Migrant-sending Areas Research Articles

From origin to destination: examining the effects of migration on Woldia’s growth and surrounding migrant sending areas in Ethiopia

From origin to destination: examining the effects of migration on Woldia’s growth and surrounding migrant sending areas in Ethiopia

Drought and migration: An analysis of the effects of drought on temporary labor and return migration from a migrant-sending area in Nepal.

Although the relationship between drought - a dimension of climate change - and migration has been explored in a number of settings, prior research has largely focused on out-migration and has not considered climate factors at the migrant destination. However, drought may impact not only out-migration, but also return migration, particularly in settings where temporary labor migration and agricultural reliance are common. Thus, considering drought conditions at origin and destinations is necessary to specify the effects of climate on migrant-sending populations. Using detailed data from the Chitwan Valley Family Study, a household panel study in a migrant-sending area in Nepal, we analyze the effect of drought at the neighborhood level on individual-level out-migration and drought at the origin district on return migration among adults from 2011 to 2017, assessing these associations among males and females separately. In mixed-effect discrete-time regressions, we find that neighborhood drought is positively associated with out-migration and return migration, both internally and internationally among males. Among females, drought is positively associated with internal out-migration and return migration, but not international migrations. We did not find an association between drought at the origin and return migration independent of drought status at the destination. Taken together, these findings contribute to our understanding of the complexity of the impacts of precipitation anomalies on population movement over time.

Mental Health Problems amongst Left-behind Adolescents in China: Serial Mediation Roles of Parent-Adolescent Communication and School Bullying Victimisation

AbstractBackgroundAdolescent mental health is a global public health concern and parental migration has been identified as a risk factor. However, the effect mechanism remained unclear.MethodsA total of 2,737 participants (mean = 11.93, SD = 1.23) were recruited from twelve schools in migrant-sending areas in Zhejiang and Anhui provinces. The participants responded to items in Child Depression Inventory, Parent–Adolescent Communication Scale, Olweus Bully or Victim Questionnaire and socio-demographic questions. Serial multiple mediation models were analysed using the bootstrapping method.ResultsCurrent and previous left-behind (LB) experience were significantly associated with higher risks of depression, non-suicidal self-injury and suicidal ideation (p < 0.05). Mother–adolescent communication and school bullying victimisation, in serial order, mediated the effect of current LB status on mental health (p < 0.05). In terms of previously LB adolescents, parent–adolescent communication was a standalone mediator (p < 0.01) and the serial mediation effect of parent–adolescent communication and school bullying victimisation was significant.ConclusionsLack of parent–adolescent communication and school bullying victimisation acted as risk factors for the negative effect of LB status or experience on adolescent mental health. The importance of these two interpersonal factors motivates future intervention initiatives to support the mental health of LB adolescents from an integrated perspective.

International Migration from Rural Punjab- An Analysis

This study is designed to analyze the overall causes and impacts of migration. This study examines those determinants of international migration which inspire the people of low income in less developed countries to migrate to high income developed countries. This Research is purely based on primary data which has been collected from the fifteen villages of two districts of Punjab namely Jalandhar and SBS Nagar. The primary aim of this research was to know about the impacts of international migration on rural Punjab. During the survey it has been noticed that international migration has brought very notable changes in the migrant sending areas. As the thinking level of migrants’ family members had changed a lot and remittances sent by NRIs also improved their financial conditions enormously. Remittance recipient households utilize these remittances for various motives such as for repayment of loan, for constructionpurposes, to purchase household goods and for donation purposes also.

When parents are not present: Decision-making dynamics for young children's health and illness in migrant-sending households in rural Cambodia

As migration rates increase globally, an increasing proportion of children in low- and middle-income countries live apart from their parents. In particular, skipped-generation households are becoming more common, with grandparents serving as primary caregivers for young grandchildren whose parents migrate and provide remittance support. Yet, how families living apart make decisions for young children's healthcare is not well understood. Processes of care seeking for children's health are examined in Cambodia, which has high rates of internal and international migration, and an increasing number of skipped-generation households. We conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with grandparents who are primary caregivers for children under ten in skipped-generation households in rural migrant-sending areas. Respondents discussed their family's migration history, care seeking and decision making for grandchildren, dynamics with absent migrant parents, and sources of support. Decisions for children's care are intimately tied to the availability of migrant remittances, which are the modality of the relationship between grandparents and parents. Additional remittance support allows grandparents to make decisions for grandchildren's health based on convenience rather than cost, given the burdens of caring grandparents have taken on a result of the parent's migration. Instrumental supports such as in-kind assistance and informational supports further facilitated children's access to healthcare. This qualitative study informs and explains findings from recent quantitative studies of migration and child health.

