Migrant-receiving Countries Research Articles

Experiences of transgender migrants from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Armenia, and Uzbekistan living in Russia

Abstract Despite Russia being a major migrant-receiving country, it does not receive adequate attention in international literature, especially in relation to migrants belonging to marginalized groups. Based on interviews with seventeen transgender (trans) migrants from Central Asia and the South Caucasus with an experience of living in Russia, the study revealed the complex intersections between transphobia, migrantophobia, racism, and whorephobia. The migrants faced profound workplace discrimination and suffered from police and ultra-right groups. Cisgender migrants caring for the prestige of their nation and trans migrant sex workers striving to annihilate competitors were described as additional threats. Russian trans/LGBT organizations were reported to be difficult to access and their priorities differed from those of migrants. Despite these challenges, the respondents found Russia to be a more tolerant country than their home countries and benefited from migration in terms of possibilities to express their gender identity and earn higher income. The discussion section uses these data to compare transition in the sex/gender and geographical spaces.

Original Research: Nurses' Attitudes Toward Brain Drain and the Associated Factors.

Brain drain refers to the emigration of scientists and other educated professionals from a low- or middle-income country to a high-income country for work. In recent years, this trend has increased, particularly in the health care arena. Prior studies among nurses and nursing students indicate that migration mainly occurs from low- and lower middle-income countries to high-income countries. This study aimed to explore the attitudes of Turkish nurses, nurse academics, and nursing students toward brain drain and the factors associated with these attitudes. The study used a mixed-methods research design. The quantitative part of the study was conducted with 1,018 participants. The qualitative part was conducted with 26 participants from the larger sample who volunteered for focus group interviews. Data were collected from June through August 2022 using an online survey, the Attitude Scale for Brain Drain, and a semistructured interview guide. Of all participants, 84.3% indicated that they wanted to work and live abroad. Nearly 95% stated that there was a risk of brain drain in the nursing profession, with economic factors given as the most significant reason. As age and years of professional experience increased, brain drain tendency decreased. Nurses and nursing students had higher brain drain tendencies than nurse academics. In focus group interviews, participants reported concern that the brain drain might lead to losses in the qualified nursing workforce and increase the workload for the remaining nurses in the migrant-sending country, while cultural adaptation issues can be difficult for nurses in the migrant-receiving country. Brain drain in the nursing profession continues to be a current, crucial problem. This study showed that among Turkish nurses, nursing students, and nurse academics, the desire to work abroad was quite high, and all three groups had high brain drain tendency scores. Brain drain has serious consequences for both migrant-receiving and migrant-sending countries. These findings can help inform the development of initiatives aimed at preventing or mitigating nursing brain drain.

Landscape of multiculturalism in Australia: Tracking ethnic diversity and its relation with neighbourhood features in 2001–2021

Embracing multiculturalism has become an important initiative for enhancing cultural identity, social cohesion, and harmony in many migrant-receiving countries. While a large body of literature has examined ethnic diversity in relation to migration, less attention has been given to tracking changes in ethnic diversity over time and from a spatial perspective. Our study aims to contribute to this gap by examining nationwide ethnic diversity in Australia from 2001 to 2021 at various spatial scales and exploring its relationship with the neighbourhood features of ethnic settlement to provide practical implications for urban planning and design. To measure ethnic diversity, we draw on the five census datasets from 2001, 2006, 2011, 2016, and 2021 and apply Shannon's diversity index to the smallest census unit, as well as to the levels of capital cities, rural areas, and states. We then employ a machine learning method to model the relationship between ethnic diversity and neighbourhood features of migrants' settlement, including demographic and socioeconomic features and housing characteristics, and to reveal changes in this relationship over time. Our key findings suggest that the level of ethnic diversity dropped during 2006–2011, possibly due to changes in migration policy in Australia, and dropped again during 2016–2021, possibly due to the outbreak of COVID-19. Neighbourhoods with high ethnic diversity are associated with populations that speak English fluently and hold high education degrees, as well as easy access to public transit and affordable housing. Our study provides practical suggestions and implications for migration and settlement policy-making and promoting better social cohesion through urban planning, neighbourhood design, and housing regulation.

Discurso del Presidente de la Academia Argentina de Cirugía

It is a great honor and an enormous responsibility to have been elected president of such a prestigious institution as the Academia Argentina de Cirugía by my peers, and I am deeply grateful for this nomination. This academy was created almost 112 years ago at a very particular historical moment in our country (a rich and migrant-receiving country). Buenos Aires was a thriving, cosmopolitan city with important medical advances. It was in this context that a group of surgeons, led by Dr. Daniel Cranwell, gathered at his home to found the Sociedad de Cirugía de Buenos Aires, the first association of surgeons in Argentina. Later, in 1939, it became Academia Argentina de Cirugía, following the guidelines of the French Academy of Surgery. However, for political reasons, it was forced to return to its original name in 1954, and it was not until 1969 that it took on its current name.

