Latin American Migration Project Research Articles

Colombian International Migration: The Impact of Information Networks on Migration

Data from the Latin American Migration Project (LAMP) collected in Colombia between 2008 and 2015 were used to establish the scarcely studied relationship between social networks and the destinations where Colombians migrate. A logistic regression was employed to predict these migratory destinations. The contribution of this research is that it tests whether social networks tied to a destination are associated with the likelihood to migrate there. The findings support the Social Network Theory and offer an improved measure of social networks. It is shown that in migration gender matters since flow and interactions vary between men and women. There is evidence that men receive a greater benefit from social networks.

Migration, Family Formation and Fertility in the Americas

In many low- and medium-income countries that are the traditional sources of international migrants, total fertility rates have dropped to levels at or near replacement. In this context of low fertility, we expect migration’s effects on fertility to operate primarily through marital timing and marital stability. We examine the effects of international migration on age at first marriage, union dissolution, timing of first birth, and completed fertility, using retrospective life-history data collected in Mexico and eight other Latin American countries by the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) and the Latin American Migration Project (LAMP). Using discrete-time hazards and Poisson regression models, we find clear evidence that early migration experience results in delayed marriage, delayed first birth, and a higher rate of marital dissolution. We also find evidence among women that cumulative international migration experience is associated with fewer births and that the estimated effects of migration experience are attenuated after taking into account age at union formation and husbands’ prior union experiences. As fertility levels in migrant origin and destination countries continue on their path toward convergence, migrant fertility below native fertility may become more common due to migration’s disruptive effects on marital timing and marital stability and the selection of divorced or separated adults into migration.

Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of Migration on Union Dissolution.

This investigation uses data from Nicaragua to evaluate the temporal and geographic influences of migration on union dissolution. We investigate the impact of three migration types: internal (within Nicaragua), South-South international (to Costa Rica), and South-North international (to the United States). We perform event history analyses using data from the Latin American Migration Project (LAMP) to test whether longer migrations (time) and migration to international and more distant locations (place), and the combination of these two factors, is associated with increased rate of union dissolution among return migrants. Results suggest that total migration duration and internal migration (relative to non-migration) are associated with an increased rate of union dissolution. Moreover, a longer duration of migration to any one of the three destinations increases this rate. In order to understand the familial risks associated with migration, then, we must consider both the time and place associated with the migration event.

Predicting Unauthorized Salvadoran Migrants’ First Migration to the United States between 1965 and 2007

Although Salvadoran emigration to the United States is one of the most important migratory flows emanating from Latin America, there is insufficient information about the predictors of first unauthorized migration from El Salvador to the United States. In this study, we use data from the Latin American Migration Project–El Salvador (LAMP-ELS4) to perform an event history analysis to discern the factors that influenced the likelihood that a Salvadoran household head would take a first unauthorized trip to the United States between 1965 and 2007. We take into account a series of demographic, social capital, human capital, and physical capital characteristics of the Salvadoran household head; demographic and social context variables in the place of origin; as well as economic and border security factors at the place of destination.Our findings suggest that an increase in the Salvadoran civil violence index and a personal economic crisis increased the likelihood of first-time unauthorized migration. Salvadorans who were less likely to take a first unauthorized trip were business owners, those employed in skilled occupations, and persons with more years of experience in the labor force. Contextual variables in the United States, such as a high unemployment rate and an increase in the Border Patrol budget, deterred the decision to take a first unauthorized trip. Finally, social capital had no effect on the decision to migrate; this means that for unauthorized Salvadoran migrants, having contacts in the United States is not the main driver to start a migration journey to the United States.We suggest as policy recommendations that the United States should award Salvadorans more work-related visas or asylum protection. For those Salvadorans whose Temporary Protected Status (TPS) has ended, the United States should allow them to apply for permanent residency. The decision not to continue to extend TPS to Salvadorans will only increase the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States. The United States needs to revise its current immigration policies, which make it a very difficult and/or extremely lengthy process for Salvadorans and other immigrants to regularize their current immigration status in the United States. Furthermore, because of our research findings, we recommend that the Salvadoran government — to discourage out-migration — invest in high-skilled job training and also offer training and credit opportunities to its population to encourage business ventures.