Return migration and in situ urbanization of migrant sending areas: Insights from a survey of seven provinces in China

Based on a survey in seven provinces and drawing on previous evidence of in situ urbanization in the coastal areas, this paper examines the implications of return migration for in situ urbanization of migrants' sending areas in China. It shows that returnees can act as catalysts for in situ urbanization by bringing back entrepreneurship, accrued human, financial, social, cultural and technological capital to facilitate rural-urban socioeconomic transformation of their home areas. The results of logistic regressions further confirm that returnees' individual characteristics and migration occupations significantly increase their probability of engaging in non-agricultural occupations post return. However, they seem to have little impact on returnees' likelihood of working in local urban areas. The results suggest that even though return migrants have exhibited somewhat positive impacts on the development of their home areas, their role is rather limited in promoting in situ rural-urban transformation. A weak industrial base at the origin has been identified as a major barrier for rural-urban transformation, which suggests that strategic measures to strengthen industrial capacity in those migrant sending areas should take place in order to fully unleash return migrants' potential in stimulating in situ urbanization of their home areas.

Will remittances suppress or increase household income in the migrant-sending areas? Modeling the effects of remittances in rural China

There are ongoing debates about whether remittances suppress or increase household income in the migrant-sending areas. The literature has not explained the heterogeneous results in a unified framework. This paper proposes a new concept, remittance capitalization potential (RCP), to conceptualise the possible switch between suppression effect and incentivization effect of remittances in the migrant-sending areas. The theoretical model reveals that remittances suppress household income in the migrant-sending areas when the RCP level is below a certain threshold, while remittances help increase household income in the migrant-sending areas when the RCP level is above a certain threshold. Moreover, the factors that affect the RCP level, such as the level of household human capital, ultimately determine whether remittances exert suppression or incentivization effect in the migrant-sending areas. Using China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) data, this paper adopts the method of instrumental variables to estimate how the level of household human capital alters the effect of remittances on household income from agricultural production in rural China. The models show that in the households with the head agricultural producers who are illiterate or semi-literate, the remittances suppress the agricultural income significantly. In the households with the head agricultural producers who are literate, however, the impact of remittances on the agricultural income switch to be positive significantly. The robustness tests not only support the results from the base models, but also confirm that the level of household human capital works as an influencing factor of RCP and determines whether remittances suppress or increase household income in the migrant-sending areas.

Migration and investments in the health of children left behind: the role of remittances in children's healthcare utilization in Cambodia.

Remittances, financial support from family members who have migrated for work, are an increasingly important source of income for households left behind in many lower- and middle-income countries. While remittances have been shown to affect the health status of children left behind, evidence is very limited as to whether and how they affect children's healthcare utilization. Yet, this is an important consideration for policymakers seeking to improve equitable access to quality care in settings where migration is common. I examine whether children under age five whose household receives remittances are more likely to utilize higher quality healthcare providers than those without remittances in Cambodia, a country with high rates of migration and a pluralistic health system. The analysis includes 2230 children reporting recent illness in three waves of the Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey with data on migration, remittances and children's health expenditures. I use mixed-effects and fixed-effects regression analysis to estimate the effect of remittances on children's likelihood of entering care with a formally trained provider, and among those attending a formally trained provider, likelihood of using a public-sector facility. Treatment expenditures are lower among households with remittances, while transportation expenditures do not vary significantly by remittance status. In mixed-effects and fixed-effect regression models, children who receive remittances have a lower likelihood of utilizing qualified providers (adjusted OR = 0.66, 95% confidence interval 0.44-0.98), though this effect is attenuated in fixed-effects models, and there is no association between remittances and attending a public-sector facility. These findings underscore that remittances alone are not sufficient to increase children's utilization of qualified providers in migrant-sending areas, and suggest that policymakers should to address barriers to care beyond cost to promote utilization and equity of access to higher quality care where remittances are a common source of income.