Forced Migration and Local Public Policies: Evidence from Post-War West Germany

Abstract We study the effect of forced migration on public policy setting in the migrant-receiving country. After World War II, eight million expelled Germans arrived in West Germany within 5 years. We use regional variation in the population share of forced migrants across West German cities to estimate the effect of this inflow on cities’ taxation and spending decisions. To identify a causal effect, we pursue an instrumental variable strategy that leverages push factors of the expulsions while being orthogonal to local conditions in the destination regions. Our results show that cities with high inflows of forced migrants increased spending on welfare and education, decreased spending on infrastructure, raised local taxes, and incurred more debt. Part of these effects can be attributed to shifts in political preferences. The migrants held voting rights upon arrival and supported parties that explicitly catered to their interests and needs.

Demographic Security in the Context of International Migration

The demographic situation in Russia today remains extremely tense. The period of implementation of the Concept of the demographic policy of the Russian Federation is coming to an end and it is necessary to sum up the results, as well as to identify the remaining problems and determine possible prospects for the country’s demographic security. The article considers the issue of ensuring the demographic security of Russia in the framework of modern realities, when demographic problems are solved by attracting migrants from Eastern European and Asian states. The purpose of the study was to determine the prospects and possible consequences of attracting international migrants to the country, since the flows of international migration are not stable and depend on the socio-economic and political situation both in migrant-sending countries and migrant-receiving countries. An analysis of the dynamics of migration flows to Russia from abroad is carried out. It is revealed that in the future we can talk about the stability of migration flows only from the countries of Central Asia (Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) considering the demographic situation in these donor countries. It is determined that the quality of human capital and the standard of living of the population in the most promising donor countries are significantly lower than in Russia. An assumption was made about the growing problem of not only maintaining the population, but also maintaining the necessary quality of human resources to ensure the implementation of strategic programs and projects in the field of socio-economic development, as well as addressing issues of social support for migrants to prevent the threat of increasing poverty in the country. It is concluded that there is a need for a new approach to the management of migration flows aimed at ensuring the quality of the labor resources. It is proposed to provide conditions for training or retraining of labor migrants, as well as to solve the issue of financial affordability of such training, since most of the migrants are representatives of the poorest segments of the population.

Heterogeneous effects of emigration on labor market activity and investment decisions in Punjab, Pakistan.

We investigate the impacts of emigration on the labor market and investment decisions of migrant-sending households in Pakistan by constructing a large individual-level dataset, using several rounds of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey conducted between 2003 and 2014. We add to the literature by introducing a new time-varying instrumental variable to control for endogenous migration decisions, constructed as a composite of three variables that represent opportunities to work abroad: (i) the household's number of adult males, (ii) historic diaspora rates, and (iii) deviations of nighttime light intensity from its trend in migrant-receiving countries. We find a significant shift in domestic labor market activity from lower-status employment categories (not working at all, unpaid family work and manual labor) toward higher-status activities and entrepreneurship such as self-employment and becoming an employer within migrant-sending households. We also find higher investment in property, bank deposits, agricultural land, livestock, poultry and fisheries by individuals in migrant-sending households. The results are stronger for vulnerable groups, implying that migration can be a force for good for rural development, the welfare of women, and less-educated individuals.

Task supply, wage earning, and segmentation among natives and two generations of immigrants in Canada

ABSTRACT The different life paths of the generation following immigration have become a matter of public discussion and scholarly research in the past decades in many migrant-receiving countries. These differences would be key points for the immigration decision made by first-generation immigrants. This paper adopts a new perspective to study the differences in task supplies and economic status between natives and two generations of immigrants to see their different life paths. This paper estimates differences in task supply and earnings between natives and immigrants in 1970 and 2015, which are the beginning and end of the fifth (and current) wave of immigration to Canada. Furthermore, using a three-fold Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, I link the average weekly wage of workers to their task productivity, and try to find the effects of the returns to tasks as well as different task supplies on the average wage gap between natives and immigrants. Finally, I use ordered probit and logit models to demonstrate and measure the significant effects of immigrant status on an employee’s labour market segment.

