Study Of International Migration Research Articles

“Life is Better in Another Country”: a Case Study of International Migration of Middle Aged and Older Adults in South Korea

Increasing global life expectancy places an emphasis on improving quality of life among individuals who are close to retirement. As the cost of living rises in Western countries, middle aged and older adults may consider relocating internationally to better satisfy their needs after retirement. South Korea has attracted foreign residents with distinctive opportunities for Westerners to work and live abroad. Therefore, this study explores factors that influence life satisfaction among middle aged and older adults residing in Eastern cultures. Our study employed a case study design and in-depth interviews with nine foreign citizens aged 50 and above living in Korea. Outcomes revealed new experiences and culture, social and family connections, leisure activities and uncertainty for the future contributed to perceptions of life satisfaction. Findings may be used for developing policies related to international migration and enhancing life satisfaction of older individuals currently living or considering retiring abroad.

Beyond Borders: Understanding Afghanistan's International Migration Dynamics and Global Implications

Afghanistan, a landlocked nation with a turbulent history of conflict and natural disasters, has experienced the evolution of migration as a strategic response to a range of challenges. Over time, Afghans have developed a resilient transnational network, using mobility as a way to cope and as a proactive strategy. This article explores the dynamics of Afghan migration, examining the intersections of political, historical, cultural, social, and economic factors. Four main themes emerge: the resilience of transnational networks, migration as a coping mechanism, prolonged displacement, and the inconsistency of return and reintegration. The paper also discusses the challenges of conceptualizing migration and return in the Afghan context and reflects on relevant theoretical models for studying migration in Afghanistan. Additionally, it explores emerging research themes, including gender perspectives and political uncertainty. As Afghanistan grapples with a dynamic migration landscape, the insights gained from this study have broader implications for international migration studies.

International migration and shifts in subjective well-being: A longitudinal study using German panel data

Abstract In many economically advanced countries, a relevant proportion of the population migrates across national boundaries every year. For these individuals, migrating abroad brings benefits (e.g. monetary returns) but also potential pitfalls, as migration is accompanied by profound changes in everyday life. However, there are mainly cross-sectional studies of individuals’ migration experiences that analyse the effects of migration on these individuals’ quality of life. This study fills this gap by examining shifts in the subjective well-being (SWB) of internationally mobile German citizens from a longitudinal perspective using data from the German Emigration and Remigration Panel Study and fixed effects panel regressions. To observe SWB over the course of actual migration events, we drew on a sample of repeat migrants: Germans who returned to Germany shortly before the panel and emigrated again during the panel. Consistent with methodologically comparable studies on internal migration, the analyses show a happiness dip before migration and an increase in SWB with the migration event. The increase is consistent, tends to be more pronounced than that observed in internal migration studies, and to some extent persists after the first few years of migration. Moreover, the results suggest that the increase in SWB systematically depends on the influence that individuals can exert on their migration decisions. Individuals without a partner show the highest increases in SWB, followed by so-called leading partners, partners of couples with a mutual migration decision, and trailing partners.

Reframing the Indian Middle Class as a Labour Aristocracy

Abstract Taking from, and critiquing, both the scholarship on the Indian “middle class” as well as the scholarship on the ‘labour aristocracy’, this paper argues for the reformulation of the Indian “middle class” as a labour aristocracy or worker elite. We define the distinctive characteristics that set the Indian worker elite apart from the broader working class and highlight, through the case studies of international migration, patterns in urban living spaces and domestic service employment, the stark differences between the worker elite and the poor working masses in India, and the exploitative relationship that exists between the two. The analysis points to the semi-periphery being the locus of the largest inequalities in the capitalist world-system today, where the bourgeoisie and the worker elite both gain tremendously from the exploitation inherent to capitalism. Resultingly, the task at hand in India and the semi-periphery broadly remains to organize the poor, marginalised working masses.

