Showing papers in "International Migration Review in 2002"

Migration and Community Formation under Conditions of Globalization

Abstract: This article sets out to rethink the dynamics of the migratory process under conditions of globalization. Two main models of migration and incorporation dominated academic and policy approaches in the late twentieth century: first, the settler model, according to which immigrants gradually integrated into economic and social relations, re-united or formed families and eventually became assimilated into the host society (sometimes over two or three generations); second, the temporary migration model, according to which migrant workers stayed in the host country for a limited period, and maintained their affiliation with their country of origin. Globalization, defined as a proliferation of cross-border flows and transnational networks, has changed the context for migration. New technologies of communication and transport allow frequent and multi-directional flows of people, ideas and cultural symbols. The erosion of nation-state sovereignty and autonomy weakens systems of border-control and migrant assimilation. The result is the transformation of the material and cultural practices associated with migration and community formation, and the blurring of boundaries between different categories of migrants. These trends will be illustrated through case-studies of a number of Asian and European immigration countries. It is important to re-think our understanding of the migratory process, to understand new forms of mobility and incorporation, particularly the emergence of transnational communities, multiple identities and multi-layered citizenship.

Immigrant incorporation and sociocultural transnationalism

Abstract: This article analyzes sociocultural transnational linkages among Colombian, Dominican, and Salvadoran immigrants in the United States. It emphasizes the importance of comparative analysis and yields three main findings. First, participation in any particular transnational activity is low, but participation over all the different forms of transnational practices is extended. Second, the process of incorporation does not weaken transnational participation. Third, there is more than one causal path that can account for the rise of transnational sociocultural practices. The different paths can be explained by reference to the context of reception and the mode of incorporation of each group.

The New Second Generation in the United States

Abstract: Immigration to the United States accelerated in the late 1960s. Since many migrants are young people who form families shortly after arrival, there is now a large and rapidly growing second generation - many of them now young adults who recently completed school and started their careers. There is much speculation about whether this second generation will assimilate into the middle class rapidly or form a new urban underclass. The last census to ask parental birthplace questions was 1970, so an absence of data precluded testing hypotheses about the social and economic progress of the new second generation. In 1994, the Census Bureau returned an inquiry about parental birthplace to the Current Population Survey so there is now an annual national sample of about 16,000 second-generation Americans. Data from the 1998 and 2000 surveys were pooled and analyzed. This investigation demonstrates that these comprehensive new data provide valuable descriptive information about today's second generation and permit the cautious testing of hypotheses concerning social and economic assimilation. They reveal a great diversity among the second generation depending upon country of origin but, in most comparisons, today's second generation exceed their first-generation parents in educational attainment, occupational achievement and economic status. In many comparisons, second-generation groups have educational attainments exceeding those of third- and higher-generation whites and African Americans. These data refute the hypothesis that today's second generation will languish in poverty. Nevertheless, intergenerational progress was less for persons of Puerto Rican and Mexican heritage than for those of Asian, European or South American heritage.

Rural migrants in Shanghai: Living under the shadow of socialism

Abstract: This article examines the fate of rural migrants in Shanghai, China's largest metropolis. Relying on data from a representative survey, it provides a profile of recent rural migrants and analyzes the pattern of occupational and income determination among them. The economic status between migrants and local residents is also compared. The authors show that despite a marked income improvement, rural migrants in Shanghai are still segregated from urban residents and argue that the social divide between urban and rural areas created under socialism has continued to function and may contribute to the formation of a dual society in urban China.

Educational Attainments of Immigrant Offspring: Success or Segmented Assimilation?.

Abstract: In this article, I study the educational attainments of the adult offspring of immigrants, analyzing data from the 1996 panel of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID). Fielded annually since 1993 by Statistics Canada, respondents are asked for the first time in 1996 to report the birthplaces of their parents, making it possible to define and study not only the foreign-born population (the first generation), but also the second generation (Canadian born to foreign-born parents) and the third-plus generation (Canadian born to Canadian-born parents). The survey also asked respondents to indicate if they are members of a visible minority group, thus permitting a limited assessment of whether or not color conditions educational achievements of immigrant offspring. I find that “1.5” and second generation adults, age 20–64 have more years of schooling and higher percentages completing high school compared with the third-plus generation. Contrary to the segmented “underclass” assimilation model found in the United States, adult visible minority immigrant offspring in Canada exceed the educational attainments of other not-visible-minority groups. Although the analysis is hampered by small sample numbers, the results point to country differences in historical and contemporary race relations, and call for additional national and cross-national research.

