital sent by workers working abroad to
their family / relatives at home.
$126 billion in 2004:
$16 billion each year goes out of Saudi Arabia
as remittances.
2nd most important most important source of
income for Mexico (after oil and before
tourism); $22 billion in 2005.

Economic Approaches
(Illegal) Immigration and the welfare state
Welfare policies appear to be promoting illegal immigration.
Welfare:
Creates a disincentive to work among the national population.
Attracts immigrants seeking benefits (e.g. health and education).
Some analysis indicate that low skilled immigrant (illegal or not) cost more
than they bring to an economy.

Employment laws (minimum wage, benefits):

Make employing nationals artificially high.
Attracts immigrants that can offer lower wages and no benefits.

Emergence of a significant black labor market used even by

large corporations (through subcontracting).
The government, in an attempt to protect U.S. workers, has
priced them out of the market.

Behavioral Explanations of Migration

Stay with parents

Move to college
25

50

First job
Marriage
Promotion

Life-cycle factors
Migration linked to events in ones life.
People in their 30s are the most mobile.
Education, career, and family are being
established.

Later in life, flexibility decreases and inertia

increases.
Retirement often brings a major change.
Large migrations of retired people have been
Children leave home occurring in the direction of amenitiesoriented areas.
Retirement

75
Loss of mobility

Behavioral Explanations of Migration

Migrants as risk-takers
Why, among a population in the same environment (the same
push factors), some leave and some stay?
Migrants tend to be greater risk-takers, more motivated, more
innovative and more adaptable.
Non-migrants tend to be more cautious and conservative.
Can be used to explain the relative dynamism in some societies,
like the USA since the 1800s.

Summary
No one theory of migration can adequately explain this huge
worldwide phenomenon.
Each brings a contribution to the understanding of why people
move.

Refugees
1. Definition
What is a refugee and how one qualifies for this status?

2. Contemporary Evolution
How the refugee situation has evolved in time?

Definition
The United Nations definition
The 1951 Convention Regarding the Status of Refugees and the
1967 Protocol on the Status of Refugees:
..... any person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for
any reasons of race, religion, nationality, member of a particular social
group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is
unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection
of that country. .

The problem lies in the definition of who is a refugee.

There are no international agreements to protect people who
cross boundaries for their economic survival.

Definition
Conditions to qualify for refugee status
Political persecution must be demonstrated.
An international boundary must be crossed:
Domestically displaced persons do not qualify.

Protection by ones government is not seen an alternative:

The government may be the persecutor.
Could be incapable of protecting its citizens from persecution.

Definition
Environmental and economic refugees
People who can no longer gain a secure livelihood in their
homelands because of what are primarily environmental or
economic factors of unusual scope.
Sources:

Natural disaster.
Human alterations to the environment; climate change.
Contamination (pollution) of the environment.
Lack of development and opportunities.

Render continued residence in that particular location

unsustainable.
Mozambique, February 2000:
Floods made 1 million people homeless.
Destroyed agricultural land and cattle.

Contemporary Evolution
Origins
The first recorded refugees were the Protestant Huguenots who
left France to avoid religious persecution.
About 200,000 at the end of the 17th century.
Went to England, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and
the English colonies in North America.

Pre-WW II and during WW II

Primarily political elites:
Fleeing repression from the new government, which overthrew them.
Usually small in number and often had substantial resources available to
them.

War-driven refugees:
About 12% of the European population displaced.
Usually could be expected to repatriate after the war ended.

Contemporary Evolution
Post WW II
Change in the patterns of refugee flows:
The majority of refugees are now coming from the developing world.

De-colonization in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean:

Political unrest in many newly independent states.
Multi-ethnic nature of those states.
The result of the drawing of colonial boundary lines by Europeans.

The Cold War also increased political instability in a number of

countries.
Political instability in Latin America increased due to the vast
social inequalities existing in that region.
New kind of refugee flow:
Large and of long (or permanent) duration.

Contemporary Evolution
Current issues
Refugees are a controversial issue:

Especially in the developed world.

Only a small share of the asylum seekers are granted the refugee status.
Less than 20% for the European Union.
Increasingly, refugees are no longer accepted.
Economic refugees resorting to asylum as the only way to get a legal
status.

1996 amendment to US immigration law:

Enforcing detention for all refugees entering the United States.
INS can summarily deport those who arrive without valid travel
documents.
4,000 detained on any given day.

Origins and Destinations of Refugees, 2003

10,000
100,000
1,000,000

Red = Origin
Green = Destination