Translocal mobility systems: Social inequalities and flows in the wild berry industry

This paper uses the lens of translocality to investigate the seasonal mobility system of Thai berry pickers in Sweden: the perspective highlights the local-to-local relations that constitute this transnational and fluid mobility system. In this paper, we add the aspect of social inequalities to translocal studies, while arguing that multi-sited and locally grounded recruitment processes are contributing to produce and reproduce the mobility system. In the migrant-receiving area, stereotyping processes are active in shaping the selection of workers based on ethnicity, whereas in the migrant-sending area local asymmetries are visible in the selectivity of workers on the basis of age, wealth, and gender. In this way, the aspect of social inequalities, locally embedded at both ends of the recruitment process, is highlighted as a dimension to consider in translocal mobility systems. This is achieved through the analysis of multi-sited fieldwork in Sweden and Thailand that consisted of observations and interviews with Thai workers and representatives of the Swedish berry business.

Care for left-behind children in rural China: A realist evaluation of a community-based intervention

In many countries, large numbers of left-behind children (LBC) grow up experiencing prolonged separation from their migrant worker parents. These children are known to be vulnerable to psychological and developmental problems. Drawing on qualitative interview data as well as ethnographic observations, a realist approach was applied in this study to evaluate the feasibility, acceptance, preliminary outcomes and potential sustainability of a community-based intervention to provide care and support to LBC, in a migrant-sending area of rural China. The intervention program comprised “Children's Clubs” in local communities, in which LBC participate in play and educational activities under the care and supervision of local volunteers. Twelve Clubs in 12 different villages were evaluated for the study. In each village, semi-structured interviews were conducted with three community stakeholders, and children and primary caregivers from two families, to examine their perceptions and experiences with regard to the intervention. Our findings indicated that most Clubs adapted the initial program theory and implementation plan to specific community contexts, particularly the socio-economic situation and the support from village leadership and other community members. Program implementation mechanisms consisted of integrating available resources, engaging local volunteers, and delivering various Club activities. Preliminary outcomes indicated the success in establishing a community care platform to benefit the emotional and behavioral wellbeing of LBC, and to enhance the community support networks. To ensure program sustainability, the Children's Clubs should explore new funding schemes, expand the pool of qualified volunteers, and improve the curricular and activities at the Clubs.

Responsible adults-in-the-making: Intergenerational impact of parental migration on Indonesian young women’s aspirational capacity

In the developing economies in Southeast Asia, labour migration is increasingly seen not simply to generate income to meet short-term livelihood needs but to secure the family’s future, often by investing in children’s education. While much work has been done studying the impact of parents’ remittances on children’s wellbeing including education access, the impact of parental migration on children’s (educational) aspirations has received less attention. Viewing youth as social actors, this paper interrogates how they make meaning of their parents’ migration, and how this consequently influences their decisions to activate, delay or reshape their hopes and plans for their own educational and work trajectories. With the increasing feminisation of labour migration in Southeast Asia where gendered regimes in care and domestic work make it easier for women to work overseas, this paper focuses attention on the aspirations of young women at the cusp of adulthood from a migrant-sending area in rural East Java, Indonesia. These young women’s ‘navigational capacity’ (Appadurai, 2004) is not only shaped by tangible obstacles such as the lack of sufficient resources, but is also more subtly moulded by an emerging discourse of self-responsibilisation in the making of ‘dutiful daughters’. Drawing on conceptualisations of multiple ‘logics of aspiring’ operating within spatial contexts (Zipin et al., 2015), we show how young women unsettle, inflect and challenge the normative linear education-work transitions by expressing their desire to replace their parents in accessing labour migration as a livelihood option, and reflect on the dialectical relationship between agency and aspirations.