Rural Depopulation in Greece: Trends, Processes, and Interpretations

Depopulation is caused by low fertility rates and out-migration, and it applies to countries, regions and smaller areas. Rural depopulation is defined as a sharp population decline that falls well below an adequate population size and indicates that an area has lost its demographic reproductive capacity. This paper discusses the socioeconomic and territorial aspects of rural depopulation, attempting to do justice to the spatial dimensions of the phenomenon. Greece exhibits all the symptoms of demographic transition, leading to labour shortages, declining economic productivity, and increasing demands on the health and welfare system. The study on rural depopulation in Greece focuses on the changes and dynamics observed at the municipal and regional levels. A typology has been developed to identify rural communities in Greece. The main source of demographic data for our study is the Greek censuses (1991, 2001, 2011, and 2021). Demographic and socioeconomic trends in Greece are interlinked and show different regional and local dynamics. Rural depopulation is closely related to the study of (international and internal) migration, even though the latter does not provide a permanent solution to depopulation. An empirical analysis has shown that there is a need to revitalise rural areas through socioeconomic improvements, infrastructure investments, and policies that directly impact rural communities.

Internal Migration and Labor Market Outcomes in Indonesia

We study the labor market effects of domestic migration in Indonesia on the employment outcomes of the natives and the migrants. To address the endogeneity of migrants’ settlement decisions, we use the information on the historical migration patterns from the Indonesian censuses to construct an internal migration version of the Bartik shift-share instrument. The instrument, used widely in the study of international migration, is based on the observation that even within countries, migrants tend to move to regions with a large migrant population from their region of origin. However, if the migration patterns are unchanged over time, past migration may affect current labor market outcomes directly, violating the exclusion restriction. To overcome this, we use a multi-instrument approach that lets us account for the long-term effects of migration separately. We find that internal migration is associated with an increase in migrant employment and a decrease in native employment. Less-educated natives in loweducation regencies are most-affected. The findings suggest that policies aiming to minimize the adverse effects of internal migration should aim at improving the human capital of natives.

Insecurity, deportability and authority

Security is more than ever a central theme in the study of international migration. For the past twenty years, research on the securitization of migration has burgeoned. While these initiatives are to be applauded, we believe they may also have misdiagnosed the problem. For example, it may not be that the concept of ‘security’ needs to be ‘humanized’ in order to be more in tune with migrants’ concerns. Rather, the problem may lie in the use of the ‘migrant’ as an analytical category. The ‘migrant’ remains an inherently statist construct. The starting premise for the collection of articles in this special issue is that it is the tendency of academic research to mistake the statist category of the ‘migrant’ as an analytical category that has prevented the literature on the migration–security nexus from meaningfully reflecting the lived experience and aspirations of its human respondents, particularly as regards their encounters with forms of institutional authority, practices, resistance and resilience. We use the rubric of deportability to open up a variety of ways of thinking and talking about migration and security that do not fall back upon statist tropes. The authors in this collection take up this challenge by framing and employing concepts such as statelessness, sedentariness and expulsion to redefine our understanding of the relationship between movement and order. They take inspiration from multiple brands of social and political theorizing where conditions of violence and forced removal qualitatively differentiate the experiences and encounters of a particular group.

Social guarantees for cross-border and seasonal workers in Europe during COVID-19 and other global crises

Globalization has intensified international migration, which is a powerful driver and an important factor of political, economic, social, and demographic changes in the countries of the world economy. The decision to migrate is mainly based on economic motives, but a migrant's choice of destination country is often determined by personal factors, which in modern conditions are formed under the influence of the system of social ties. Almost all countries of the world are now involved in international labour migration, and it has become increasingly widespread, resulting in many new problems for both states and the world community as a whole. The issue of protecting the rights of labour migrants in the EU is of particular relevance. The purpose of this study is to highlight the protection of labour migrants in the context of COVID-19 and other global crises. The article uses some general scientific methods (analysis and synthesis, deduction, induction, forecasting), as well as special legal scientific methods, including historical, formal legal, structural, and functional. As a result, the article examines measures and policies adopted by the countries of the European Union to improve the social protection of cross-border and seasonal workers during the crisis, as well as recommendations for further steps in this direction. The article provides a narrative analysis of social guarantees for cross-border and seasonal workers in Europe during the global crisis, which can be positioned for research in international labor law, social sciences, migration studies and economics.