Correction: Predicting Unauthorized Salvadoran Migrants’ First Migration to the United States between 1965 and 2007

Although Salvadoran emigration to the United States is one of the most important migratory flows emanating from Latin America, there is insufficient information about the predictors of first unauthorized migration from El Salvador to the United States. In this study, we use data from the Latin American Migration Project–El Salvador (LAMP-ELS4) to perform an event history analysis to discern the factors that influenced the likelihood that a Salvadoran household head would take a first unauthorized trip to the United States between 1965 and 2007. We take into account a series of demographic, social capital, human capital, and physical capital characteristics of the Salvadoran household head; demographic and social context variables in the place of origin; as well as economic and border security factors at the place of destination. Our findings suggest that an increase in the Salvadoran civil violence index and a personal economic crisis increased the likelihood of first-time unauthorized migration. Salvadorans who were less likely to take a first unauthorized trip were business owners, those employed in skilled occupations, and persons with more years of experience in the labor force. Contextual variables in the United States, such as a high unemployment rate and an increase in the Border Patrol budget, deterred the decision to take a first unauthorized trip. Finally, social capital had no effect on the decision to migrate; this means that for unauthorized Salvadoran migrants, having contacts in the United States is not the main driver to start a migration journey to the United States. We suggest as policy recommendations that the United States should award Salvadorans more work-related visas or asylum protection. For those Salvadorans whose Temporary Protected Status (TPS) has ended, the United States should allow them to apply for permanent residency. The decision not to continue to extend TPS to Salvadorans will only increase the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States. The United States needs to revise its current immigration policies, which make it a very difficult and/or extremely lengthy process for Salvadorans and other immigrants to regularize their current immigration status in the United States. Furthermore, because of our research findings, we recommend that the Salvadoran government — to discourage out-migration — invest in high-skilled job training and also offer training and credit opportunities to its population to encourage business ventures.

A study of remittances to Mexico and Central America: Characteristics and perspectives of immigrants

Mexican and Central American immigrants remit large sums to improve the well-being of their families back home. Though literature provides substantial data on the economic impact of remittance funds, we know little about remitters themselves. The current mixed methods study utilizes data from the Mexican Migration Project and the Latin American Migration Project (n = 1,218) to examine characteristics of immigrants who remit and data from focus groups to explore the meaning of remitting to Mexican and Central American immigrants. Findings suggest that marital status, legal documentation status, and English proficiency are three key predictors of remittance behaviors. Immigrants report that remitting leads to their own positive feelings and also fulfills an obligation they have to improve the well-being of family remaining at home. Implications for social work practice with Mexican and Central American immigrants are discussed. Key Practitioner Message: • Results indicate characteristics of immigrants based on remittance sending behaviors, increasing our knowledge of immigrants who support family back home; • Findings highlight the meaning of remitting for immigrants, and thus suggest a relationship between remitting and immigrant well-being.

U.S. Migrant Networks and Adult Cardiometabolic Health in El Salvador.

Heightened prevalence of cardiometabolic health conditions in areas where infectious disease remains a major public health concern has created an especially challenging situation for developing countries, like El Salvador. Individuals living within migrant households where migrant networks are present may be at a greater risk for the development of cardiometabolic health conditions. Using data from the 2007 El Salvador database of the Latin American Migration Project (LAMP-ESLS4), this study investigates relations between financial remittances, familial U.S. migration history and cardiometabolic health conditions (overweight status, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and stroke) among 534 individuals within 351 households from four different communities within the departments of La Unión, Cabañas, and San Miguel in El Salvador. Adults living in households that had close primary kin with U.S. migration history were almost two times less likely to be overweight (OR 0.456, p<0.001) and obese (OR 0.453, p<0.01) when adjusting for age, sex, education and economic well-being. This study highlights the importance of exploring the potential role of U.S. migrant ties in the epidemiologic transition present within developing countries, like El Salvador.

