Economic Immigration Research Articles

Dilemmas of measurement of economic immigration on the example of Łódzkie Voivodship

The aim of this study is to present the employment rate of immigrants from outside the European Union (EU) in Łódzkie Voivodship within 2010–2017. Simultaneously, some problems with measurement of economic migration on the regional labour market were emphasized. The main source of data are statistics on the number of work permits granted and registered declarations of intention of employing foreigners available at the website of the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy as well as information from the Voivodship Office in Łódź. Descriptive and comparative research methods were applied. In the case of Łódzkie Voivodship, the long-term nature of immigrant employment is evi-dent, which, given the current demographic situation in the region (population aging and depopulation) can testify the ”setting up” of immigrants from outside the EU.

Development of Bangladeshi immigrant entrepreneurship in Canada

Canada has developed a comprehensive immigration policy to accept different types of immigrants under its economic, family and humanitarian immigration categories. Canada invites over a quarter-million immigrants in a year. Many of these immigrants do not find suitable jobs upon arrival in Canada. Some of these immigrants choose to open their own businesses and eventually become entrepreneurs. Drawing on the experiences of Bangladeshi immigrants in Canada, this paper examines how immigrants reposition themselves to become immigrant entrepreneurs in the settlement process. Findings suggest that immigrant entrepreneurship is embedded within the dynamics of immigration trajectory and the broader context of the receiving society. Even though Bangladeshis are driven toward the lower end of the economy, innovations have expanded the breadth and depth of their businesses and made their businesses different and rewarding.

Intergenerational mobility and the political economy of immigration

Flows of US immigrants are concentrated at the extremes of the skill distribution. We develop a dynamic political economy model consistent with this observation. Individuals care about wages and the welfare of their children. Skill types are complementary in production. Voter support for immigration requires that the children of median-voter natives and of immigrants have sufficiently dissimilar skills. We estimate intergenerational transition matrices for skills, as measured by education, and find support for immigration at high and low skills, but not in the middle. In a version with guest worker programs, voters prefer high-skilled immigrants but low-skilled guest workers.

Putting Brexit into perspective: the effect of the Eurozone and migration crises and Brexit on Euroscepticism in European states

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the link between recent EU crises and the development of party-based Euroscepticism across Europe. It draws on data from expert surveys with qualitative data to outline the way in which we can empirically see the link between the impacts of the crises in European states, and how far, and in what ways, Euroscepticism has been mobilized by political parties in those states. It identifies four main frames through which the EU is contested in European states which focus on: economic factors, immigration, democracy/sovereignty and national factors. It also shows that there has been a clear difference between the impacts of the different crises. While the Eurozone crisis had a particularly powerful effect in the party systems of those countries most affected by the bailout packages and the migration crisis had a particularly strong effect on party politics in the post-communist states of central Europe, Brexit has had a very limited impact on national party politics, although this may change in the longer-term.

“If I have to clean, I clean my own shop”: Migrant entrepreneurship as a form of emplacement in times of crisis: The example of Italy

This article analyses the relation between European economic crisis and immigration. It does so by analysing the establishment of migrants’ entrepreneurship activities in Italy, and by looking at how these activities unravel subjects’ agency in confronting constraining socioeconomic conditions and restrictive immigration laws. In this perspective, entrepreneurship should be understood as a possibility for transforming a person’s own incorporated cultural capital into a resource and, consequently, into an opportunity for self-created work performance. Interpreting entrepreneurship as a personal response of migrants to the economic recession offers a new perspective in the existing literature on migrant entrepreneurship. Crisis, in this paper, is not seen as an abstract and supernatural phenomenon leading and controlling the capacity of individuals to act, but is understood as a constructed set of meanings comprising social interactions and relationships and consolidated within public discourses. This study is based on a qualitative-explorative research approach and was carried out in South Tyrol, Italy. For the data collection, different qualitative methods were used: narrative interviews, informal discussions and semi-structured interviews. Data analysis was based on the coding processes described within the Grounded Theory. As the results show, crisis as such represents, on the one hand, a critical moment of transition or transformation of normality and the constituted ways of acting and thinking and, on the other hand, it is perceived as a new opportunity to change individual behaviour and to initiate innovative counter-strategies that will maintain a person’s capacity to act even in critical personal and structural situations. Nevertheless, showing resilience, which is powerful and leads to change, depends not only on personal motivational forces but also to given opportunity structures.

