New Economics Of Labor Migration Research Articles

Emigration and the Family Economy: Bangladeshi Labor Migration to Saudi Arabia

The new economics of labor migration explains migration as part of family strategies to address income risks and capital constraints in developing countries. However, it does not adequately take into account the risks and costs borne by migrant families in contemporary labor migration. This paper examines the emigration-family economy nexus highlighting the undercurrent of risks in the labor migration process. This study draws from the experiences of Bangladeshi families who have family members working in Saudi Arabia. The research reports that migrants often undertake international migration at great costs of their own, incurring large debts, risking personal savings and family assets, and accentuating income risks and capital constraints, while the remittances are meager in the repair of such family economy.

Migration and agricultural production in Burkina Faso

This article analyzes the relationship between migration and agricultural production in Burkina Faso. It lies on the model of the New Economics of Labor Migration, and uses the 2003 to 2004 cropping season data collected in the Sudanese area. The results show that the majority of rural households in Burkina Faso are involved in migration, and migration is an important part of their income. The results obtained from the analysis come to validate partially the assumptions of the New Economics of Labor Migration; which highlight some weaknesses in the way markets function in the rural area notably the labor market. Key words: Migration, remittances, agricultural production, new economics of labor migration, Burkina Faso

The New Economics of Labor Migration: Beware of Neoclassicals Bearing Gifts

Until the emergence of the New Economics of Labor Migration (NELM) in the 1980s, migration scholars were largely divided into two main theoretical camps, viz. the neoclassical and historical-structural approaches to migration. Against this background, the NELM presented itself as a theoretical ‘third way’ between the two latter approaches, and purported to reconcile agency and structure in a way previously unachieved by either of them. While those pretensions gained a fair amount of acceptance and popularity, this paper argues that they are fundamentally misleading, and that the NELM is little more than a slightly more sophisticated avatar of the neoclassical approach to migration, whose fundamental weaknesses it has not, and cannot, shed. This paper further argues that, in so doing, the NELM effectively constitutes migration theory's own instance of economics imperialism, i.e. the attempt to advance the fundamental tenets of neoclassical economics (methodological individualism and the assumption of optimizing rationality) within the context of the study and interpretation of various social phenomena. In order to put forth these arguments, this paper provides a summary presentation of the standard neoclassical theory of migration, the historical-structural heterodoxy and the NELM; highlights why it is that the NELM should be regarded as a ‘reworked’ version of the neoclassical theoretical framework and discusses its inception in the context of the ‘information-theoretic revolution’ in economics; and argues for a new and improved ‘historical-structural synthesis’ as a more satisfactory alternative to both the NELM and the standard neoclassical theory.

Undocumented Migration from Latin America in an Era of Rising U.S. Enforcement.

Available data have consistently pointed up the failure of U.S. policies to reduce undocumented migration from Latin America. To shed light on the reasons for this failure, we estimated a series of dynamic models of undocumented entry into and exit from the United States. Our estimates suggest that undocumented migration is grounded more in mechanisms posited by social capital theory and the new economics of labor migration rather than neoclassical economics. As a result, U.S. efforts to increase the costs of undocumented entry and reduce the benefits of undocumented labor have proven unsuccessful given the widespread access of Latin Americans to migrant networks. The main effect of U.S. enforcement efforts has been to reduce the circularity of Latin American migration.

Water savings through off‐farm employment?

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to gain more insight into the relationship between off‐farm employment of rural households and water‐saving investments and irrigation water use in rural China.Design/methodology/approachData from a survey held among 317 households in Minle County, Zhangye City, Gansu Province, covering the year 2007, are used for a probit analysis explaining investments in land leveling and for an ordinary least squares regression explaining irrigation water use per mu.FindingsOff‐farm employment is not significantly related to investments in land leveling, but is negatively associated with water use per mu. In addition, the paper finds that the share of migrant students in a household is positively related to investments in land leveling. The results indicate the presence of major factor market imperfections in the research area, and confirm that the new economics of labor migration (NELM) approach is more relevant for analyzing off‐farm employment and agricultural production in China than neoclassical economic theory.Originality/valueThe paper expands the NELM approach towards the analysis of water‐saving investments and water use. In addition, it distinguishes migrant students as an important category that should be taken into account in analyzing farm household decisions making.