A global network of scholars? The geographical concentration of institutes in migration studies and its implications

The study of international migration and responses to it has experienced rapid growth in the last three decades: an institutionalisation of migration studies. This paper identifies and specifies infrastructural and semantic elements of institutionalisation by establishing a global Directory of Migration Research Institutions identifying 282 institutes focused on migration research that were operative between 1945 and 2020. We observe a clear geographical concentration in the Americas and Europe and find that most institutes are in countries with higher economic development (GDP) and net immigration (not emigration). Using this evidence, we suggest that the institutionalisation of migration studies is driven by concerns and ideas produced in high-income ‘destination’ countries. We thus show that uneven knowledge production in migration studies is not only caused by exclusive categories, language, or journal policies, but also by a structural problem at an earlier stage: because of fewer resources invested in the creation of institutionalised academic knowledge structures, lower income countries have fewer possibilities to shape the semantic features of the field of migration studies, by which we mean the identification of subjects of interest, concepts, narratives, and priorities.

Do migration outcomes relate to gender? Lessons from a study of internal migration, marriage and later‐life health in China

AbstractThere has been increasing recognition in the literature that migration and marriage events are interdependent. However, previous studies on migration and gendered health outcomes focus on isolated migration events and rarely embed the migration process in the context of family life course. This study aims to narrow the research gap by examining the impacts of combined internal migration and marriage histories on health and how these vary by gender from a life course perspective. We utilized the rich life history data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study and the analytical sample is composed of people of age 50 years and above with rural origin, who have migrated and married (N = 3096). By employing sequence analysis, we identified eight typical patterns of marriage–migration histories for older Chinese people. Thereafter, linear regression and Poisson regression were used to examine the relationship between these patterns and four later‐life health outcomes (depressive symptoms, self‐rated health, physical functioning and cognitive impairment). To address the selectivity into different marriage–migration trajectories, we further employed inverse‐probability‐weighted regression adjustment estimators for robustness checks. Results show that migrating in early adulthood before marriage leads to better health outcomes than migrating after marriage or migrating and getting married simultaneously. Moreover, health differences among these three groups are larger among women than men. Further analysis suggests that the relative health advantages of those, in particular for women, who migrate before marriage compared with those who migrate and marry simultaneously can be partly explained by their higher chances of gaining urban citizenship (converting to a nonagricultural Hukou) and marrying highly educated spouses. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for both internal migration in China and international migration.

Food Intake and Food Selection Following Physical Relocation: A Scoping Review.

Objectives: To synthesize the current available evidence on the changes in food intake and food selection after physical relocation in non-refugee populations. Methods: The inclusion criteria were studies with a measurement of food selection and/or food intake in non-refugee populations where physical relocation had occurred with self-reported or objective assessment of the neighbourhood physical environment before and after relocation. Databases searched included MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL and SCOPUS from 1946 to August 2022. Results: A total of four articles met the inclusion criteria. Overall, these studies gave longitudinal (n = 2) and cross-sectional (n = 2) evidence to suggest that moving to an urban neighbourhood with more convenience stores, cafés and restaurants around the home was associated with an increase in unhealthy food intake in adult populations. Additional factors such as income, vehicle access, cost, availability and perceptions of the local food environment played a role in shaping food selection and food intake. Conclusion: Four internal migration studies were found. The limited evidence base calls for more research. Future studies should include children and apply appropriate research designs to account for neighbourhood self-selection and concurrent life events. International migration studies should include assessment of neighbourhood physical environments pre- and post-relocation.

Embedded Coexistence: Social Adaptation of Chinese Female White-Collar Workers in Japan

In Japan, Chinese female white-collar workers have emerged as a rapidly growing social group. Unlike traditional female migrants, high-skilled women exhibit more autonomy and strategy in their interactions with mainstream society. Traditional immigrant theories do not apply to their patterns of social adaptation. The paper draws on qualitative research with 38 Chinese female white-collar workers working in Tokyo after graduating from Japanese colleges. It illustrates their performance and strategies in adapting to Japanese society and explores how their decision-making process is shaped. The findings show that they exhibit a selective adaptation: They self-identify as “permanent sojourners”—they are eclectic, but inclined to maintain a cultural cognition ordered around their homeland culture, and they have multiple contacts across ethnic groups and reserve cultural differences in social interactions. Furthermore, this mode of adaptation results from the interaction of three factors: individual rational choice, the mutual pressure of the in-group and the out-group, and the national policies and historical issues between China and Japan. This paper argues that the migration patterns of different migrant groups should be interpreted in light of the subjectivity of migrants, taking into account their initiative, human capital, gender, and ethnicity. This study enriches the study of international female migration and adds to the practical research on social adaptation patterns among immigrants.