The Other Side of the Paradox: The Risk of Low Birth Weight among Infants of Migrant and Nonmigrant Households within Mexico

Abstract: The main aim of this study is to understand how the international migration process affects the risk of low birth weight among Mexican-born infants using the ENADID 1997 (Encuesta Nacional de la Di...

Being well vs. doing well: Self-esteem and school performance among immigrant and nonimmigrant racial and ethnic groups

Abstract: It has frequently been suggested that the academic achievement of minority students may be hindered by low self-esteem in a white-dominated society. Some researchers and theorists, however, have questioned such assumptions. The self-esteem-academic achievement issue is further complicated by the relatively strong performance of children of immigrants in general, and of children of Asian immigrants in particular. A substantial literature suggests that these children face insecurities and difficulties that are inconsistent with high self-esteem. In examining data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we find that Asians do show the lowest levels of reported self-esteem of the major raciallethnic groups, but also the highest grade-point averages. Black adolescents, on the other hand, show the highest levels of reported selfesteem, but show relatively low grade-point averages. In further examination, we demonstrate that despite this apparent inconsistency between school performance and reported self-esteem, the two do have a positive relationship. Immigrant parental status, we suggest, has a complex relationship to school performance and psychological well-being that can help to explain the apparent paradox. One of the most vexing problems in educational achievement is the continuing stratification of academic performance by major racial and ethnic groups. Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board, a national association of educational institutions that administers major standardized tests, has observed that “chronic underachievement among minority students is one of the most critical problems facing our country today” (quoted in Wilgoren, 1999). Since education has long been recognized as the primary route to upward mobility in American society (Blau and Duncan, 1967), racially stratified educational performance contributes greatly to the perpetuation of a

For better, for worse: Life satisfaction consequences of migration

Abstract: This study explores the extension of microeconomic and migrant network theoretical frameworks for explaining perceived post-migration life satisfaction of repeat (temporary) and more permanent labo...

Speaking the Unspeakable: Marital Violence among South Asian Immigrants in the United States

Abstract: 'Speaking the Unspeakable: Marital Violence among South Asian Immigrants in the United States' by Margaret Abraham is reviewed.

The ties that heal: Guatemalan immigrant women's networks and medical treatment

Abstract: Using participant observation and in-depth interviews with ladina and indigenous Guatemalan immigrant women, this article examines the intricate social networks - both local and transnational - through which these immigrants obtain treatment for their own and their families' illnesses. Although Guatemalan women also relied on ties with friends, families and acquaintances to obtain a cure in their country, these ties acquire more significance within the broader U.S. politicoeconomic context that restricts their medical choices. Under these conditions, these women's informal networks become key in putting within reach a variety of treatments that include prescription drugs (obtained over the counter) and “traditional” medicines, which are acquired both locally and from contacts back home. Giving and receiving help through these social networks, however, is a negotiated process punctuated by disillusions, tension, and frustration as much as by cohesiveness and support.

Host Societies and the Reception of Immigrants: Research Themes, Emerging Theories and Methodological Issues

Abstract: Research on the reception and integration of immigrants now recognizes more explicitly the impact that characteristics of societies have as they play host to immigrants. This brief introduction to ...

Becoming American/Becoming New Yorkers: Immigrant Incorporation in a Majority Minority City

Abstract: Many observers have noted that immigrants to the United States are highly concentrated in the largest metropolitan areas of a relatively few states. Though immigrants diffused into many places that had previously seen relatively few immigrants during the 1990s, as of the 2000 census, 77 percent of the nation's 31.1 million foreign born residents still lived in six states - California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois. According to the 2000 census, the two largest metropolitan areas, Los Angeles and New York, accounted for one third of all immigrants (httf://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2002/demoprofiles. html). While immigrants moved into many new areas during the 1990s, making the challenge of incorporating their children a national issue, their concentration in our largest cities remained pronounced.

Welfare Reform and Immigrant Participation in Welfare Programs

Abstract: This article examines the impact of the 1996 welfare reform legislation on welfare use in immigrant households. Although the data indicate that the welfare participation rate of immigrants declined relative to that of natives at the national level, this national trend is entirely attributable to the trends in welfare participation in California. Immigrants living in California experienced a precipitous drop in their welfare participation rate (relative to natives). Immigrants living outside California experienced roughly the same decline in participation rates as natives. The potential impact of welfare reform on immigrants residing outside California was neutralized because many state governments responded to the federal legislation by offering state-funded programs to their immigrant populations and because the immigrants themselves responded by becoming naturalized citizens. The very steep decline of immigrant welfare participation in California is harder to understand, but could be a by-product of the changed political and social environment following the enactment of Proposition 187. It's just obvious that you can't have free immigration and a welfare state. Milton Friedman.

