International Migration Literature Research Articles

Infrastructures of Social Reproduction: Migrant Survival and Economic Development at the Thailand-Myanmar Border

International migration literature has shown that infrastructures consisting of people and institutions sustain migration and help migrants cope in new environments. However, analytic focus on these infrastructures is often limited to the migration process and its impact on migrants. This article extends the growing literature on migration infrastructure by analyzing its socially reproductive capacities in the context of economic development in Thailand. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data from the Tak border zone, I show how the social and humanitarian dimensions of migration infrastructure that grew from war displacement, labor migration, and migrant survival efforts became essential to economic development aims of the Thai state. Through this case, I illustrate a process of infrastructural co-optation by which the state harnesses grassroots and humanitarian actors’ capacities for childcare, education, and healthcare to advance such aims. Authorities spatially contain migrant workers with limited rights and social protections while loosely engaging with parts of the border's infrastructure, which keeps noncitizen workers alive and available for low-wage jobs. The findings show that aspects of migration infrastructure are co-optable, with impact beyond the migration process and for non-migrants.

It's not all about money: Understanding Chinese student switchers in Britain

AbstractThis study challenges the assumption that international students from the Global South migrate to advanced Western economies primarily for economic gain and social distinction. Through temporally focused interviews with Chinese student switchers in the United Kingdom, that is, migrants who moved from China for university and remain working in situ after graduation, we examine how lifestyle factors may come into play in evoking and accommodating (im)mobilities. Our findings reveal how participants' experiences before, during and after international education are narrated as an entanglement of affective and rational concerns. We highlight how their migration decisions are driven by the search for a desired lifestyle that features work–life balance and a perceived release from a work‐oriented and socially pressurized life in China. Yet, their final emplacement remains an open question due to familial responsibilities in China and Chinese citizenship regulations. The study provides an original conceptual amalgamation of student migration and lifestyle mobility, and sheds further light on the importance of life courses in international student migration literature and lifestyle mobility studies.

“The US is still more accepting and respecting of us”: Rethinking the “opt‐out” myth among highly educated Chinese immigrant stay‐at‐home mothers

AbstractScholars have long been fascinated by the push‐pull discourses that have been used to account for the work‐life (in)balance of college‐educated, stay‐at‐home mothers in the United States. However, the entire conversation about the opting‐out myth excludes the increasing population of highly educated, immigrant mothers. Meanwhile, international migration literature contends that highly educated, skilled, immigrant women experience an unexpected downward career mobility. However, among all the studies, the term motherhood and housewife are largely framed as a threat and source of frustration. In response to these two bodies of literature, I conducted semi‐structured interviews with 28 highly educated, Chinese stay‐at‐home mothers in the United States between August 2019 and July 2021. By adopting an intersectional lens, I argue that although the neoliberal, immigration structures have indeed caused career downward mobility among highly educated, Chinese immigrants, we should not assume that the current, new generation of Chinese women unanimously interprets full‐time motherhood simply as a disadvantage. Instead, I have found out that, due to social and cultural differences, these mothers all felt compelled to be stay‐at‐home immigrant mothers in the United States where they believe they would receive more respect and acceptance, and feel more liberation.

Integration Based on Socio-economic Status? Everyday Interactions and Boundary (Un)making Between Mainland Skilled Professionals and Locals in Hong Kong

Scholars and the Hong Kong government are concerned about the social, economic, and cultural integration of new mainland Chinese immigrants (NMCIs) into local society. Research on NMCIs’ integration difficulties in Hong Kong has largely focused on one-way permit-holder migrants from China — who are less skilled and face discrimination and problems with integration based on differences in human capital — while overlooking other NMCI groups, such as mainland skilled professionals (MSPs) who may have different social integration experiences and receive different treatment from locals. Drawing on interviews with 48 MSPs and local Hong Kongers, this article investigates three questions: (1) What do interactions between MSPs and locals look like in the workplace and other social settings? (2) Are specific stereotypes of the other group changed or reproduced through boundary-making/unmaking processes, and if so, how? (3) What kind of integration are MSPs pursuing, do they face barriers to their integration? If so, how do they react to the barriers? The findings contribute to international migration literature by highlighting that, with the decreasing need for migrants to integrate into the host society, the high socio-economic status of skilled migrants does not weaken their boundaries with locals but instead reinforces them. Socio-economic status, along with language, political/ethnic identity, and cultural differences, thus divides highly skilled migrants from mainland Chinese workers and local Hong Kongers.

