Immigrant Selection Research Articles

Fashioning of the Homo Economicus (Economic Citizen): Reflections on Migration and Integration

ABSTRACT This article critically explores what is meant by integration and the expectations that come with it, and how the ‘right’ kind of economic citizen (homo economicus) gets produced through social work practice with immigrants. This article engages in critical reflection on a participant’s narrative that derives from a larger study that investigated structural and individualistic factors that describe how Ethiopian immigrants living in Toronto, Canada negotiate the decision-making process to returning to their homeland. At the macro-level, the study explored the role that broader processes of social, political and economic transformation (globalization) play whilst at the micro-level exploring the aspirations, capabilities and individual agency to migrate out and how their experiences of settlement shape the return-thinking process. The participant accounting analyzed in this article probes the expansion of immigrant selection in Canada (Author), the policy of multiculturalism as Canada’s most recognized policy as it pertains to integration, and how they coalesce and shape settlement work with immigrants. This article, through the participant accounting, engages the question of what is meant by integration – and whether integration is the new assimilation – and concludes with a discussion on how to begin to address concerns that surround social work practice with immigrants.

Assimilation Theories in the 21st Century: Appraising Accomplishments and Future Challenges

Over a quarter century has passed since theoretical debates surrounding competing assimilation models emerged, and durably structured research on immigrants and their descendants in America and beyond. In this article, I offer a three-pronged reflection on the contemporary state of assimilation research. First, I aim to take stock of the relative merits of segmented and neoassimilation theories and their ability to explain major empirical trends in both the US and Europe. I argue that there is now an emerging empirical consensus about the second generation in the US and Western Europe primarily experiencing intergenerational progress rather than downward assimilation as envisioned by segmented assimilation theory. I then note six analytical challenges facing further theory building: clarifying the role of race and better understanding how cultural difference shapes assimilation trajectories, rethinking the relationship between immigrant socioeconomic mobility and the experience of belonging, acknowledging the importance of immigrant selectivity in conditioning assimilation, facing issues of in- and out-of-sample selectivity due to processes endogenous to assimilation such as ethnic attrition and incarceration, and studying the third generation. Looking out and into the future, I note the need for conversations across methodological traditions and specialist subfields to encourage further theoretical progress and assess existing data infrastructures and future data requirements. Finally, in tandem with machine learning applications allowing for empirical surprise and abductive reasoning, I argue that the current era of data plenitude and unprecedented ability to collect high-dimensional surveys through nonprobability online samples is likely to lead to further theoretical progress.

Persistent Educational Advantages of Asian Immigrants’ Children, 1940 to 2015–2019

The educational achievements of Asian American children, especially those from lower backgrounds, are substantially higher than other ethnoracial groups. Hyper-selectivity theory finds the origin of such an advantage in the double selectivity of Asian immigrants after the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act and the formation of cross-class community resources. Utilizing the 1940 linked full-count Census, 1940–2000 decennial censuses, and the 2008–2012 and 2015–2019 American Community Survey, this study tracks changes in the educational advantages of Asian immigrants’ children. Our results show that in contrast to the anticipated dependence of the educational achievements of Asian immigrants’ children on structural conditions, the educational advantages of Asian immigrants’ children have remained remarkably persistent over time and across geographical locations. The influx of highly educated Asian immigrants is not associated with an increase in the educational advantages of lower-background Asian Americans. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Immigrant Selectivity and Educational Outcomes of Immigrant Children: A Temporal Perspective

Immigrant Selectivity and Educational Outcomes of Immigrant Children: A Temporal Perspective

‘It’s a reward for good performance’: exploring the role of employer–employee relationships in Canada’s two-step economic immigration system

ABSTRACT This article is based on personal narrative-style interviews with various stakeholders connected to Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Programme and delves into the significant role employers play in the two-step immigration system and to the rise of Canada’s Provincial Nominee Programme. The research draws from interviews with employers, settlement workers, union representatives, and government officials, shedding light on the transition from a human capital approach to immigration to an employment-driven system. At present, Canada’s Provincial Nominee Programme serves as the primary pathway for economic-class immigrants to obtain Canadian permanent residence. It is projected that by 2025, one-fifth of all new permanent residents will have been admitted through this programme, highlighting a shifting landscape where immigrant selection is increasingly being delegated from the federal government to other actors, such as provincial governments and employers. The article focuses on how stakeholders employ discretion within Canada’s two-step immigration system and explores the affective dynamics that this discretion produces. The findings illuminate how the delegation of immigrant selection to employers amplifies the importance of intricate human, economic, and administrative relationships. These relationships form complex webs of entanglement and mutual reliance, exerting a significant influence on the outcomes of Canada’s economic immigration process.

