The configuration of developed countries has become today diverse and multiethnic due to international migration. A single coherent theoretical explanation for international migration is lacking. The aim of this discussion was the generation and integration of current theories that clarify basic assumptions and hypotheses of the various models. Theories were differentiated as explaining the initiation of migration and the perpetuation of international movement. Initiation theories discussed were 1) macro theories of neoclassical economics; 2) micro theories of neoclassical economics; 3) the new economics with examples for crop insurance markets futures markets unemployment insurance and capital markets; 4) dual labor market theory and structural inflation motivational problems economic dualism and the demography of labor supply; and 5) world systems theory and the impacts of land raw materials labor material links ideological links and global cities. Perpetuation theories were indicated as network theories of declining risks and costs; institutional theory cumulative causation through distribution of income and land organization of agrarian production culture of migration regional distribution of human capital and social labeling factors; and migration systems theory. The assumptions and propositions of these theories although divergent were not inherently contradictory but had very different implications for policy formulation. The policy decisions over the next decades will be very important and carry with them the potential for misunderstanding and conflict. Policy options based on the explicated models range from regulation by changing wages and employment conditions in destination countries or promoting development in countries of origin to changing structural market economic relations.

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Theories of international migration: a review and appraisal.

This review culls disparate elements from the theoretical and research literature on human migration to argue for the construction of a theory of migration that simultaneously incorporates multiple levels of analysis within a longitudinal perspective. A detailed review of interconnections among individual behavior household strategies community structures and national political economies indicates that inter-level and inter-temporal dependencies are inherent to the migration process and give it a strong internal momentum. The dynamic interplay between network growth and individual migration labor migration remittances and local income distributions all create powerful feedback mechanisms that lead to the cumulative causation of migration. These mechanisms are reinforced and shaped by macrolevel relationships within the larger political economy. (authors)

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3644186.pdf

Social structure, household strategies, and the cumulative causation of migration.

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the impact of the Mariel Boatlift on the Miami labor market, focusing on the effects on wages and unemployment rates of less-skilled workers. The Mariel immigrants increased the population and labor force of the Miami metropolitan area by 6-7 percent. Most of the immigrants were relatively unskilled: as a result, the proportional increase in labor supply to less-skilled occupations and industries was probably much greater. Nevertheless, an analysis of wages of non-Cuban workers in Miami over the 1979-85 period reveals virtually no effect of the Mariel influx. Likewise, there is no indication that the Boatlift lead to an increase in the unemployment rates of less-skilled blacks or other non-Cuban workers. Even among the Cuban population wages and unemployment rates of earlier immigrants were not substantially effected by the arrival of the Mariels.

The Impact of the Mariel Boatlift on the Miami Labor Market

The study of labor flows across labor markets is a central ingredient in any discussion of labor market equilibrium. These labor flows help markets reach a more efficient allocation of resources. This paper surveys the economic analysis of immigration. It investigates the determinants of the immigration decision by workers in source countries and the impact of that decision on the host country’s labor market. The survey stresses the ideas and models that economists use to analyze immigration, and delineates the implications of these models for empirical research and for our understanding of the labor market effects of immigration. © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

The economic analysis of immigration

A significant proportion of migration in low-income countries, particularly in rural areas, is composed of moves by women for the purpose of marriage. We seek to explain these mobility patterns by examining marital arrangements among Indian households. In particular, we hypothesize that the marriage of daughters to locationally distant, dispersed yet kinship-related households is a manifestation of implicit interhousehold contractual arrangements aimed at mitigating income risks and facilitating consumption smoothing in an environment characterized by information costs and spatially covariant risks. Analysis of longitudinal South Indian village data lends support to the hypothesis. Marriage cum migration contributes significantly to a reduction in the variability of household food consumption. Farm households afflicted with more variable profits tend to engage in longer-distance marriage cum migration. The hypothesized and observed marriage cum migration patterns are in dissonance with standard models of marriage or migration that are concerned primarily with search costs and static income gains.

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Consumption Smoothing, Migration, and Marriage: Evidence from Rural India

This study was begun while the author was on a Brookings Economic Policy Fellowship in the Office of Economic Research of the Economic Development Administration. Acknowledgements are due Paul L. Burgess, Richardj Cebula, James A. Chalmers, Herbert M. Kaufman, Todd Sandler, WalterJ Wadycki, and the referees for this journal, all of whom have made helpful comments on earlier drafts of the paper and none of whom bears any responsibility for remaining shortcomings.

Research on Internal Migration in the United States: A Survey

A general review of studies on internal migration within the United States since 1970 is presented. The author first describes the changes that have occurred during the recent past in U.S. internal migration patterns. The state of knowledge concerning these changes is also assessed. A more abstract discussion of the determinants of migration covering both the theoretical and empirical literature is then presented. Next the empirical findings associated with several new time-series migration data sets are reviewed and the application of econometric methodologies to temporal models of migration is considered. The review concludes with a summary of recent research results and some pointers for future research.

Human migration: theory, models, and empirical studies.

Internal migration in developed countries

HE objective of this study is to estimate T the magnitudes in which each of several factors influenced interstate migration over the period 1955-1960. Several variables were chosen which might reasonably be expected to explain the movements which occurred, and multiple regression analysis was used on the data. The most unique explanatory variable employed is the "migrant stock," i.e., the number of persons born in state i (the origin state) and living in state j (the destination state).' It is shown that the failure to include the migrant stock variable in the estimated relationship causes the true direct effect of most other variables to be obscured.

Michael J. Greenwood

Papers

Research on Internal Migration in the United States: A Survey

Human migration: theory, models, and empirical studies.

Internal migration in developed countries

Internal migration in developed countries

An Analysis of the Determinations of Geographical Labor Mobility in The United States