Looking for Women in the Field: Epistemic Ignorance and the Process of Othering

In this article, I ask how my challenges in the field can shed light on dynamics that contribute to excluding women as research participants in (climate) migration studies, and investigate the relationship between the absence of women as migrants in literature and challenges of accessing women in the field. Multiple studies have established that women – like men – migrate, and consequently have called for greater inclusion of women into international labour migration literature. Nevertheless, women still often disappear as research participants within this field. Through an investigation of literature I find that this is because women as migrants are Othered in academia. I build on this insight to investigate the dynamics that may also exclude women as research participants from other subfields of migration research, more specifically the field of ‘climate migration’. Next, I reflect on my unexpected challenges in accessing the information about women migrants in coastal Bangladesh. Men in the village, who were gatekeepers in my access to women, were not immediately willing to talk about women’s mobility. Rather, they tended to distance themselves from knowing these women, effectively turning migrant women into the ‘Other’. Bringing together insights about the Othering of migrant women in both academia and the field, I show how both contribute to upholding systems of epistemic ignorance. I argue that an awareness of such ignorance can be utilized as a tool in fieldwork by lending sensitivity to whom we include and exclude as knowers in our research.

A transnational lens into international student experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We analyse the experiences of international students living in Canada during the COVID‐19 pandemic through the lens of transnationalism that understands mobility as broadly uninterrupted, continuing and taken‐for‐granted, and international student migration (ISM) literature. With the onset of the COVID‐19 pandemic, people had to contend with sudden border closures and stringent restrictions on all forms of travel. International students are regarded as the archetypal trans‐migrants with frequent mobility and often multiple attachments to place. We interrogate these assumptions of mobility by drawing on interview data from 13 international students in Ontario from April to June of 2020. We found that international students experienced the pandemic transnationally and faced increased challenges, which heightened their reliance on support from transnational families, and generated anxieties about their future career and mobilities. We bring transnational theories into conversation with ISM literature to better understand international students’ lived experiences in Canada during a pandemic.

‘It’s kind of becoming a culture’: how habitus influences the migration trajectories of African students in China

ABSTRACT Global flows of international students have diversified in recent years. As a result, the common association of this form of mobility with affluent members of the global middle class increasingly does not hold. This study focuses on one emergent student migration pattern that has been the subject of relatively little empirical research: that of African international students in China. The main aim is to establish how international student migration is experienced differentially by students positioned in their home societies in unequal ways, thereby moving beyond the notion that international student migration is a middle-class activity. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with 40 students from 14 African countries, we apply Bourdieu’s theory of practice to examine the extent and nature of habitus transformation of students from a variety of social backgrounds. We show that differences in social background in this particular case led to distinct trajectories during the sojourn and in terms of post-study plans. Our study makes a theoretical contribution to the international student migration literature, arguing that the nature of transformation that took place among student migrants as a result of study was shaped by the nature of mobility, both spatial and social.

“Us versus them”: Sensemaking and identity processes in skilled migrants’ experiences of occupational downgrading

We examine how a group of highly-skilled migrants from Sri Lanka made sense of occupational downgrading associated with their career transition to the UK. Our findings highlight three distinct sensemaking narratives that enabled the migrant employees to develop a more positive identity in the face of occupational downgrading. While all the narratives followed a similar cognitive pattern, one that represented the occupational world in terms of a cultural opposition between ‘us’ and ‘them’, the choice of a particular sensemaking narrative was shaped by the organisational context in which the migrant employees were embedded. In particular, the migrant workers’ emotional experiences within their new organisation influenced the way in which they discursively framed the ‘us versus them’ relationship. We contribute to the international migration literature by theorising how sensemaking links identity to migrants’ occupational experiences in new organisational contexts.