UKRAINIAN LABOUR MIGRATION AND REMITTANCES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

1. Introduction International migration has become one of the most discussed and analysed topics of the 20th century. Military turmoil, political orientation and general economic climate have all impacted its nature and brought about new waves and streams of migration while increasing the public interest in this topic. Mass inflows and outflows of migrants have shaped labour markets and performance of policies. Therefore, researchers started studying potential determinants of migration and impacts of the migration on the source and destination countries that would also contribute to developing regulatory measures and international legal framework of this phenomenon. Since the 1950s, the situation in the Europe has been significantly influenced by the introduction of Four freedoms and the development of the European Integration process that has brought freedom of movement of people and workers and series of employment opportunities not only to the European Union (EU) States but also to non-EU member countries. Within Europe, the East-West stream of migration belongs to the second largest stream of the world after Latin America (sometimes Mexico)-US stream. A number of European countries play an important role in this concept as transition and destination countries for both intra-EU and international migration flows. Ukraine has a unique position in this system. It is the country simultaneously sending and receiving migrants but also the transition country on the migration way to the EU. Also, proximity to the EU borders has made Ukraine an attractive country for the study of socio-economic impacts of migration. An interest in migration aspects has been noted among researches who strived to determine the majority of economic factors and implications for all participants. The key factor of empirical study has become data, their analysis and phenomenon observed. Remittances are one of the consequences accompanying migration that can be easily interpreted as quantitative measure. Remittance as money transfers are one of the most important channels of the wealth distribution influencing countries on both sides. The socio-economic effects and determinants can be analysed from macro and microeconomic perspective. The result of such analysis often depends on the reliability of data source and explanatory power. The advantage of macroeconomic data originating from the international institutions such as IMF, Eurostat or the World Bank is their availability. On the other side, those highly aggregated datasets derive remittance from balance of payments which captures only a formal form of remittances. The majority of remittances sent to the source country are transferred via formal and informal channels. In view of the high number of illegal or undocumented migrants, official statistics usually underestimate volume of both migration and remittances (the fact that has been acknowledged also by IMF). An alternative approach that allows capturing all channels of transfer is microeconomic research conducted on individual basis. Although listing all related publications would take up several pages of this paper, some relevant ones, e.g. Massey et al. (1997), Massey et al. (2002), Massey (2004), Donato et al. (2005), or Durand and Massey (2010) can be used as examples of this type of research on the study of migration behaviour in Mexico and Latin America (Mexican Migration Project (MMP) and Latin American Migration Project (LAMP)). Douglas Massey and his colleagues provided methodology with aspirations to capture global migration flows. 2 2. Literature review In recent decades the scope of interest in migration topic has changed in many ways in methodology, topic and results. Unlike the researchers in the 1970s and their specific approach, has been an expansion of the area of interest and a shift from rural-urban migration to global migration flow models with the stress on mutual connection to development (Clemens et al. …

Explaining Undocumented Migration to the U.S.

Using data from the Mexican Migration Project and the Latin American Migration Project, we find that undocumented migration from Mexico reflects U.S. labor demand and access to migrant networks and is little affected by border enforcement, which instead sharply reduces the odds of return movement. Undocumented migration from Central America follows primarily from political violence associated with the U.S. intervention of the 1980s, and return migration has always been unlikely. Mass undocumented migration from Mexico appears to have ended because of demographic changes there, but undocumented migration from Central America can be expected to grow slowly through processes of family reunification.

Violence, Networks, and International Migration from Colombia

AbstractAlthough Colombia is a major country of emigration, little is known about its citizens' motivations for migration. Social and economic conditions have been studied as determinants of migration, but violence has received less attention. We examine how social networks and violence function to promote emigration from Colombia by linking event‐history data from the Latin American Migration Project to external data on violence and economic conditions. We show that emigration is more likely to be initiated by those with higher education, those with network connections to migrants, and during periods of greater violence and increased police presence. Although violence acts powerfully to determine when people migrate, the geographic distribution of social capital determines where they go. Not surprisingly, migrants go to locations where people in their social networks are currently living or have been earlier.

Migration, remittances and smallholder decision-making: Implications for land use and livelihood change in Central America

We model Central American migrant-sending household agricultural practices given labor losses and the concomitant infusion of remittances. Under the new economics of labor migration (NELM) framework, it is hypothesized that smallholder farm households invest remittance income in their land either to increase crop production or to transition to cattle ranching. We test this hypothesis by developing a combination of multivariate logistic, Poisson and beta regression techniques using Latin American Migration Project data to determine how agricultural land use change compared among migrant and non-migrant households in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. Results indicate that a rise in months spent abroad and remittances returned do not translate into a higher percentage of farm sales, intensification or transition to cattle ranching – counter to NELM. However, farmers are investing remittances to increase row crop and pasture land holdings. These findings suggest remittance investments in quantitative increase rather than qualitative change in land use practices. Given the expansive land demands supporting low intensity smallholder agriculture and cattle, and the land degradation cattle precipitate particularly, the trend does not augur well for the sustainability of rural landscapes increasingly transformed by international remittances. Appropriate policies to champion coupled human-land system sustainability in Central America might usefully consider viable land use alternatives to remittance investments dedicated to crop and pasture expansion.