Language as Both Human Capital and Ethnicity

Abstract: In this study, we estimate earnings differentials for knowledge of thirteen minority languages in Canada's three largest urban areas. We find that conditional on knowledge of a majority language, k...

The North American Naturalization Gap: An Institutional Approach to Citizenship Acquisition in the United States and Canada

Abstract: Using 1990 U.S. Census 5% PUMS and 1991 Canadian Census 3% public and 20% restricted microfiles, this article demonstrates the existence of a North American naturalization gap: immigrants living in Canada are on average much more likely to be citizens than their counterparts in the United States, and they acquire citizenship much faster than those living south of the border. Current theories explaining naturalization differences - focusing on citizenship laws, group traits or the characteristics of individual migrants - fail to explain the naturalization gap. Instead, I propose an institutional approach to citizenship acquisition. States' normative stances regarding immigrant integration (interventionist or autonomous) generate integrated or disconnected institutional configurations between government, ethnic organizations and individuals. Evidence from a case study of Portuguese immigrants living in Massachusetts and Ontario suggests that in Toronto government bureaucrats and federal policy encourage citizenship through symbolic support and instrumental aid to ethnic organizations and community leaders. In contrast, Boston area grassroots groups are expected to mobilize and aid their constituents without direct state support, resulting in lower citizenship levels.

The Causes and Consequences of Albanian Emigration during Transition: Evidence from Micro Data

Abstract: This note reports the results of a field survey of individuals and firms in Albania, carried out during 1998. The surveys were designed to analyze the size, causes and consequences of emigration from Albania during the 1990s. Our results show that emigrants are motivated mainly by the ease of access of neighboring countries and by the prospect of high financial returns. Although most emigrants worked illegally and had part-time, low-skilled jobs, the majority found the overall experience positive, and the skills and earnings abroad have contributed to setting up businesses on return. These results have important policy implications for both EU countries and other transition countries in the region.

The Social Consequences of Participating in the Ethnic Economy1

Abstract: This study examines the effects of working in ethnic economy on social integration of immigrants. The analysis is based on a recently completed survey of the Chinese ethnic economy in Toronto. Our ...

The Cost of Not Being Christian: Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims in Britain and Canada

Abstract: This article compares foreign born Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims to native born white Christians on four economic outcomes in two nations: Britain and Canada. For Canada, our data come from the 1991 Census, for Britain from the Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities (1994). Theory and research lead us to predict that, ceteris paribus, non-Christians will fare better in Canada on three of the four outcomes. In the main, however, this expectation does not hold up. Compared to their British counterparts, Canada's Muslims fare less well on labor force participation and Canada's Hindus and Sikhs less well on unemployment. Compared to their Canadian counterparts, British Muslims fare less well on unemployment. On occupation and earnings, we detect no cross-national differences. To explain the paucity of cross-national disparities, we draw on Reitz's argument that Canada's reputation as an attractive immigrant destination has been exaggerated. To explain the few differences we do find, we emphasize cross-national differences in religious discrimination and our inability to control adequately for differences in sending countries.

Mobile Livelihoods: The Sociocultural Practices of Circular Migrants between Puerto Rico and the United States

Abstract: This article focuses on the bilateral flow of people between Puerto Rico and the United States - what has come to be known as circular, commuter, or revolving-door migration. It documents the migra...

Grounding Immigrant Generations in History: Cuban Americans and Their Transnational Ties.

Abstract: The two paradigms for analyzing immigrant experiences, “assimilationist” and “transnationalist,” leave unanalyzed important differences in immigrant adaptation rooted in different historical generational experiences. This article analyzes the importance of a historically grounded generational frame of analysis. It captures differences in views and involvements between two cohorts of first generation emigres. Empirically, the study focuses on different Cuban-American cohort crossborder ties. The first cohort, comprised of emigres who left between 1959 and 1979 primarily for political reasons, publicly oppose travel to Cuba because they believe it helps sustain a regime they wish to bring to heel. The second cohort, who emigrated largely for economic reasons, is enmeshed in transnational ties that, paradoxically, are unwittingly doing more to transform Cuba than first wave isolationism. The cohort comparison is based on interviews with emigres in Union City, New Jersey and Miami, Florida. The analysis of ef...