Children’s voices about ‘return’ migration from the United States to Mexico: the 0.5 generation

ABSTRACT Since 2004, our research has focused precisely in those minors who ‘returned’ from the United States to Mexico. Our interest has been to know the social, geographical, educational, and symbolic trajectories of those migrant children and adolescents who are part of the contemporary move of returnees. Based on the children’s narratives (all collected before US November 2016 federal election), we now have a multifaceted response to the question: How and why are young Mexican migrants returning from the United States to Mexico? Some of these returnees were born in Mexico and arrived to the United States when they were young. International migration literature describes them as members of the 1.5 generation. But others were born in the United States and often started school there. They did not ‘return’ to Mexico, they arrived to their parents’ home country for the first time in their lives. We call them the 0.5 generation.

International Migration Literature Search in Bangladesh during the period of 1971-2020

The Bangladeshi diaspora consists of people of Bangladeshi descent who have immigrated to or were born in another country. First generation migrants may have moved abroad from Bangladesh for better living conditions, to escape poverty, to support their financial condition or to send money back to families in Bangladesh. With a total of 10 million Bangladeshis living abroad, the country has ranked fifth among top 20 countries of origin for international migrants. There is a large Bangladeshi diaspora population in Saudi Arabia. There are also significant migrant communities in various Arab states of the Persian Gulf, particularly the United Arab Emirates and Oman, where Bangladeshis are mainly classified as foreign workers. British Bangladeshis are mainly concentrated in east London boroughs Tower Hamlets and Newham; the migration to Britain is mainly linked with chain migration from the Sylhet Division. Besides the UK and Middle East, Bangladeshis also have a significant presence in the United States, Malaysia, South Africa, Singapore, and in other Western countries such as Italy, Canada, and Australia. This research paper is designed to provide an illustrated account of what kind of research has been done on these migrants at home and abroad over the past fifty years.

Stephen Castles and Australian Immigration Policies, Politics and Possibilities

ABSTRACTStephen Castles has been a cutting-edge migration scholar and migration theorist since the 1970s. An Australian by birth, Castles’ retirement from the University of Sydney in 2017 provides a moment to reflect on his legacy in the field of global and Australian immigration scholarship. In this paper, I first present some personal reflections on the profound way that Stephen has shaped my own career as an Australian immigration scholar. The paper then situates Stephen Castles within the field of Australian immigration scholarship and situates his legacy of the giants in this field, including Charles Price, WD Borrie, Graeme Hugo and James Jupp. The paper then shifts to assess Stephen Castles’ contributions to the international migration literature.

Immigrants and poverty, and conditionality of immigrants’ social rights

It is not only immigration and the incorporation of immigrants into society that serve as challenges for post-industrialised countries, but also rising inequality and poverty. This article focuses on both issues and proposes a new theoretical perspective on the determinants of immigrant poverty. Building on comparative welfare state research and international migration literature, I argue that immigrants’ social rights – here understood as their access to paid employment and welfare benefits – condition the impact which both the labour market and welfare system have on immigrants’ poverty. The empirical analysis is based on a newly collected dataset on immigrants’ social rights in 19 advanced industrialised countries. The findings confirm the hypotheses: more regulated minimum wage setting institutions and generous traditional family programmes reduce immigrants’ poverty more strongly in countries where they are granted easier access to paid employment and social benefits.

Identifying the role of the sending state in the emigration of health professionals: a review of the empirical literature

There is a growing research interest in how sending states manage the emigration of health professionals. While the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors depict sending states as passive actors in this process, emergent studies are revealing them to be active actors with an articulated policy agenda. Using a variety of examples from the empirical literature, this paper identifies the multiple roles that sending states play in the emigration of doctors and nurses. The current findings contribute to the international migration literature in three ways. Firstly, this paper emphasizes that sending states are active actors in the health professional migration. Secondly, it shows that sending states adopt one of the three strategies: (1) introduce restrictive measures to delay the mobility of health professionals; (2) respond to market demands by producing and promoting emigration; and (3) implement a combination of these two strategies. Lastly, this paper highlights how sending states institutionalize gendered emigration through a bilateral cooperation in nurse migration. Missing from the extant literature are studies on competing beliefs, motivations, and technical information informing the strategies of sending states. This paper concludes by presenting a research agenda to further examine how and why sending states are active actors in the health professional migration.