Strangers in the Homeland? The Academic Performance of U.S.-Born Children of Return Migrants in Mexico

The number of return migrants from the U.S. to Mexico has swelled in recent years, yet we know little about the academic performance of the over 500,000 U.S.-born children who have accompanied them. This study compares Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test scores of U.S.-born children of return migrants in Mexico to two groups: Mexican-born students in Mexico and students in the U.S. born to Spanish-speaking immigrant parents. While previous work often highlights the struggles these children face in adapting to schools in Mexico, at age 15 they attain slightly higher PISA scores than their Mexican-born counterparts. However, these adolescents’ scores are much lower than similar youths’ in the U.S. Results for both comparisons change little in models controlling for variables related to immigrant selection and are consistent across possible individual moderators, including age at migration. This paper highlights the importance of a cross-border perspective and attention to institutional context in studies of immigrant education.

Explaining the attainment of the second-generation: When does parental relative education matter?

How can we understand unexplained variation in the educational outcomes of the children of immigrants? A growing literature posits that standard educational transmission models fail to explain national origin differences in attainment because they ignore immigrant selectivity – the degree to which immigrants differ from non-migrants in their sending countries. The immigrant selectivity hypothesis is usually tested using indicators of parents’ relative or “contextual” educational attainment, measuring their rank in the educational attainment distribution of their country of origin. However, using this proxy, current support for the hypothesis is mixed. We outline three conditions for the use of educational selectivity as a proxy for relative social positioning among the children of immigrants. We test our conditions using an adult and a youth sample from a large household panel survey in the UK. We supplement our analyses by exploring relative education data from prior research on Italy, France and the United States. Triangulating these varied sources, we illustrate cases when our three conditions do and do not hold, providing evidence from the UK and other contexts. We provide guidelines on the use of relative education as a measure of relative social standing in cross-national research as well as an assessment of the immigrant selectivity hypothesis in explaining second-generation educational outcomes.

Immigrant selectivity at school entry

AbstractImmigrant educational selectivity—immigrant parents' educational attainment relative to their peers who did not migrate—is associated with better schooling outcomes for children at later stages of the educational pipeline in the United States. Less is known, however, about its influence on early education‐related outcomes. Using Early Childhood Longitudinal Study data from three different cohorts and quantitative analyses, I examine the relationship between immigrant selectivity and school readiness at school entry (proxied through math skills and approaches to learning evaluations). I find that immigrant selectivity is positively associated with school readiness, but it does not generate a widespread immigrant advantage at school entry, contrary to findings related to schooling outcomes later in the schooling pipeline. Notably, among most Asian groups, immigrant selectivity partly accounts for school readiness advantages compared to their White peers with native‐born parentage, whenever they emerge. By contrast, accounting for immigrant selectivity reveals the full extent of the immigrant disadvantage at school entry among most Latino groups. These results suggest that immigrant selectivity is an important factor in shaping racial/ethnic stratification early in the schooling pipeline.

‘Stand by me’: competitive subnational regimes and the politics of retaining immigrants

ABSTRACT This article examines the pivotal role of immigration for subnational units, focusing on their efforts to retain immigrants. In the global competition for ‘wanted’ immigrants, subnational governments have developed innovative immigration-related programmes tailored to their demographic, economic, and linguistic needs. While previous research has mainly focused on the selection of international immigrants, this study delves into subnational efforts to keeping immigrants ‘in’. Using Canadian provinces as a case study, and through a qualitative content analysis of policy documents and immigration schemes, this article asks: To what extent do Canadian provinces compete to retain immigrants? The analysis reveals ‘subnational competitive immigration regimes’, wherein subnational units take policy actions to not only attract immigrants but influence or hinder their internal mobility. Downstream, provinces employ settlement and integration services to encourage retention. Upstream, provinces fine-tune their selection streams to choose migrants who are deemed more likely to stay. Policy outputs reveal how ‘wanted immigrants’ are conceptualized at the subnational level: those who can demonstrate a commitment to staying, rather than solely those who fulfil economic and demographic needs. The results shed light on the interplay between international immigration policies and immigrants’ internal mobility, and emphasize the significance of subnational policy in retaining immigrants.

Overcoming origin-based preferences by selecting skilled immigrants? Preferences in immigrants’ national origin and social class in Quebec

ABSTRACT Although most liberal democracies have abandoned preferences for national origins in immigrant selection policies, large segments of the local populations continue to prefer immigrants that they perceive to be of similar cultural, religious, and ethnic backgrounds as them. What remains unknown is whether governments can count on the promotion of successful economic integration to ensure acceptance of the greater ethnocultural and religious diversity of immigrants that now settles in host-countries through what has been identified as building a middle-class nation. Relying on an original survey experiment of 2400 respondents in Quebec, we compare reactions to immigrants of different professional status and two national origins (France and Algeria) to investigate if certain types of economic immigration can reduce origin-based preferences. Our results show that origin-based preferences shared by majority group members can be attenuated, but not eliminated by selection based on social class. That said, expectations that immigrants will contribute to Quebec's economy translate into greater acceptance of immigrants of all national origins and social classes.