Assimilation, Ethnic Competition, and Ethnic Identities of U.S.-Born Persons of Mexican Origin

Abstract: Processes governing the ethnic identification of second and later generations of Mexican immigrant descendants are explored empirically using the Latino National Political Survey, 1989–1990. With m...

Mexican Workers and U.S. Agriculture: The Revolving Door

Abstract: Western U.S. agriculture is an industry that has shaped and been shaped by a peculiar labor policy: seasonal workers were outsiders who looked to agriculture for jobs, not careers. They did not plan to remain farm workers, and the industry and community in which they worked and lived did not see them as long-term settlers. The immigration and integration policy, in effect, was to recruit new workers willing to accommodate themselves to seasonal employment, and to avoid their integration in agricultural areas. Thus, for most immigrant workers, economic mobility required geographic mobility. However, the major policy issue is not how to enhance the upward mobility of immigrant farm workers and their children; it is how U.S. agriculture should gain access to immigrant farm workers.

Female Labor Migrants to Shanghai: Temporary 'Floaters' or Potential Settlers?

Abstract: Using data on 54,373 migrants from the Fifth Sampling Survey of the Floating Population of Shanghai, this article isolates a group of 32,967 rural labor migrants who hold rural household registrations and whose previous occupations were in agriculture, and focuses on the women among them. The demographic and occupational characteristics of these 9,124 women are described, demonstrating that migration to Shanghai is a highly gendered process, with men and women working in different occupations and sectors. Moreover, important differences are found to exist between unmarried and married female rural labor migrants that indicate that the latter are probably accompanying and working with their migrant husbands. A significant proportion of female "social" migrants also exhibit characteristics that indicate that they are the spouses of male rural labor migrants, bringing to over one third the proportion of rural labor migrants to Shanghai who could be migrating as couples. These couples and their children may be the vanguard in a transition from temporary labor migration to settlement in China's large cities.

Immigrants' vulnerability as subjects of human rights

Abstract: Une version anterieure de cet article fut preparee pour un groupe d'experts des Nations Unies charge de la question des droits de l'homme des migrants (Commission des Droits de l'Homme, resolution n°1997/15) . Cet article montre comment la vulnerabilite des migrants est construite socialement dans un contexte de structures de pouvoir existant de facto. L'A. met en rapport cette vulnerabilite avec les processus d'etiquetage dont font l'objet les migrants, notamment comme deviants

Decolonization Immigrations and the Social Origins of the Second Generation: The Case of North Africans in France1:

Abstract: Immigrations resulting from decolonization challenge the ability of researchers to track accurately the incorporation of the second generation through classifications based on country of origin. Th...

Migration and the Second Wife in South China: Toward cross-border polygyny

Abstract: Rapid industrialization in southern China has brought together two types of migrants: young women from towns and villages seeking work and upward mobility and affluent men from Hong Kong sojourning in the coastal provinces to supervise or service export-oriented industries. The result is that many married Hong Kong men who cross the border regularly on business have taken “second wives” or mistresses in China. We analyze this phenomenon using government statistics, selected court cases, and personal interviews. We show that the emergence of the “second wife” phenomenon among migrants in southern China is consistent with recent studies on the causes of polygyny, and we make some predictions about the likelihood of this type of polygyny among migrants.

“Extension du domaine de la lutte”: International Migration and Security before and after September 11, 2001

Abstract: Dans cet article, l'A. s'interroge sur les peurs et menaces securitaires ressenties en Occident par les flux migratoires avant et surtout apres les evenements du 11 septemmbre

Transnationalism and American Exports in an English-Speaking World

Abstract: Investigating the relationship between immigration, middleman minority status, transnationalism, and U.S. foreign trade, the authors assembled a census-based data file that contains aggregate-level...

Canadian Borders and Immigration Post 9/11

Abstract: This article focuses on the effects of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks on Canadian immigration and refugee policy. After a glimpse at shifts in media coverage and public attitudes, and an examination of the impact on domestic human rights issues and the process of economic integration of Canada and the United States, this article will zero in on the security issue and its impact on immigration and refugee issues.

Between Spatial and Social Segregation among Immigrants: The Case of Immigrants from the FSU in Israel

Abstract: Studies on immigrants' residential concentration have reported mixed findings. Some have argued that immigrants' residential concentration is a necessary step in the process of their social integra...