Feminist practical theology and (un)making structural violence against immigrant women and families

A key thesis of this essay is that exploration of the construct of structural violence—especially as iterated in Johan Galtung’s notion of the triangle of violence—can help elucidate the theological concept of systemic or social sin, and thereby help Christians generate a more adequate ethical response to issues and dilemmas in immigration debates in the U.S. today. The notion of structural evil and sin can proffer insight into the reality of complex webs and entanglements in structural violence that enshrouds the lives and journeys of unauthorized Latino/a immigrants into the United States, and into the role of U.S. citizens in perpetuating such violence. Structural violence, seen theologically as social sin, is a conceptual key to “critical seeing” of political, social, legal, and economic structures and policies that drive forced economic immigration in the first place, and also to exposing the moral oblivion and blindness that thwarts the church from offering hospitality and justice to unauthorized immigrants. I argue that because structural violence originates in the vastly unequal distribution of power and privilege among human agents, which systematically advantages elite power brokers at the expense of people on the lowest rungs of society, then repentance from structural violence must entail collective efforts toward redistributing power, and ensuring more equitable access to resources needed for human flourishing. The primary practice and discipline dedicated to this radical task is faith-based community organizing.

Vaccines Meet Big Data: State-of-the-Art and Future Prospects. From the Classical 3Is ("Isolate-Inactivate-Inject") Vaccinology 1.0 to Vaccinology 3.0, Vaccinomics, and Beyond: A Historical Overview.

Vaccines are public health interventions aimed at preventing infections-related mortality, morbidity, and disability. While vaccines have been successfully designed for those infectious diseases preventable by preexisting neutralizing specific antibodies, for other communicable diseases, additional immunological mechanisms should be elicited to achieve a full protection. “New vaccines” are particularly urgent in the nowadays society, in which economic growth, globalization, and immigration are leading to the emergence/reemergence of old and new infectious agents at the animal–human interface. Conventional vaccinology (the so-called “vaccinology 1.0”) was officially born in 1796 thanks to the contribution of Edward Jenner. Entering the twenty-first century, vaccinology has shifted from a classical discipline in which serendipity and the Pasteurian principle of the three Is (isolate, inactivate, and inject) played a major role to a science, characterized by a rational design and plan (“vaccinology 3.0”). This shift has been possible thanks to Big Data, characterized by different dimensions, such as high volume, velocity, and variety of data. Big Data sources include new cutting-edge, high-throughput technologies, electronic registries, social media, and social networks, among others. The current mini-review aims at exploring the potential roles as well as pitfalls and challenges of Big Data in shaping the future vaccinology, moving toward a tailored and personalized vaccine design and administration.

The causality between economic growth and immigration in EU/EFTA Member States

The EU/EFTA Member States attract yearly a large population of immigrants. Economists, demographers, historians and sociologists generally agree that the need to fill labor market gaps and the income differences between host and sending countries explain migration into industrialized nations. They also recognize that demographic changes that occur through immigration have important economic effects. However, regarding the existence of economic repercussions of migration, there is no conclusive evidence on the relationship between economic growth and immigration. To this end, the Granger long-run causality based on the Error Correction Model (ECM) and Johansen cointegration technique and Granger causality test were applied to Eurostat database for EU/EFTA nations.

Stages of Forming a Common Immigration Policy of the European Union

The article analyzes the stages of the formation of a common immigration policy of the European Union. The article argues that the elimination of the stages is due to the need for answers to the challenges of both economic needs and the circumstances of the environment caused by regional and global threats. On the whole, it can be assumed that an increase in the role of the institutions in the area of immigration policy under the Lisabon Treaty will help to strengthen the protection of the rights of immigrants and deepen European integration. At the same time, it can be stated that certain areas of the Unions immigration policy will continue to be at different levels of harmonization: from the most „communitarization” (asylum policy, the fight against illegal immigration), to a large extent remaining in the competence of national governments (economic immigration).
 Keywords: EU, immigration, migration, communitarization, pillars, treaties