Flying snails: immigrant selection and the taxon cycle in Pacific Island land snails

Flying snails: immigrant selection and the taxon cycle in Pacific Island land snails

THE SELECTIVE IMMIGRATION POLICY OF THE EUROPEAN UNION IN THE LABOUR MARKET FOR THE NON-EU NATIONALS

Migration is an indispensable option for people to sustain their life cycle and improve their quality of life. In the 20th century and beyond, we have seen immigration policies among the common policies of the European Union, mainly due to the rise in immigration and the need for workers. The EU's Common Immigration Policy is a set of social and economic policies in which a balanced approach is adopted and measures are taken to promote orderly and irregular migration practices are applied. The paper will highlight the EU's aim for a qualified immigration policy. The study's research question is to question why the EU is setting up an immigration policy that balances economic prosperity with the labour market. The study examined the situation of EU and non-EU migrant workers in terms of EU selective immigration policy, wage inequalities, social integration problems and discrimination in the labour market. The study is covered in three sections. In section one, international migration and labour migration are studied in a theoretical framework. The second section examines the EU's selective immigration policy and its impact on the labour market. The third section focuses on the integration problems faced by immigrants from EU and non-EU countries in the labour market.

SELECTIVE IMMIGRATION POLICY IN MAINTAINING STATE SECURITY AND IMPROVING THE WELFARE OF THE NATION

This writing aims to look at the role of selective immigration policies in Indonesia in order to maintain state security and improve the nation's welfare. The implementation of selective policy in Indonesia is the most important thing that cannot be ignored, the principle of selective policy looks at security and welfare approaches. Two of the functions of immigration are state security and facilitator of community welfare development. Currently, indicators of state security and the economy of a nation have become important aspects of the state. Considering that currently the movement of people between countries is becoming easier and global economic development is becoming more widespread, there will be an impact on these two factors. Selective immigration policy is a form of legal product from immigration related to regulating the entry of foreigners into Indonesia with an approach to the principle of benefits for the nation and state. This research method uses normative legal research methods with a descriptive qualitative approach.Keywords: Selective Policy, State Security, WelfareÂ

Do immigrants ever oppose immigration?

This paper analyzes immigrants’ views about immigration, contributing to the behavioral literature on the subject. In particular, it explores the role of statistical discrimination as a cause of possible opposition to immigration in the absence of stringent immigration policies and a large amount of undocumented immigration. We test this hypothesis using US data from the seventh wave of the World Value Survey, finding that economically successful immigrants in the United States (i.e., those who are in the top quintile of the socioeconomic classification), who may benefit the most from being perceived as unrelated to unskilled undocumented immigrants, have negative views about immigration, especially with respect to its contribution to unemployment, crime, and the risk of a terrorist attack. This effect does not arise in the case of countries that apply stricter controls than the United States on immigration, like Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, or do not attract as large a number of undocumented immigrants. We interpret these results as evidence that immigrants’ attitudes toward other immigrants respond to the lack of a selective immigration policy: namely, if successful immigrants run the risk of being perceived as related to undocumented or uncontrolled immigration, they respond by embracing an anti- immigration view.

Equality before the law and the recognition of same-sex foreign marriages in Namibia: Digashu and another v GRN and others; Seiler-Lilles and another v GRN and others [2023] NASC 14

Article 10(1) of the Constitution of Namibian provides for the right to equality before the law. Article 10(2) prohibits discrimination on several grounds. The Constitution of Namibia, unlike that of South Africa (1996), does not prohibit discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation. However, unlike the Constitutions of some African countries such as Uganda, Seychelles, Kenya and Zimbabwe, the Constitution of Namibia does not prohibit same-sex marriages. Namibian law does not expressly prohibit same-sex marriages. However, in Immigration Selection Board v Frank (2001), the Namibian Supreme Court held that same-sex marriages were not allowed in Namibia. In Digashu and Another v GRN and Others; Seiler-Lilles and Another v GRN and Others, dated 16 May 2023, the Supreme Court, by majority, invoked Article 10(1) and common law to overrule its decision in Immigration Selection Board v Frank and to hold that Namibian law should recognise same-sex marriages entered into abroad. However, the court declined to express its opinion on whether discrimination on the ground of sexual-orientation is prohibited in Namibia. In this note, the author argues, inter alia, that the list of grounds under Article 10(2) is closed and that explains why the court did not rule that the appellants had been discriminated against based on their sexual orientation; it was unlikely for the government to succeed had it relied on the argument of public policy as the basis for its refusal to recognise foreign same-sex marriages; and that the court unconsciously developed common law on the issue of foreign marriages.