Bureaucratic and Organizational Amenability to Racial Diversification: How Points Systems Replaced White-Only Immigration Policies

After Australia and Canada adopted policies to admit immigrants of any nationality or race, the racial composition of immigrants did not immediately diversify. It only diversified after their governments adopted points systems to recruit immigrants with the education, language ability, and skills that would increase the national income of the migrant-receiving country. Why? I draw on archival documents to reveal how the organization of consular institutions and practices of bureaucrats limited how much immigrant sources diversified. However, the more human capital-rich people in White-majority countries lost interest in immigrating and the more non-White people in migrant-sending societies increased their human capital, the more frequently bureaucrats became amenable to admitting more racially diverse immigrants who could contribute more to national income and productivity than human capital-poor White immigrants. This emerging preference later stimulated the immigration department to geographically expand their organizational infrastructure to facilitate further non-White immigration. This study illustrates how scholars through a more intersectional lens can better potentially understand changes in institutions and norms along one dimension of identity (race) due to policies to admit a minority of non-White immigrants along another dimension (human capital).

Migtech, fintech and fair migration in Malaysia: addressing the protection gap between migrant rights and labour policies

This paper suggests that digitalisation fills the protection gap between labour policies and practices on migrant rights. Digital technologies have shaped how the Malaysian state views its migrant protection policy. Malaysia has tapped into the potential of migration technology (migtech) and financial technology (fintech) to address various challenges faced in its labour migration governance. Malaysia, a migrant-receiving country in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), has improved its migrant protection policy by digitalising migration management governance, wage payments, and financial services for migrant workers. This paper thus contributes to ongoing debates on fair migration by looking at how technology interventions could bridge the long-standing protection gap resulting from states’ institutional limitations, defective migration systems, unethical recruitment by intermediaries, and implementation gaps (i.e. discrepancies between labour legislation and implementation by state and non-state actors). Digitalisation addresses migrant protection gaps through preventing unethical recruitment, offsetting barriers to regular migration, monitoring labour law infringements, and ensuring employer compliance with immigration and labour laws.

Trust in government and intention to emigrate in a post-soviet country: Evidence from Azerbaijan

Intention to emigrate has been one of the most challenging issues globally over the last decade for both migrant-sending and receiving countries. Rising emigration intentions trigger migration attempts and brain drain, while migrant-receiving countries are challenged by illegal emigration. Self-perceived trust in government is one of the fundamental determinants of citizens' emigration aspirations. This research applies path analyses to explore direct and indirect effects of trust in government on emigrating intentions in a post-soviet country – Azerbaijan. Using a pool of two social survey data (N=4092,n_Male=2106,n_Female=1986,〖Mean〗_Age=31.82) within a serial mediation analysis framework, we conclude that the trust in government has a significant direct (65-70%) and indirect (30-35%) negative impact on emigration aspirations among the people of Azerbaijan. The relationship is mediated by self-reported life satisfaction. Perceived income adequacy also mediates the relationship indirectly via life satisfaction. A key novelty of the study is that, contrary to popular belief, emigration aspirations in Azerbaijan are revealed to be less economic in motivation and are mainly explained by the lack of trust in government, which also reduces individuals' satisfaction with life. Therefore, improving the quality of public services and the trust in government institutions would reverse intentions to emigrate. The research can be replicated in other developing countries, and the findings can be used to design policies aimed at controlling international emigration issues.

Institutional Gap and Mobility–Immobility Transition: International Students’ Study-to-Work Experience in China

Individuals’ transnational mobility trajectories are shaped by personal life stages and intertwined with migration infrastructure. In the case of international student mobility, graduates may seek to ‘stay put’ in the host country for career mobility. However, this mobility–immobility transition is heavily mediated by regulatory institutions, especially in a relatively new migrant-receiving country like China. This article unpacks the process of study-to-work transitions in China. The preliminary findings from policy analysis and two case studies reveal that institutional gaps in China’s migration infrastructure can manifest in multiple forms, including intransparent information accessibility, administrative barriers, and institutional timeframe clashes. These gaps also have a temporal dimension and can shape graduates’ post-study mobility path as their transnational biographies develop. The human cost of individuals in navigating these gaps thus hinders their socio-economic mobility and entails questions regarding the implication of China’s ‘rise’ as an international student/migration destination.