Immigration Policy and Agriculture: Possible Directions for the Future

Presidential candidate Trump in 2016 promised to prevent unauthorized migration and deport unauthorized foreigners in the United States, and President Trump issued executive orders after taking office in January 2017 that could lead to a 2,000-mile wall on the Mexico-US border and the removal of many of the 11 million unauthorized foreigners, including one million who work in US agriculture. This paper emphasizes that, especially agriculture in the western United States, has long relied on newcomers to fill seasonal farm jobs. The slowdown in Mexico-US migration since 2008–09 means that there are fewer flexible newcomers to supplement the current workforce, which is aging and settled. Farm employers are responding by offering bonuses to satisfy current workers, stretching them with productivity-increasing tools, substituting machines for workers, and supplementing current workforces with legal H-2A guest workers. Immigration policy will influence the choice between mechanization, guest workers, and imports. Several factors suggest that the United States may be poised to embark on another large-scale guest worker program for agriculture. If it does, farmers should begin to pay Social Security and Unemployment Insurance (UI) taxes on the wages of H-2A workers to foster mechanization and development in the workers' communities of origin by dividing these payroll taxes equally between workers as they depart and commodity-specific boards. Worker departure bonuses could be matched by governments in migrant-sending areas to promote development, and commodity-specific boards could spend monies to reduce dependence on hand labor over time. The economic incentives provided by payroll taxes could help to usher in a new and better era of farm labor.

The undermining of rural labor out-migration by household strategies in China's migrant-sending areas: The case of Nanyang, Henan Province

Although migrant labor shortages have affected migrant-receiving areas in Eastern China for many years, research shows that there is still an abundance of laborers in rural China. Therefore, the dynamics that undermine the out-migration of rural laborers in migrant-sending areas is a critical factor in the pace of China's urbanization process. Public policies promulgated by the central government focus on institutional reform, such as offering urban hukou33Also known as the household registration system, the hukou assigns citizens rural status (rural or agricultural hukou) or urban status (urban or non-agricultural hukou) in de jure terms. to rural migrants. Still, the decision-making processes of rural villagers and potential migrants remain unclear. Based on a case study of 32 townships in Nanyang, and further investigation in nine migrant-sending provinces, this paper probes into the livelihood strategies of rural households, rather than accepting the current conclusions of many Western research models. Preliminary findings reveal that rural livelihood strategies are undermining further out-migration of rural laborers in migrant-sending areas in three ways: 1) income diversification strategies that reflect emerging local off-farm job opportunities; 2) peri-urbanization driven by rural hukou that rural residents find increasingly attractive compared to urban hukou; and 3) localized urbanization driven by rural industrialization, better public services and rural residents' desire to keep families intact. These findings differ from previous explanations of the coexistence of migrant labor shortages and an abundant rural labor supply. Most importantly, they suggest that opening urban hukou entitlement will not promote further rural-to-urban migration per se to the extent that is generally assumed, unless a more coordinated rural–urban development model can be achieved to change rural household livelihood diversification strategies.

Why populations persist: mobility, place attachment and climate change

Explanations of relationships between migration and environmental change now focus on multiple interactions, risks in destination and immobility. This research applies behavioural migration theory to examine the extent to which immobile populations experiencing environmental degradation exercise agency with respect to location and, in doing so, elucidates what it means to be trapped. This research uses individual survey data from a migrant-sending area in highland Peru where the population experiences negative health and livelihood impacts from climate-related phenomena. Analysis of these data reveals three reasons for non-migration: high levels of satisfaction, resource barriers and low mobility potential. Immobility in dissatisfied people is more likely to be caused by attachment to place than resource constraints. Thus, the results suggest that trapped populations exist along a continuum. This highlights the need for policy responses differentiated by the mobility characteristics and preferences of the individual. Caution, therefore, must be exercised when labelling populations as trapped and promoting relocation.

Grandchildren Caregiving: Elderly Support for the Family (A Case Study in Some International Migrant Sending Areas in West Java)

As their abilities continue to deteriorate, most senior citizens are assumed to need expansion in the caring for them. However, previous studies found that instead of being care recipients, many elderly actually provided support for their families. Specifically in migrant worker source areas, the main support that is usually provided by the elderly is the care for grandchildren who are left behind by their migrant parents. A study in two migrant worker villages in Indramayu district, West Java province, revealed that senior citizens were the main caregivers in one-fourth of households with at least one left behind child that were interviewed in the study. Although the elderly were never asked about their willingness to take over the chore, they accepted it readily and saw it as their contribution in rearing the grandchildren. Some elderly encountered several problems while caring for the grandchildren, mainly the financial matters and the disciplining of grandchildren.