Standardizing Refuge: Pipelines and Pathways in the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program

How do bureaucracies pattern durable inequalities? Predominant approaches emphasize the role of administrative categories, which prioritize certain populations for valued resources based on broader regimes of human worth. This article extends this body of work by examining how categorical inequalities become embedded within administrative infrastructures and institutional pathways. I develop this argument through a case study of the United States’ refugee resettlement program. Drawing together previously unseen government statistics, expert interviews, and documentary analysis, I show that U.S. resettlement is organized through administrative pipelines that create path dependent imbalances in the distribution of scarce resettlement spaces. Social and political logics of immigrant worthiness are important, yet a full understanding of these imbalances requires attention to the tendency of pipelines to become self-reproducing. I identify three factors that account for this tendency: calculative rationales, administrative reactivity, and structured visibility. This three-part conceptualization of pipelines can be applied to other institutional contexts to study the origins, dynamics, and durability of social inequalities. My findings also demonstrate the analytically autonomous role of policy administration in shaping ethnoracial imbalances in immigrant selection.

Hard Exterior, Soft Interior: Skill Regulation and Employer Control over Migrant Worker Selection Policy in Australia

Abstract This paper utilises a regulatory analysis of skilled visas and insights from labour law scholarship to examine how Australian immigration law regulates ‘skill’ and the implications for migrant workers’ employment relationships. While qualifications or ‘hard skills’ act as the formal basis for selection under Australian immigration law, interpersonal attributes associated with ‘soft skills’ often decide who employers recruit. Immigration regulations that allow employers discretion to recruit based on soft skills widen scope for employer misuse and migrant worker exploitation, including for those on high-skilled visas, and for diversity bias against women and ethnic minorities. Our major theoretical contribution is to highlight how immigration laws that give employers discretion over the criteria used in skilled immigration selection intensify power imbalances within the contract of employment. The regulatory definitions of skill constructed by immigration law can thus serve as an additional lever of employer control. The findings indicate that precise regulation of skill is necessary to limit the potential for employers to exert undue control over migrants in worker selection processes.

Do immigrants benefit from selection? Migrant educational selectivity and its association with social networks, skills and health

Recent scholarship suggests that immigrant selectivity – the degree to which immigrants differ from non-migrants in their sending countries – can help us understand their labour market outcomes in the receiving country. The selectivity hypothesis rests on three assumptions: first, that immigrants differ from non-migrants in their observed characteristics, such as education; second, that there is an association between such observed selection and (usually) unobserved characteristics, and third that this association drives positive relationships between observed selection and immigrant outcomes. While there is some evidence for a relationship between the degree of immigrants' selectivity and their children's outcomes, a comprehensive assessment of these assumptions for immigrants' own labour market outcomes remains lacking. We use high-quality, nationally representative data for the UK, with large numbers of immigrants from a wide range of different origins and with a rich set of measures of networks, traits and characteristics, as well as economic outcomes, not typically found in surveys of immigrants. This enables us to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the selectivity hypothesis and its assumptions. We find that immigrants to the UK are on average positively selected on educational attainment. However, counter to theoretical assumptions, educational selection has little association with labour market outcomes: it is not or negatively associated with employment; and it is only associated with pay for those with tertiary qualifications and with occupational position for women. We show that the general lack of economic benefits from selection is consistent with an absence of association between educational selectivity and (typically unobserved) mechanisms assumed to link selection and labour market outcomes: social networks, cognitive and non-cognitive skills, and mental and physical health. We contextualise our findings with heterogeneity analysis by migration regime, sending country characteristics, level of absolute education and location of credential.

Migration in knowledge aging societies. Differentiating labor force and discriminating people

Although populism in the global North countries has advanced during the last two decades as an anti-immigrant ideology, demographers have shown concerns about the aging of populations in those countries and have suggested encouraging replacement migration policies to mitigate such aging effects. It is the classical liberal paradox – to claim the general need for immigration and then to reject immigrants. From a political and economic point of view, we are called to bring to the fore the relationship between labor and productivity transformations, on the one hand, and demographic crisis, on the other. In fact, the need for migrations is never generalized, but specific. Over the last decades, qualified and highly qualified migration has boomed, consolidating globally the presence of migrant labor in technological, scientific and financial sectors. We attempt to investigate migration in aging knowledge societies, as a result of complementary processes whereby immigrants are differentially included as labor force, and socially discriminated via selective immigration policies, which barely consolidates the reproduction of global social injustice.

Are Immigrants Particularly Entrepreneurial? Policy Lessons from a Selective Immigration System

Are Immigrants Particularly Entrepreneurial? Policy Lessons from a Selective Immigration System