Indonesia's Promotion of UN Migrant Protection Norms in ASEAN

Scholars have devoted insufficient attention to Indonesia's foreign policy on migrant worker protection, especially as mobilized in multilateral institutions. This article addresses such knowledge gaps by analyzing why Indonesia has, for almost two decades, persistently promoted the United Nations Migrant Worker Convention in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) despite constant pushback from migrant-receiving countries. It argues that Indonesia's persistence is driven by its locally constituted meaning of migrant worker rights. In particular, this article advances the critical norms approach in international relations to demonstrate that its interpretation is influenced by "Indonesia's normative baggage," or past experiences with labour migration that have too frequently dealt with the exploitation of Indonesian citizens abroad. This normative baggage in turn shapes the country's diplomacy and promotion of convention standards deemed appropriate for safeguarding Indonesian migrants in ASEAN. In presenting the argument, this article contributes to the study of labour migration by scrutinizing Indonesia's foreign policy on migrant protection and unpacking norm interpretation processes that are necessary in international negotiations.

Migration outside large cities: a comparison of the hiring of migrants for the food processing industry in the United States and Japan

Recent studies suggest that the hiring of migrants in the food processing industry has increased the migrant population outside large cities among affluent migrant-receiving countries. This study examines how the U.S. meatpacking industry and the Japanese seafood processing industry, in particular, have developed a dependence on migrants; it does so to identify whether and how a common—thus cross-nationally generalizable—process may account for migration outside large cities. A comparative historical analysis revealed that, with significant national differences between the United States and Japan, including in the legal and institutional contexts of migration, there is little commonality in the processes through which the industries have come to depend on migrants. Yet, there is a similarity in the development of mass production. Such production necessitates an undisrupted availability of full-time as well as low-wage workforce, and migrants on both sides of the Pacific are employed to ensure this availability. Thus, while urban-centered migration studies often emphasize the growth of low-wage services or small-batch manufacturing as an economic driver of migration, this study argues that, outside large cities, a different pattern of industrial transformation is associated with labor migration.

The plight of racialised minorities during a pandemic: migrants and refugees in Italy and Australia

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to draw on data from interviews with six Italian migrant service providers and media stories in Italy and Australia to weave a comparative snapshot of the plight of precarious migrant and refugee communities in these two countries during the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachThe article draws attention to prejudicial shortcomings towards vulnerable migrant communities enacted by the states of Italy and Australia in response to COVID-19.FindingsWhile the unequal ecology of the pandemic has flared up the need for the State to strengthen participation and inclusion policies, it has also provided opportunities to foreground the disadvantages vulnerable communities face that also demand policy attention and sustained funding. Governments in migrant-receiving countries like Australia and Italy need to articulate culturally sensitive and inclusive responses that foreground agencies give vulnerable migrants, asylum seekers and refugees clear, supportive messages of solidarity leading to practical solutions.Originality/valueThis paper relays preliminary data from the coalface (migrant service providers) and media as the pandemic evolved in the two countries, whose support mechanisms had never before been critically compared and evaluated through the lens of racial inequality in the face of a health and social crisis.

Immigration, perceived discrimination and mental health: evidence from Venezuelan population living in Peru

BackgroundThe association between international migration and mental health is conditioned to several factors, and discrimination may play a significant role. Currently, Peru is one of the principal Venezuelan migrant-receiving countries in Latin America. There are around one million Venezuelan refugees and migrants in the country. This study evaluates the association between self-perceived discrimination and mental health problems in Venezuelan population living in Peru.MethodWe analyzed data from the Venezuelan Population Residing in Peru Survey 2018, a nationally representative urban sample aimed at collecting information on several dimensions of Venezuelan population wellbeing. We applied logistic regression models to assess the association between self-perceived discrimination and mental health problems. Moreover, we applied the propensity score matching method as a robustness check of our results.ResultsOf 9487 Venezuelans surveyed, 6806 included complete information. From this sample, 6.3% reported mental health problems related to fear, anger, anxiety, or stress. Logistic regression models showed that Venezuelans who perceived being discriminated against had 2.4 higher odds of presenting mental health problems than their non-discriminated counterparts. Moreover, propensity score matching models showed that Venezuelans who perceived being discriminated against increased by 3.5 percentage points their probability of presenting mental health problems compared to their non-discriminated counterparts.ConclusionsThere is evidence that self-perceived discrimination is associated with mental health deterioration in Venezuelan migrants living in Peru. Our findings are relevant in the current geopolitical context and could be useful in the decision making processes in international health.