Insurance and remittances: New evidence from Latin American immigrants to the US

This paper examines how the probability of sending remittances and the level of remittances sent are influenced by immigrants’ desire to insure against uncertainty, as opposed to factors that result in remittances with altruistic motives. Using for the first time both 1) data from the Mexican Migration Project and the Latin American Migration Project and 2) the predicted probability of unemployment in the destination country as a measure of immigrants’ economic uncertainty, we find that for Latin American Immigrants insurance motives play a more dominant role than altruistic motives.

Social Capital and International Migration from Latin America

We combine data from the Latin American Migration Project and the Mexican Migration Project to estimate models predicting the likelihood of taking of first and later trips to the United States from five nations: Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Peru. The models test specific hypotheses about the effects of social capital on international migration and how these effects vary with respect to contextual factors. Our findings confirm the ubiquity of migrant networks and the universality of social capital effects throughout Latin America. They also reveal how the sizes of these effects are not uniform across settings. Social capital operates more powerfully on first as opposed to later trips and interacts with the cost of migration. In addition, effects are somewhat different when considering individual social capital (measuring strong ties) and community social capital (measuring weak ties). On first trips, the effect of strong ties in promoting migration increases with distance whereas the effect of weak ties decreases with distance. On later trips, the direction of effects for both individual and community social capital is negative for long distances but positive for short distances.

Decoupling Migration Effects from Income Effects on Reproduction in Central American Migrant-Sending Households

Contemporary data for three Central American countries (Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Nicaragua) surveyed by the Latin American Migration Project were analyzed to determine if migration length and remittance transfers had an influence on fertility. The analysis was structured to separate societal influences on fertility attributable to migration from the income effects associated with remittance transfers. At the couple level, the odds that a birth would occur were negatively associated with an increase in U.S. remittance receipts and an increase in a wife’s migration duration. However, no correlation was found between length of male migration and couple fertility.

The electoral cycle of international migration flows from Latin America

Political events tend to have an impact on human geographical mobility. Using the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) and the Latin American Migration Project (LAMP) datasets, this study looks at whether there is an association between electoral cycles and emigration and return migration flows in 6 Latin American countries: Mexico, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Peru and Guatemala. Results showed that there is a statistical association between election years and emigration and return migration flows, but that the electoral cycles of the Nicaraguan, Peruvian, and Mexican flows are the only ones with the expected pattern. The political business cycle modified the effects of the electoral years on return migration in all the studied countries, except in Nicaragua. Fewer changes were observed in first emigration flows, when the models controlled for economic performance indicators. The article showed that first emigration and return migration are associated with the timing of elections in several Latin American countries. However, the direction of this association is not uniform across the studied countries. Gilbert BRENES-CAMACHO, PhD Assistant Professor, School of Statistics; Researcher in Demography, Centro Centroamericano de Poblacion (CCP), Universidad de Costa Rica, San Pedro de Montes de Oca, San Jose 2060, Costa Rica. E-mail: gbrenes@ccp.ucr.ac.cr , gilbert.brenes@ucr.ac.cr .

International Migration and the Education of Children: Evidence from Lima, Peru

The issue of whether emigration has consequences for the education of children who remain behind in the country of origin occupies an increasingly prominent place in the agendas of both scholars and policy makers. The conventional wisdom is that the emigration of family members may benefit children by relaxing budget constraints through remittances that can be used to cover educational expenses. However, the empirical evidence on the overall effect of migration is inconclusive. This is due in part to a substantive emphasis on remittances in the literature, as well as the inability of some studies to deal satisfactorily with the endogeneity of household migration decisions in comparing outcomes across migrant and non-migrant households. Using Peruvian data from the Latin American Migration Project (LAMP), we apply an innovative instrumental variable technique to evaluate the overall effect of migration on educational attainment and schooling disruption among the children of immigrants. In contrast to conventional wisdom, our results suggest that a higher household risk of immigration has deleterious consequences for the education of children who remain behind.

Leaving to Get Ahead

Analysis of the impact of international migration on the socioeconomic conditions of migrants and their families in Peru, using data from the Latin American Migration Project, suggests that international migration contributes to individuals' socioeconomic well-being. While those who migrate tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds in the first place, they gain further relative economic advantage by moving out of the country. A possible implication of this is that the growing international migration observed today is likely to exacerbate rather than ameliorate the already uneven distribution of income and rigid socioeconomic hierarchy in Peru.