Migration and Development: A Theoretical Perspective.

The debate on migration and development has swung back and forth like a pendulum, from developmentalist optimism in the 1950s and 1960s, to neo‐Marxist pessimism over the 1970s and 1980s, towards more optimistic views in the 1990s and 2000s. This paper argues how such discursive shifts in the migration and development debate should be primarily seen as part of more general paradigm shifts in social and development theory. However, the classical opposition between pessimistic and optimistic views is challenged by empirical evidence pointing to the heterogeneity of migration impacts. By integrating and amending insights from the new economics of labor migration, livelihood perspectives in development studies and transnational perspectives in migration studies – which share several though as yet unobserved conceptual parallels – this paper elaborates the contours of a conceptual framework that simultaneously integrates agency and structure perspectives and is therefore able to account for the heterogeneous nature of migration‐development interactions. The resulting perspective reveals the naivety of recent views celebrating migration as self‐help development “from below”. These views are largely ideologically driven and shift the attention away from structural constraints and the vital role of states in shaping favorable conditions for positive development impacts of migration to occur.

Determinants of Remittances to Mexico From Mexican-Born Immigrants in Chicago

Using a 2005 multi-stage probabilistic sample of 510 Mexican-born immigrants from Cook County, Illinois, which includes the City of Chicago, two logistic regression models are estimated to test the relevance of the New Economics of Labor Migration on the likelihood to remit money to Mexico. The findings indicate that life cycle variables such as being married or being a female immigrant decrease the likelihood to remit, while having dependent children in Mexico increases the probability of sending money to Mexico. Furthermore, being a U.S. citizen also lowers the likelihood of remitting to Mexico relative to other types of immigrants, but preference for Mexico's lifestyle over Chicago's increases the likelihood to remit. Other variables, such as the immigrant's educational achievement in Mexico or the United States, English proficiency, weekly income, work status, number of trips to Mexico in the past year, voting in Mexico or the United States, or being affiliated to a Protestant church, do not affect the likelihood to remit.

Rural-urban migration, rural household income and local geographical contexts—A case of northwestern Guangxi, China

This paper aims to examine New Economics of Labor Migration (NELM) in the northwestern Guangxi, China and investigate the relationships among rural-urban migration, rural household income and local geographical contexts. Stratified sampling and typical case study were adopted and 236 questionnaires were collected from four villages, Daxin, Lixin, Longhe and Yongchang. We analyzed the rural-urban migration rate, household income and local geographical factors, focusing on the ratio of remittance income to total household income. Data descriptions and statistical methods, such as Pearson Chi-square test, Contingency coefficient, Eta, Pearson correlation coefficient, t-test, multiple comparisons (LSD test, Tamhane T2, Dunnett T3 and Dunnet C test) were used. The results are as follows. Rural households’ income is diversified in survey villages so the motivation of rural-urban migration in the study area can be partly explained by NELM. The migration rate of households (the percentage of households with migrants in survey households) in survey villages varies from 50% to 86%, while the proportion of remittance income to household income is in the range of 30% to 80%. In the village of Yongchang, with the least average arable land area per household, the remittance income plays a vital role in household income (80%). And the statistical findings show that the proportion is significantly and negatively correlated with arable land area per household. The conclusion is that direct effect of migration, i.e., the contribution of remittance to household income, is negatively correlated with the contribution of resources to local income.

