Emigration

About: Emigration is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5434 publications have been published within this topic receiving 70717 citations.

European immigration policy: Federal Republic of Germany

Abstract: Immigration and immigration policy In many respects the present situation in Germany in regard to immigration and immigrants is unprecedented. A great number of immigrant families are preparing for a permanent stay and some form of “integration”; moreover, easing the tension between integration and cultural autonomy is being considered on a political level. The situation now differs fundamentally from that of the past, when foreign workers were either clearly defined as seasonal workers and subjected to rigid Germanization during their stay (and in the Second World War forced into war production) or else used as an easily transferable labor pool to compensate for manpower shortages in certain branches of the economy. Yet policymakers have found it difficult to grasp this difference and to act accordingly, which is why the current reorientation of immigration policy has been so difficult. To understand the novelty of the present situation and to appreciate the obstacles faced in changing from a “guestworker” policy to an “immigration” policy, one must begin by examining the varied history of population movements and foreign labor migration into the German Reich and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). Until 1885 Germany was mainly an emigration country (Armengand 1971:163fT). Germans emigrated primarily to the United States and, to a lesser extent, to Canada, Australia, and South America. A number of Germans settled down to work as administrators and merchants or founded new settlements in the Baltic, Poland, and Russia.

The Impact of Mass Migration on the Israeli Labor Market

Abstract: Mass migration from the former Soviet Union increased the Israeli population by 12% in the first half of the 1990s. This exodus was precipitated by the lifting of emigration restrictions in an unstable USSR and by the open immigration policy of Israel toward Soviet Jews, who faced more restrictive entry policies elsewhere. I use this natural experiment to study the impact of immigration on the labor market outcomes of native Israelis. OLS yields significant reductions in wages and small reductions in employment. However, OLS is biased if the distribution of immigrants across occupations in Israel was not exogenous to relative wage and employment conditions. I instrument for the entry of Russians into an occupation in Israel, using information on their former occupations in the USSR. There is a significant positive correlation between the former presence of the immigrants in an occupation in the USSR and their presence in that occupation in Israel. But the previous occupational choices of Russians abroad were independent of Israeli wage and employment growth subsequent to their migration. IV estimates indicate that immigration did not have an adverse impact on native Israeli labor market outcomes.

Migration in the Age of Involuntary Immobility: Theoretical Reflections and Cape Verdean Experiences

Abstract: Our times are characterised by involuntary immobility as much as by large migration flows. The sheer number of people wishing to migrate but not being able to do so indicates that migration must be analysed in the light of restrictive immigration policies. This article suggests that insights can be gained by addressing the aspiration and ability to migrate separately. On the basis of a case study of emigration from Cape Verde, the article first examines how aspirations are formed in the interplay between people’s individual characteristics and their common emigration environment. It then proceeds to investigate how potential migrants’ ability to migrate is determined in their encounter with the immigration interface. This involves a series of barriers and constraints which each potential migrant is differently equipped to overcome. The aspiration/ability model is proposed as a framework for analyses of migration and non-migration at a time when mobility itself has become an important stratifying factor.

Migration Networks and Migration Decision-Making

Abstract: Drawing on the rational choice approach and the economic sociology of migration, this article discusses the role of social networks in terms of location-specific social capital. It discusses relations between sociological and economic aspects of migration and outlines the influence of social capital on migration decision-making and chain migration processes. There have been various attempts to measure these effects through empirical migration research, and this article focuses on two such studies. The first example concerns an investigation of migration intentions among Bulgarians in the 2001 Bulgarian census. The second is return migration in the household context of Italian migrants in Germany, based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. The main finding is that social capital at the place of destination has positive impacts on emigration intentions and return migration, whereas social capital at the place of residence has negative impacts on return migration.

Economic Development and International Migration in Comparative Perspective

Abstract: Economic development is associated with modernization urbanization internal rural-urban migration and international migration. Emigration is positively associated with development and aid to developing countries will increase emigration from those countries until the developing country reaches a standard of living equal to that of the developed country. Studies of European emigration to America have shown that emigration is correlated with the onset of industrialization and that emigration was highest when the home country was experiencing a depression and the US economy was in a period of upswing. The basis of society in an underdeveloped country is labor-intensive subsistence farming which provides work and sustenance to a household or community. As soon as capital is applied to agriculture the small peasant holdings are replaced by large private holdings efficiently farmed by machinery and producing surpluses that find their way to markets that is to urban areas which represent concentrations of wealth. The fabric of agricultural society is destabilized as the peasant owner becomes a hired laborer who migrates to the urban area when farms need fewer and factories more laborers. The 1st phase of migration is thus rural to urban. But development is discontinuous both in time and in space and when the displaced worker cannot find employment in the cities of his own country he emigrates to another. Transportation and communication facilities developed to facilitate industrial and commercial exchange also serve as carriers of international migration usually to the same country with which close economic links have already been established. International migration feeds on itself because earlier immigrants provide a network that makes resettlement easier cheaper and less risky for the next wave of migrants. Moreover the emigrants send money back to the home country which helps to speed up the development process in the home country until modernization and urbanization reach the point where there are no more displaced peasants to export. The experience of the United States and Mexico illustrates most phases of the emigration cycle. The 1st wave of Mexican emigration to the US lasted from 1900 to 1929 when the US economy was growing and the Mexican Revolution (1910-1919) devastated the Mexican economy. In the 1930s Mexico experienced a period of rapid growth. The 2nd wave of emigration 1942-1964 stemmed from the coincidence of drought in Mexico and wartime labor shortage in the US which was remedied by the bracero program which granted temporary visas to Mexican agricultural workers. The 3rd and current wave of emigration began in the mid-1960s. It was fueled by the Mexican governments ambitious economic reform program which was to be paid for out of oil revenues. When oil prices fell the Mexican economy suffered a crisis of inflation and debt. However the development process in Mexico is reaching the stage where there are no longer large numbers of surplus agricultural workers and Mexican emigration should diminish over the next 2 decades.