Migration and Foreign Aid

AbstractWhen it comes to linkages between migration and the global allocation of foreign development assistance, the size of the immigrant population from a recipient country residing in a donor country is an important determinant of dyadic aid commitments. Two complementary hypotheses probe this relationship. First, donors use foreign aid to achieve their broader immigration goals, targeting migrant-sending areas to increase development and decrease the demand for entry into the donor country. Second, migrants already residing in the donor country mobilize to lobby for additional aid for their homeland. Empirical tests on a large sample of country pairs made up of twenty-two donors and more than 150 recipients over the period 1993 to 2008 show robust support for these hypotheses.

Emigration as Family Strategy in Chinese Context: Emigration from Fuqing, China

This study explores how family characteristics affect the emigration of family members from the city of Fuqing, China, a major migrant-sending area in China. We focus our discussion on three related questions: how family demographic characteristics affect a family’s participation in emigration, the number of family members involved in emigration, and the locational diversification of family members overseas. Our findings show that family income is related to whether the family has any members overseas and their numbers. Second, a larger family is more likely to participate in migration. These findings are consistent with the argument that migration is a joint family decision. Third, effects of demographic characteristics of different generations on emigration indicate again that migration is a family matter. Finally, our Fuqing findings show no clear patterns of family members settling in the same country if more than one member is overseas.

Household Migration, Remittances, and Its Impact on Health in Indonesia.

The growing flow of migrant's remittances has generated much interest in understanding the socioeconomic consequences of household migration for individuals and families in migrant-sending areas. This paper examines the effect of household migration on health status, as measured by nutritional status, of adults who remained behind in rural Indonesia, a setting with high rate of out-migration and poor nutritional profiles. Assuming that remittances may improve household economic resources and thus change dietary intake and health-related investment, household migration may be associated with both the risks of undernutrition and overnutrition. The analyses use longitudinal data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey and fixed-effect regressions. The results show that adults in emigrant household were significantly less susceptible to being underweight than those in non-migrant households, but they did not have increased risk of being overweight. The improved nutritional status was restricted to people in households with labor migrants, highlighting the role of remittances in improving nutritional intake. The health gain also was concentrated among women, increased with the number of out-migrants, and was revealed over time as remittances arrived. Overall, this study demonstrates the beneficial role of household migration, especially the resulting remittances, in the health status of household members in resource-constrained settings. Improving transfers of remittances would be helpful in reducing the problem of undernutrition in poor migrant-sending areas.

Household migration, social support, and psychosocial health: The perspective from migrant-sending areas

An extensive literature demonstrates various negative health consequences of family disruption in Western societies, which is largely due to marital dissolution. In developing settings, family disruption commonly arises in the context of labor out-migration. However, studies on household emigration often focus on the economic benefits from remittances, overlooking emigration as a source of stress and loss of social support. This research examines the psychosocial consequences of internal out-migration using longitudinal survey data collected in Indonesia between 1993 and 2007. Results demonstrate considerable psychosocial costs of out-migration, with adults left behind by migrants more susceptible to stress-related health impairments such as hypertension and to psychological distress such as depressive symptoms. These findings largely hold when specific relations are investigated, including spouses left behind and parents left behind by adult children. This study also finds some support for the stress-buffering role of social support from extended families and the differential psychosocial processes for men and women.

MIGRATION AND GENDER IDENTITY IN THE RURAL PHILIPPINES

Remittances associated with labor migration have been hailed by many as the most direct form of development to rural migrant-sending areas of the Global South, but focusing only on the quantity of cash flows does little to contextualize how migration has transformed social structures in rural areas. Through a qualitative focus on divisions of agrarian labor and decision-making, this article illustrates how the out-migration of men from rural areas of the Philippines is challenging preexisting gender ideologies of agricultural labor. The article examines how wives “left-behind” by their migrant husbands negotiate forms of farm work and responsibility that are culturally prescribed as “masculine.” While a number of studies have detailed how female migration can destabilize conventional gender roles—as housebound husbands are shown to take up social reproductive work often considered “feminine”—the impacts of male migration on the participation of housebound wives in productive farming practices has been less studied. This article presents several vignettes of stay-at-home mothers who venture into farming and it analyzes how these women interpret their own gender identity.