Chinese–international intimate relations: An Australian case study of migrant marriage and divorce

This article analyses trends in Chinese–international marriages and divorces, using Australia, a major migrant-receiving country, as a comparative case study. In exploring the recent rise of ‘Chinese–foreign’ marriage in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), we show that Chinese–international marriage within mainland China is a small, gendered phenomenon that largely involves Chinese women marrying men from other Asian societies. By examining unique data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, we reveal that most marriages involving PRC-born people in contemporary Australia are between two people born in China. But the displacement of Chinese intimate relationships to a non-Asian country results in significant behavioural divergences from couples ‘at home’, especially regarding prior cohabitation. Marriages solely involving PRC-born couples in Australia are also typically less enduring than marriages to non-Chinese. We argue that these differences underscore the roles of country-specific immigration policies and labour mobility patterns in shaping unpredicted family formation behaviour.

Migration, externalities, and the diffusion of COVID-19 in South Asia☆

The initial spread of COVID-19 halted economic activity as countries around the world restricted the mobility of their citizens. As a result, many migrant workers returned home, spreading the virus across borders. We investigate the relationship between migrant movements and the spread of COVID-19 using district-day-level data from Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan (the 1st, 6th, and 7th largest sources of international migrant workers). We find that during the initial stage of the pandemic, a 1 SD increase in prior international out-migration relative to the district-wise average in India and Pakistan predicts a 48% increase in the number of cases per capita. In Bangladesh, however, the estimates are not statistically distinguishable from zero. Domestic out-migration predicts COVID-19 diffusion in India, but not in Bangladesh and Pakistan. In all three countries, the association of COVID-19 cases per capita and measures of international out-migration increases over time. The results show how migration data can be used to predict coronavirus hotspots. More broadly, the results are consistent with large cross-border negative externalities created by policies aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19 in migrant-receiving countries.

‘So, he is practically a Korean?’: Power relations and re-articulation of the Korean Self in the TV show Non-Summit

Korean national identity is defined by nationalist sentiment and a mono-ethnic self-image. Having turned into a migrant-receiving country, Korea is slowly transforming into a multicultural society. The contemporary popularity of television shows with migrant representation reflects this change. The question arises how migrants get depicted in these popular broadcasting shows and what this portrayal of non-Koreans reveals about re-articulations of the Korean Self. As a response to these questions, a critical discourse analysis of Episodes 1 and 103 of the show Non-Summit (Bijeongsang hoedam 2014–17) is conducted. Corresponding to Koller’s (2011) combined discourse-historical and socio-cognitive approach, macro-, meso- and micro-level are analysed separately. Overall, Non-Summit reproduces Korean discourse on multiculturalism as ‘happy talk’, as the avoidance of in-depth consideration of inequality, the reproduction of ‘western’ norms and the normativity of Koreanness. This results from predominantly selecting Caucasians and constructing them as ‘para-Koreans’ who can then be readily consumed. These practices enable the Korean Self to position itself as analogous to western, modern norms. This positioning mirrors the influence of ‘nouveau-riche nationalism’ and the Korean ‘will to greatness’. The show further consolidates existing societal norms in Korea (Kang 2017: 14) on four different levels of power relations between Korean producers/writers and migrant population in Korea, non-Korean cast and migrant population in Korea, Korean producers/writers/hosts and non-Korean cast, and Korean viewers and non-Korean cast, and hierarchizes modern and traditional values. Thereby, Non-Summit reproduces the South Korean struggle to reconstruct a homogenous national identity in the face of a rising ethnic diversity within the country.

From local control to remote control: an excavation of international mobility constraints

Before the passage of the US Immigration Act of 1924, governments of migrant-receiving countries decided whether to admit most prospective immigrants only after they arrived at the border; afterward, the United States and then later other migrant-receiving states required prospective migrants and visitors to apply for visas in their country of residence before coming—an institution that Zolberg has termed “remote control.” Previous scholars wrote about remote control in terms of how it increased the capacity of states to reduce immigration, protect their societies from external threats, and maintain sovereignty, but did not analyze in detail how it did so. Here I analyze three ways through which remote control was a model for a more general revolution in migration control that simultaneously reduced interactions between inhabitants in migrant-receiving societies and those in migrant-sending societies, slowed down the historical reduction of inequality between migrant-sending and migrant-receiving societies, and reduced research and critical awareness within migrant-receiving societies about remote control’s structural impact on societies in general. First, this institution brought more order and precision to the process of individually evaluating prospective visitors. Second, it enabled states to select and define authorized migrants according to their migratory purpose and to force other migrants either to demonstrate enough stamina and strength to enter unauthorized or to die trying. Third, by moving the migrant selection process to migrant-sending societies remote control reduced contact between residents in migrant-receiving societies and prospective migrants in migrant-sending societies. In these three ways, remote control has more generally constrained migratory opportunities and global mobility of individuals between distinct societies.