Od chłopa do narodu. O autografie Pana Balcera w Brazylii

The author analyzes the amendments made by Maria Konopnicka in subsequent versions of the narrative poem Pan Balcer w Brazylii and the differences between the original text from “Biblioteka Warszawska” (1891–1901), and the book version (1910). The basis for the analysis are 1500 pages of the autograph stored at the National Museum in Cracow. Konopnicka was writing and editing the poem for more than two decades. During this period both the composition’s concept and the readers’ ideological and political situation changed. In the first part, it has been established that the poet’s amendments concerned accessories, whereas the picture’s original motif was constant, and re-written a number of times. The amendments created a uniform stylistic field, which treated a Polish peasant as a part of biological environment. The author’s amendments in terms of anthroponymy were the result of the poet’s assumptions concerning peasants’ socio-cultural characteristics, but amendments resulting from the need of euphony. The article’s second part analyzes the amendments in the contexts of terms such as: peasant, people, nation. The order of amendments made indicates that the Polish peasant was depicted by the poet as a model of local biological determinants and a part of nature. The experience of economic immigration provided him with a crash course in historical awareness. The former individual peasant became a part of a community with shared historical memory and the awareness of being a modern ideological nation.

Non-Administrative Models to Deteriorate Tax Evasion, a Socio-Cybernetic Application using NLP Archives for Taxpayer Euphoria Formation

With our Socio-Cybernetic Application we present a minimal approach to reduce tax evasion. Theoretically we use proven theories of Neuro Linguistic Processing, Christian Virtues influence, Cognitive Psychology guidelines, Tax collection and law enforcement principles. Our database are taxpayers, payments Beneficiary, Neuro Linguistic Programming reference points, Virtue points, etc. From the last two we create the Personal Human Space database with 1803 records. Then we analyze every person in the Taxpayers and money Receivers database and according to the theoretical guidance we formulate a specific limited human-space diagram for all 7 million persons and legal entities. As an example, we demonstrate the exact math and Matlab methodology to match a Taxpayer and money beneficiary with scoreboard 65 non-zero diagram points. The working system could be useful for Financial Intelligent Units, Economic Law enforcement agencies and Immigration Authorities.

On the Political Economy of Deficit Bias and Immigration

How much can governments shift the cost of their expenditure from today’s voters to tomorrow’s generations of immigrants, without resorting to taxation that is explicitly discriminatory? I demonstrate that if their societies are absorbing continuous flows of new immigrants, we should expect governments that represent the interests of today’s population to choose policies that shift some portion of the tax burden to the future, even if that population is altruistically linked to future generations. To measure the deficit bias, I analyse the dynamic behaviour of an optimal growth model with overlapping dynasties and factor taxation, calibrated for the US economy, and consider the welfare implications for today’s population and their descendants of intertemporal shifts in the tax rates on labour and asset income as well as transfer payments. Models with overlapping infinite-lived dynasties allow for a very clear distinction between natural population growth (an increase in the size of existing dynasties) and immigration (the addition of new dynasties). They also provide an alternative to the strict dichotomy between models with overlapping generations, where agents disregard the impact of their choices on future generations, and the quasi-Ricardian world of infinite-lived dynasties with representative agents that fully participate in both the economy and the political system in every period. The trajectory of the debt burden predicted by the model is a good match for the rise in US Federal Government debt since the early 1980’s, as well as the increases in debt projected by the Congressional Budget Office over the next few decades.

European Populist Parties in Government: How Well are Voters Represented? Evidence from Greece

AbstractIn this paper we focus on the two populist parties, one radical left and one radical right, that have formed a coalition government after the January 2015 elections in Greece: SYRIZA and Independent Greeks (ANEL). Using data from the Greek Candidate Study 2015 and the Greek Voter Study 2015 we study the congruence between party voters and party elites for these two parties, also comparing them with mainstream, non‐populist parties. Employing a slightly modified ?many to many’ approach, we measure congruence on a variety of issues (economic policy, austerity, Euroscepticism, immigration, law and order) and ideological divides (left/right, populism/anti‐populism) in order to assess the factors explaining the paradoxical resilience of Greek populism in power. The evidence generated can help us account for the trajectory of political antagonism in the Greek context throughout 2015 and in drawing some broader conclusions and challenges for future populism research.

The synergy of the refugee crisis and the financial crisis in Greece: Impact on mental health.