Ethnographies of migrant mixtec women in California. An anthropological approach to narratives of transmigration, transnational motherhood and pregnancy in the context of western medicine

This article examines the narratives of mixtec women from Oaxaca, Mexico, who migrated to Oxnard City, California, USA. The ethnographies derived from their migratory process were analyzed through 27 in-depth interviews. The complexity involved in the study of international migration, intersected with gender and ethnicity, has required a multi-methodology in accordance with this specificity. Through a decolonized investigation this research examine the situations of inequality and oppression that affect indigenous women, defined in different historical contexts than those of urban, white, western and heterosexual women, which classic feminism has formulated. The first section of the article focuses on the narratives of transmigration, which are analyzed in relation to the dimensions that influence and intervene in terms of gender roles. The second section explore the complexity of transnational motherhood in the host society as mothers or mothers-to-be, approaching the multidynamics of transnational care, and how the health management of pregnancy is a complex issue in the face of cultural difference and the lack of an inter-ethnic sensitive health care system. This research highlights the challenges and cultural impacts that they face as indigenous women, migrant women, and mothers, in a transnational and migratory context. Everything related to their role as mothers is very complex, since they are the ones who entirely take care of their family. This assumption of care empowers the agency of these women who are attentive to their family on both sides of the border. This research has focused an approach on these subjects and underline how colonialism, gender and ethnocentrism constantly act on indigenous populations, greatly affecting women, as well as to highlight on the transformative and significant involvement and agency of these women.

FOREIGN STUDIES OF INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION: METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS, THEMATIC TRENDS

International migration is a large-scale social problem, its complexity and relevance has been increasing in recent years, which necessitates research on the main trends and social processes related to migration flows. The purpose of this article is an analytical review of modern foreign studies on international migration, which are mostly unknown to the Russian reader. The authors consider the methodological problems of in-ternational migration studies and the main directions ofmigration research by foreign specialists. The results of the analysis demonstrate that migration processes are being significantly transformed under the influence of global and regional challenges. In terms of methodology of migration studies, the neo-institutional ap-proach is gaining more and more influence as one of the most promising theoretical and methodological ap-proaches that can influence the construction of a holistic concept of international migration. Such categories as «institutions», «practices», and «structures»make it possible to cover a wide range of variables that are significant for external migration. Among the key areas of migration research, one should note changes in the scale and structure of migration, including gender aspects; theemergence of new barriers in the field of migration, including in connection with the global COVID-19 pandemic; institutional changes in the migra-tion management system. In addition, foreign studies focus on issues such as the problem of security and democracy in the context of international migration, regulation of migration processes, modern migration policy and regimes. In conclusion, it is noted that the issue of migration processes is in constant dynamics, which determines and permanently updates the agenda for research in the field of international migration.

Where do migrants and natives belong in a community: a Twitter case study and privacy risk analysis

Today, many users are actively using Twitter to express their opinions and to share information. Thanks to the availability of the data, researchers have studied behaviours and social networks of these users. International migration studies have also benefited from this social media platform to improve migration statistics. Although diverse types of social networks have been studied so far on Twitter, social networks of migrants and natives have not been studied before. This paper aims to fill this gap by studying characteristics and behaviours of migrants and natives on Twitter. To do so, we perform a general assessment of features including profiles and tweets, and an extensive network analysis on the network. We find that migrants have more followers than friends. They have also tweeted more despite that both of the groups have similar account ages. More interestingly, the assortativity scores showed that users tend to connect based on nationality more than country of residence, and this is more the case for migrants than natives. Furthermore, both natives and migrants tend to connect mostly with natives. The homophilic behaviours of users are also well reflected in the communities that we detected. Our additional privacy risk analysis showed that Twitter data can be safely used without exposing sensitive information of the users, and minimise risk of re-identification, while respecting GDPR.