Family and Migration in Comparative Perspective: Reply to King*

In a previous article in Social Science Quarterly (Sana and Massey, 2005), we compared remittance receipt by households in four countries: Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, focusing especially on the first two. We argued that the new economics of labor migration (NELM) offered a useful theoretical rationale for understanding remittances to Mexico, but not to the other countries. The Mexican patriarchal family system coincidentally fulfills the expectations of NELM by making it very likely that male migrants will send money earned in the United States back home to their families. We found that remittance receipt in Mexico was associated with the migration of males more than of females and that remittances flowed disproportionately to communities that offered better opportunities for investment, suggesting their use for overcoming missing capital and credit markets. Moreover, whereas nuclear households were least likely to receive remittances in most countries, that disadvantage disappeared when Mexican households were considered alone.

Comment on “Migration and Incomes in Source Communities: A New Economics of Migration Perspective from China”

One of the central ideas of the “new economics of labor migration” is that migration from a village household can enable the household to overcome two major obstacles that stand in the way of its ability to transform its production technology: paucity of investment funds (a credit constraint) and scarcity of risk-mitigating devices (an insurance constraint). “In bypassing the [local] credit and insurance markets . . . migration facilitates the transformation [to the new technology]; it succeeds in doing this via its dual role in the accumulation of investment capital . . . usually generating significant urban-torural- flows of remittances and through diversification of income sources [in] controlling the level of risk.” A diagrammatic display of this argument provided by Taylor Rozelle and de Brauw (2003) constitutes an original and appealing way of synthesizing the argument. However the diagram does not represent the argument adequately. The purpose of this note is to correct and supplement the representation offered by Taylor et al. (excerpt)

Buying membership in the transnational community:migrant remittances, social status, and assimilation

I analyze the effects that social status and immigrant incorporation have on migrant remittances. Understanding remittances as one type of transnational practice, I conceptualize them as the fee that migrants pay to remain members of the transnational community. I define a “status hypothesis” in terms consistent with the view of transnational engagement as a response to status loss, predicting a negative association between increases in social status and remittances. Since immigrant incorporation usually entails status gain, this hypothesis is consistent with the conventional assimilation paradigm. While the status hypothesis could be linked to the new economics of labor migration as well, it collides with the view of transnationalism as an alternative path for successful immigrant incorporation. Using data on male Mexican migrants to the United States, I find enough support for the status hypothesis, indicating the need to clarify the ultimate meaning of transnational practices. In addition, my analysis shows that there is room to integrate economic theory, the assimilation paradigm, and the transnational perspective into a comprehensive understanding of transnational engagement.

Household Composition, Family Migration, and Community Context: Migrant Remittances in Four Countries*

Objectives. We study migrant remittances among households surveyed in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, testing expectations derived from the new economics of labor migration (NELM) and from the historic‐structural approach.Methods. We applied logistic regression analyses to survey data collected by the Mexican Migration Project and the Latin American Migration Project, focusing on the contrast between Mexico and the Dominican Republic.Results. In Mexico, remittances seem to be associated with the patriarchal traditional family, but in the Dominican Republic we verified the opposite. Receipt of remittances is positively associated with degree of development among Mexican households, but the association is negative in the Dominican Republic. In addition, Mexican remittances are negatively associated with the number of businesses in the local community.Conclusions. In Mexico, as predicted by NELM, the cohesive patriarchal family ensures the flow of remittances as part of a household strategy of risk diversification. Dominican remittances, however, seem to be mostly determined by lack of opportunities and household need.

Social-Capital Mobilization and Income Returns to Entrepreneurship: The Case of Return Migration in Rural China

Temporary labor migration in developing countries is an important urban–rural linkage that has a potential impact on rural development. According to the new economies of labor migration, it is often a strategy used by families with small farms to acquire investment capital for future business formation. In this paper, I argue further that human-capital accretion during migration reinforces the mobilization of local social capital, which in turn enhances a returnee's entrepreneurship. By using the results of an in-depth survey of returned labor migrants in rural China, I seek to explain the mobilization of social capital and income return to entrepreneurship in a multivariate framework. I find that skilled returnees are indeed more prone to mobilize social capital. The income return to local social capital is as considerable as that to investment capital and skills acquired at the urban destination. The findings suggest that the consequences of labor migration can be better understood through the integration of the new economics of labor migration and social capital