Migration as Development: Household Survey Evidence on Migrants’ Wage Gains

The study of the effects of migration on migrants themselves has not garnered nearly as much attention within the recent international migration literature as other topics, such as motives for migration, the effects of immigration on receiving countries, and the effects of emigration on countries of origin. Focusing instead on these effects on migrants themselves, an issue of primary importance to the discussion of international migration, I present novel data collected through household interviews in communities both in Mexico and the United States. Data gathered using an ethnosurvey approach, combining the techniques of ethnographic fieldwork with representative survey sampling in order to collect both quantitative and qualitative data, permit a careful comparison of absolute and relative wage gains for interviewees with data from existing Mexican surveys. Key findings include: (1) upon crossing the border, even given the cost of migration, migrants indeed stand to collect large net absolute gains, average incomes increasing more than fivefold immediately; (2) relative gains are large, many migrants moving from the lower deciles of origin wage distributions to the top deciles; and (3) average gains accruing to migrants surpass those of even the most successful current programs of economic development. In turn, these findings verify the importance of including consideration for the migrants themselves in any ongoing discussions of how to construct effective migration policy around the world.

WHO WANTS TO LEAVE CHINA?

AbstractWhy are Chinese people moving abroad in unprecedented numbers? Using unique experimental and survey data, this research finds that Chinese citizens with more positive perceptions and, especially, overestimation of foreign socioeconomic conditions are more interested in going abroad. Moreover, correcting socioeconomic overestimation of foreign countries reduces their interest in leaving China, indicating that there is a causal effect from rosier perceptions of foreign conditions to higher interest in going abroad, and emigration does not always represent well-informed “voting with the feet.” The relationship between international political knowledge and exit intentions, on the other hand, is not significant or consistent, suggesting that Chinese citizens’ interest in going abroad is more socioeconomic than political in nature. These results contribute to the study of citizen misinformation, challenge a prevalent assumption in the international migration literature, and help us understand one of the most important social trends in the world's largest developing and authoritarian country.

Mirrored boundaries: how ongoing homeland–hostland contexts shape Bangladeshi immigrant collective identity formation

ABSTRACTLargely overlooked in the international migration literature, migration from the Muslim world can reveal how the combination of globalization and ongoing homeland tensions shapes immigrants’ collective identity formation in the hostland. Using the case of Bangladeshi Muslims in Los Angeles, this article ethnographically traces how ongoing and historic homeland, hostland, and global political–religious contexts shape immigrants’ everyday struggles over identity categories through two distinct but overlapping processes: (1) the immigrants’ exposure to a more expanded, diverse range of people in the hostland; (2) their import of homeland cleavages to the receiving society. It argues that through international migration, migrants both produce and experience globalization, consequently both reiterating and reconstructing their identity categories in the hostland. It also shows how the immigrants’ cross-border ties to not only their homeland and hostland but also to nation-states beyond shape their identity-work, thus revealing conceptual ambiguities about transnationalism and diaspora.

International Migration Diversification: A New Perspective to Migration Management

Diversifying migration for development is an option that much has been discussed and yet little has been done in sending countries. The potential of international migration being harnessed for economic and social development have gained significant importance. Some initiatives have been discussed and launched to manage international migration. Some of these efforts are aimed at addressing the issue of containing the outflow and encouraging return of migrants to help with nation building. But these programmes are not adequate, and therefore more needs to be done. This study aims to review the international migration literature to examine the trend of migration and advocate for its diversification for development in sending countries. Some countries have courted the idea of diversifying migration but none have taken on the challenge. This study provides a precursor for policy makers to better understand international migration trends, options and strategies that can lead to diversification. The way forward for diversifying is a call for empirical studies to comparatively weight the options and develop short, medium and long term strategies. The question is whether policy makers in sub-Saharan Africa will take on the challenge to manage and transform international migration especially of the highly skilled. The paper calls for a different perspective in managing migration and contributes to the literature on international migration diversification for sending countries.