The current global financial crisis that started in 2008 resulted in a significant decline in global trade, slowing/reversing economic growth worldwide, and a dramatic increase in public sector debt. At the same time, the global migrant/refugee crisis has reached extreme rates, with millions of people being forced to abandon their homes and communities because of war, political violence or related threats. There is a broad consensus about the deleterious consequences of these crises on psychological well-being, depression, anxiety disorders, insomnia, alcohol abuse and suicidal behavior. Although the separate consequences of economic recession and immigration are extensively discussed in previous research, we know very little about the processes through which the intersection of economic crisis and migrant crisis contributes to the vulnerabilities of natives and migrants during these crises. Of particular concern is the status of children, adolescents and their families, who constitute one of the most vulnerable groups in society. To discuss the contexts that economic and migrant crises shape and suggest possible effects of this intersection on mental health risks, especially among children, adolescents and their families, through reflecting on the recent experience in Greece. Review of the literature and critical analysis of the effects of the confluent crises. The interactive effects of these two crises need further exploration. Novel and diverse models of psychological understanding need to be developed in order to manage the effects of the confluent crises. The role of mental health professionals is crucial in this respect, offering culturally flexible, accommodating and empathetic approaches, allowing healing and acceptance in the face of adversity.

Resilience of Gendered Spheres in Transnational Migration: An Interpretive Book Review of Sheba Mariam George’s When Women Come First: Gender and Class in Transnational Migration

Dr. Sheba George’s ethnographic study based using participant observation and purposive sampling and an insider transnational journey to examine changes in family and social roles that result when nurses from Kerala, India immigrate to the US ahead of their husbands. The author concludes that the economic and political gain immigration affords nurses does not translate into enhanced social status for their family in India or for their husbands in the US when they undergo gender transferral to homemaker. This transference causes a shift in gender structure from the home to the community, in this case the church as a way of counteracting the social emasculation Kerali men experience. This review cross culturally examines the resilience of patriarchal cultural mores and gender roles when Kerali and Puerto Rican immigrant men face the prospect of social emasculation; Puerto Ricans are examined from an insiders perspective.

Immigration and the Common Profit: Native Cloth Workers, Flemish Exiles, and Royal Policy in Fourteenth-Century London

AbstractThis article reconstructs a crucial episode in the relationship between the English crown, its subjects and the kingdom's immigrant population. It links the murder of about forty Flemings in London during the Peasants’ Revolt in June 1381 to the capital's native cloth workers’ dissatisfaction with the government's economic immigration policy. We argue that, in the course of the fourteenth century, the crown developed a new policy aimed at attracting skilled workers from abroad. Convinced that their activities benefited the common profit of the realm, the crown remained deaf to the concerns of London's native weavers, who claimed that the work of exiled Flemish cloth workers in the city encroached on their privileges. Confronted for more than twenty-five years with political obstruction, the native weavers increasingly resorted to physical aggression against their Flemish counterparts, which came to a dramatic conclusion in 1381. The dissatisfaction of London's cloth workers and the massacre of the Flemings thus had much in common with the frustrations over the royal government's policy that had been fermenting for decades among many other groups in society: all came to the surface during the Peasants’ Revolt.

MOTIVATION OF FUTURE HEALTH CARE SPECIALISTS IN PROMOTING SOCIAL WELLBEING OF ELDERLY PEOPLE

Dynamics of ageing of Latvia’s population is faster than in other European Union countries, which has been caused by the social economic situation and immigration of society members. Ageing of society will have a considerable impact on health care in the future. Hence, it is essential to invest resources in the process of the development of health care by educating health care specialists who will be motivated to solve social wellbeing problems in the country in a professional way.Students and lecturers of Riga Stradins University Liepaja branch have been taking part in European Later Life Active Network (ELLAN) project since 2013. In the research done within the framework of the project, Kogan’s attitude scale to elderly people has been made use of, as well as Nolan’s questionnaire was used to learn about the future health care specialists’ attitude and their expectations concerning work with elderly people. Data collected in Latvia in comparison with the rest of the four countries (Ireland, Germany, Italy and Finland) taking part in the project present the lowest level of attitude indicators. The article focuses on the issue of future health care specialists’ motivation and attitude in their professional work with elderly people, as well as, the impact of the environment on promoting the development of positive attitude towards elderly people and work with them during the study process.