Intergroup Encounters in Urban Public Spaces: Everyday Strategies of Host Community Members Following a Refugee Influx

Some host community members (HCMs) develop positive attitudes toward refugees, while others do not. The current literature on perceptions of refugees offers different explanations for these varied responses to intergroup encounters (positive contact, negative contact, and exposure). Nevertheless, few scholars have examined the outcomes of intergroup relations at the microlevel to better understand the various impacts of intergroup encounters between HCMs and refugees. Even fewer scholars have focused on the everyday implications of HCMs’ attitudes toward refugees in response to changing local demographics. In this article, I argue that in addition to the type of intergroup encounters, the locations where these encounters occur at the neighborhood level serve as a critical factor in understanding HCMs’ sociospatial attitudes or their attitudes toward refugees at the microlevel of everyday life. In doing so, I introduce the concept of everyday strategies to describe the sociospatial attitudes that HCMs adopt in different types of urban public spaces following their encounters with refugees in neighborhoods that have experienced a large refugee influx. Empirically, the analysis draws on interviews conducted with 60 HCMs in Bursa, Turkey, in 2018 and, through the concept of everyday strategies, extends the literature on HCMs’ attitudes regarding refugees. Overall, this article contributes to the wider study of international migration by detailing the influence of microlevel intergroup encounters on HCMs’ sociospatial attitudes in a South-South forced migration context.

Intention to Stay or Return? Motivation and Factors Influencing Indonesian Nurses Working in Japan

In 2008, Japan agreed to recruit Indonesian nurses to work as nurses as a part of the Indonesia-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (IJEPA). This study aimed to explore the motivation behind working in Japan and factors behind the Indonesian nurses' intention to stay in Japan or return to Indonesia after the contract is terminated. This descriptive quantitative study used an online survey involving 103 respondents. Results revealed that a high rate of remuneration and better working environment were the pull factors whereas low salarie, and poor working conditions in Indonesia were the major reasons why Indonesian nurses wanted to work in Japan. Of the 103 respondents, 71 % stated that they intended to remain in Japan, whereas 29 % preferred to return to Indonesia after the contract is terminated. The research only focused on one framework of Indonesian migrant workers (nurse). At the end, hopefully this research can be a comprehensive discussion of Indonesian nurse workers and enrich the study of international migration.

The crisis discourse’s blind spot: EU-level politicization and the endogenization of the migration crisis

ABSTRACT The strong state-centric orientation of the EU crisis discourse has produced an important blind spot that limits our understanding of the Migration Crisis. Conceptually engaging with international migration studies and the politicization/identity nexus that postfunctionalism has put on the map in EU studies, this contribution advances original empirical evidence to visibilize the ongoing intra-EUropean struggle over the meaning of the crisis and the identity relationships underlying it. As the findings show, the externalizations the dominant crisis narrative promotes on the order dimension (vis-à-vis the EU) are clearly challenged by the European Commission as a politicizing agent: Along the EUropean identity markers ‘responsibility‘ and ‘solidarity‘, it has endogenized the Migration Crisis, located difference in the Member State-collective and consistently pursued integrative steps and the development of competencies. Taking into account this ‘crisis resolution‘ counter-narrative allows to enhance our understanding of the Migration Crisis and of the permanent contestedness of European (dis)integration.

Shock temporality: international students coping with disrupted lives and suspended futures

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people around the word experienced periods of local, state and international immobility due to lockdowns, border closers and travel restrictions. For transient migrants such as international students, these kinds of immobility have resulted in disrupted lives with professional and personal futures suspended as careers and relationships become stuck in limbo. Moreover, such sudden and extended periods of immobility have not been sufficiently covered in temporality literature due to the novelty of the pandemic crisis in the international education, migration and mobility studies spaces. By conducting a pilot project investigating current and recently graduated higher degree by research (HDR) international students (PhD, Masters and Honours) from public institutions in the Australian city of Melbourne, this paper, thus, introduces the concept of ‘shock temporality’ caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Shock temporality takes place when the expected and finite temporary/transitory experience becomes forcefully broken and appears to be ongoing outside of the individual’s control. While shock temporality has left HDR international students’ professional and personal agendas and aspirations in suspension, students interviewed use the time to plan and prepare for truncated futures. The findings of this paper, thus, become relevant in assisting higher education student support services in creating potential approaches and strategies for a post-pandemic future.

Migration on the Rise, a Paradigm in Decline: The Last Half-Century of Global Mobility

The past several decades have witnessed a rebirth of global labor mobility. Workers are moving between countries at rates not seen since before World War I. During the same period, economists' study of international migration has been framed by a particular textbook model of location choice. This paper reviews the evidence on the economic causes and effects of global migration during the past half century. That evidence falsifies most of the core predictions of the old model. The economics of migration will regain vitality and relevance by discarding and replacing its outworn paradigm.