Migration in the Americas: Mexico and Latin America in Comparative Context

Because Mexico–U.S. migration represents the largest sustained migratory flow between two nations worldwide, much of the theoretical and empirical work on migration in the Americas has focused on this single case. Yet in the past few decades, migration has emerged as a critical issue across all nations in Latin America and the Caribbean. Indeed, over the past fifteen years, this region has changed its historical position from a net migrant-receiving region to one of the leading sending areas of the world. In this volume, we offer the first systematic assessment of Latin American migration patterns using ongoing research on the Mexican case as a basis for comparison. We include work by leading scholars of migration who draw on a common source of comparable data. Our specific purpose is to determine whether and how Mexican migration is similar to or different from migration in other countries of the hemisphere. The analyses are comparative and based on data from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) and the Latin American Migration Project (LAMP), which together offer the most comprehensive and reliable source of data on migration from Latin America and the Caribbean. Each chapter examines specific propositions or findings derived from the Mexican case that have not yet been tested for other Latin American or Caribbean nations. Work from Mexico has now produced a fairly conventional account of migration and settlement in the United States, but we know very little about how Mexican patterns generalize to other migratory flows in the region. A major shortcoming of prior research is its overreliance on data from just one country. To the extent that other countries have been studied, most of the research to date has been conducted on a case-by-case basis rather than comparatively. As a result, conclusions about migration trends and patterns in Latin America are derived from a diverse array of studies that make use of divergent data, methods, and theoretical models. In this volume, we seek to remedy this lack of coherence by systematically comparing Mexico to other source countries in the Americas using a common framework of data, methods, and theories. In doing so, we hope to situate findings about Mexico–U.S. migration in the larger context of migration in the Americas and to discover how country-specific characteristics affect patterns and processes of emigration. Such a comparative approach to the study of migration represents a unique and innovative contribution to scholarship on international migration—a topic of considerable interest in the twenty-first century. The chapters derive from papers originally presented at a conference held at Vanderbilt University in May 2008. With support from Vanderbilt’s Center for the Americas, the conference brought together an interdisciplinary set of scholars from universities throughout the Americas who were instructed to base their analyses, at least in part, on data collected by the MMP and the LAMP in 118 Mexican communities and 35 communities from eight other nations of Latin America and the Caribbean, including Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. In their comparative breadth, the resulting chapters offer a new perspective on the causes and consequences of migration in the Western Hemisphere. In this introduction, we underscore some of the salient challenges and rewards of doing comparative work on migration. We begin by describing the structure and organization of the MMP and LAMP, highlighting their origins, developments, and strategies of data collection. These projects, and the important gaps in data they were designed to overcome, explain why research done to date has generally not been comparative and why it has failed to discern which causes and consequences of migration are unique to Mexico and which apply as well to other countries and regions. We conclude by looking to the future to consider how truly comparative investigations might better inform research on migration in the Americas.

Transition Shocks and Emigration Profiles in Latin America

Scholars have long recognized the impact transformative political events have had on migration patterns in individual countries, but few have extended these ideas to the current period of political transition taking place across Latin America. Through analysis of data from the Latin American Migration Project (LAMP) and the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) from across Peru, Nicaragua, and the Mexican states of Guerrero and Oaxaca, the authors offer cross-national and subnational evidence of the role political “shocks” play in determining the demographic and socioeconomic profiles of migrants from these areas over the past twenty years. The results suggest that even in times of democratic opening, citizens’ migration decisions are in part driven by political considerations.

Determinants of Emigration: Comparing Migrants’ Selectivity from Peru and Mexico

Although Latin American migrants to the United States, particularly Mexicans, are typically portrayed as poor and uneducated, some, such as Peruvians, are disproportionately well educated compared to those who never left their countries. This article examines who emigrates and why by comparing migrants’ selectivity from Mexico and Peru. Using the Peruvian data of the Latin American Migration Project (LAMP), collected in five communities in Lima between 2001 and 2005, and comparable data for twelve urban communities from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP), the authors compare the determinants of out-migration from these two countries. The results show that the difference in migrant selectivity is not so much attributable to migrants’ legal status, urban versus rural origins, demographic background, or geographic distance. Rather, a crucial difference lies in the nature of migrant networks, or how networks develop over time and how migrants utilize networks in migrating.