Moving Parts: Immigration Policy, Internal Migration and Natural Resource Shocks

The Canadian government made major changes in 2014 to both the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program and the permanent economic immigration system. Under the previous system and its enforcement, temporary foreign workers were in competition with some Canadian residents, resulting in a major political backlash. In addition, permanent immigrants to Canada were not generally moving to locations with the strongest demand for jobs.The federal changes to the TFW Program limited the kinds of workers companies could bring in, made the applications more rigorous, and set an employer-specific cap on the use of TFWs. These changes will lead to a decrease in the number of TFWs working in Canada.In the permanent immigration system, the government modified the traditional points system and created the Express Entry System. International applicants must meet a threshold of points before the government will invite them to apply for immigration. The system is skewed toward labour-market demand. It rewards workers who have skills that the federal government determines the labour market needs. It also rewards permanent immigrants who have a Canadian job offer.We expect that the changes to the permanent immigration system will have many positive results. Immigrants will have better skills and improved job-market outcomes, and they will meet employer needs more closely than permanent immigrants did in the past. Likewise, recent changes to the TFW Program will improve the labour market for existing residents.However, the changes in the immigration system may have some unintended consequences. First, they make it difficult for international students at Canadian universities to become permanent residents. Further, whereas TFWs were the main source of labour-market competition for Canadian residents until 2014, new permanent immigrants will increasingly compete with Canadian residents. This change will have profound implications for interprovincial migration. Lastly, the permanent immigration policy prioritizes skills currently in demand, and that preference may decrease the immigration of workers whose skills may be more important in the longer term.Although, on the whole, the recent changes are an improvement to Canadian immigration policy, the federal government should consider addressing these potential negative consequences as it moves forward with its reforms. Those refinements would entail:• better incorporating recent international graduates of Canadian universities into the permanent immigration system;• creating more permanent immigration opportunities for immigrants with skills the Canadian economy may need in the future, although they are not in demand in today’s labour market; and• addressing the concern that permanent international immigrants will reduce the incentive for Canadian residents to move among the provinces to seek better opportunities.All things considered, in terms of substituting for existing Canadian workers, we argue that the new immigration system will make TFWs less attractive and permanent immigrants more competitive.

Reframing the New Deal: The Past and Future of American Labor and the Law

This Article reinterprets the period from 1935 to 1973 as a “long exception” to the sustained pattern of legal hostility to labor organizing in the United States. While the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) and the broader New Deal were once regarded as secure solutions to the “labor question” in America, in retrospect they only offered a partial, temporary, and extraordinary respite from state and corporate opposition to the collective interests of working people. The decades from the thirties through the seventies witnessed the rise and fall of union density as well as the fall and rise of inequality that stands out in contrast to the rest of American history since the industrial revolution. However, because of the extraordinary circumstances of that era (which are connected to important sociopolitical variables including the economic emergency, immigration, the state, unions, individualism, and cultural politics), the New Deal serves as a poor historical metaphor for those interested in labor’s revival. The circumstances that created the New Deal are unlikely to be repeated, thus the future of labor organizing and the law will look more like the deep and difficult past of American history prior to the 1930s than like the “modern” age of organizing and collective bargaining.

Residential Segregation and Health Outcomes in the United States: Moving Beyond Black and White

Recent research in the United States has found a strong negative association between segregation and minority health outcomes. However, few studies have been conducted which examine this relationship in light of the theoretical processes which could produce such an association. Further, the bulk of this literature is focused on the Black case with little attention as to how this may affect other racial/ethnic minority groups. Using the 2011-2012 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) combined with metropolitan-level data, I examine the relationship between residential segregation and poor self-rated health for the three largest racial/ethnic minority groups in the US (Blacks, Latinos and Asians), with Whites serving as a comparison group. Moreover, I analyze a variety of factors which could account for this association based on theories of segregation, including economic considerations and immigration. Overall, I find a strong association between racial residential segregation and poor self-rated health across all of the three largest racial/ethnic minority groups in the US. However, this association is partially accounted for by economic factors in the case of Black Americans and fully accounted for by immigration in the case of Asian Americans. These results suggest that segregation should be an important consideration in our understanding of minority health disparities.