Rural-Urban Migration and the Skill Wage Premium in Brazil: 1980-2000

We use a production function approach to determine the impact of increased labour supply of different skill level on the skill wage premium. In particular, we use data the Brazilian Population Census for 1980 to 2000, for which we have consistent data on cities, to estimate the elasticity of substitution between high and low-skill workers. Unlike the international migration literature, we can estimate the response of out migration from rural areas in response to exogenous shocks, such as rainfall shocks and changes in transportation costs, and use the predicted value from these shocks to construct our instrumental variable. We nd an elasticity of substitution between high and low-skill workers of 0.56, much lower than what has been found in the international migration literature. Our simulations show that migration between 1991 and 2000 had only a small impact of the skill wage gap, a 1.1% decrease in the wage gap between high and low-skill workers in Brazil, explaining only 5% of the changes in relative wages between high and low-skill workers seen in the data during this time period. Though this impact is small is it is 2.5 times larger than what we would have found using the elasticity of substitution between high and low-skill of developed countries.

Cumulative Causation, Market Transition, and Emigration from China

This article reports findings from a recent survey of international migration from China's Fujian Province to the United States. Using the ethnosurvey approach developed in the Mexican Migration Project, the authors conducted surveys in migrant-sending communities in China as well as in destination communities in New York City. Hypotheses are derived from the international migration literature and the market transition debate. The results are generally consistent with hypotheses derived from cumulative causation of migration; however, geographical location creates some differences in migration patterns to the United States. In China as in Mexico, the existence of migration networks increases the propensity of migration for others in the community. In contrast to the Mexican case, among Chinese immigrants, having a previously migrated household member increases the propensity of other household members to migrate only after the debt for previous migration is paid off. In step with market transition theory, the authors also find that political power influences the migration experience from the coastal Fujian Province.

Work experiences of Moldovan women in Italy: bearing the double identity strangeness

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore multiple cases of Moldovan women who individually initiated and involved in work arrangements with Italian employers. The main purpose is to examine the international employment experiences of female migrants by identifying the challenges they face in a foreign country and building a comprehensive typology of female migrant workers.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical work consists of field notes gathered through direct observations and semi‐structured interviews conducted with five Moldovan women while they were still working in Italy. The content analysis of the interviews reveals how Moldovan workers perceive their foreign experience and the ways it influences their personal development.FindingsThe paper suggests that such brain mobility concepts as brain drain, brain waste and optimal brain drain represent the distinguishing characteristics of our interviewees who are citizens of a transitional economy. Imaginary trip, frustrating encounter, identity consolidation and self‐actualization are identified as four consecutive stages through which the self‐initiated migration experience develops over the time. The resulting variations in migrants' behaviours and mind‐sets create a typology of female workers based on their desperateness to migrate (planner vs despairer), their failure to tolerate the frustrating encounter (surrenderer), their attitudes towards personal development (conformist vs rejuvenator) and their ability to transcend their own limitations (highflyer). The paper describes the double identity strangeness along with other aspects which differentiate self‐initiated experiences from expatriate assignments.Research limitations/implicationsThe use of a limited number of case studies prevents concluding whether and to what extent the findings apply to all female migrant workers from other transitional economies. This limitation could be clarified in a future study on larger samples of female respondents involved in self‐initiated employment arrangements in Italy or in other developed countries.Practical implicationsAt the organizational level, the findings allow employers and human resource managers in the destination country to distinguish different types of migrant workers and better understand their particular needs in order to facilitate their intra‐firm integration.Originality/valueUsing a gender analysis highlighted in the international migration literature, this research makes a contribution towards creating a solid knowledge base on Moldovan migrant women – a widely underexplored group of migrant workers – and their involvement in labour market processes in Italy.