Variation In Immigration Research Articles

Mental health service use by recent immigrants from different world regions and by non-immigrants in Ontario, Canada: a cross-sectional study.

BackgroundGiven that immigration has been linked to a variety of mental health stressors, understanding use of mental health services by immigrant groups is particularly important. However, very little research on immigrants’ use of mental health service in the host country considers source country. Newcomers from different source countries may have distinct experiences that influence service need and use after arrival. This population study examined rates of use of primary care and of specialty services for non-psychotic mental health disorders by immigrants to Ontario Canada during their first five years after arrival. Service use by recent immigrants in broad source region groups representing all world regions was compared to use by age-matched Canadian-born or long term immigrants (called long term residents).MethodThis matched population-based cross-sectional study assessed likelihood of any use and counts of visits for each of primary care, psychiatric care and hospital care (emergency department visits or inpatient admissions) for non-psychotic mental health disorders from 1993–2012. Adult immigrants living in urban Ontario (n = 912,114) were categorized based on their nine world regions of origin. Sex-stratified conditional logistic regression models and negative binomial models were used to compare service use by immigrant region groups to their age-matched long term residents.ResultsImmigrant were more or less likely to access primary mental health care compared to age-matched long term residents, depending on their world region of origin. Regarding specialty mental health care (psychiatry and hospital care), immigrants from all regions used less than long term residents. Across the three mental health services, estimates of use by immigrant region groups compared to long term residents were among the lowest for newcomers from East Asian and Pacific (range: 0.16–0.82) and among the highest for persons from Middle East and North Africa (range: 0.56–1.23).ConclusionThis population-based study showed lower use of mental health services by recent immigrants than long-term immigrants or native born individuals, with variation in immigrants’ use linked to world region of origin and type of mental health care. Variation across source region groups underscores the importance of identifying underlying individual characteristics that affect service use to make services more responsive to newcomers.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-015-0995-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Explaining Variations in Immigrants’ Satisfaction with Their Settlement Experience

The study seeks to determine the extent to which economic integration factors, social integration factors, human capital and area-level factors are associated with immigrants’ satisfaction with their settlement experience in Canada. The Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (Wave 1) and the 2001 Census Profiles are used for multilevel modelling. The study confirmed that factors from all broad groupings are associated with immigrants’ satisfaction with their settlement. Skilled class and highly educated migrants report lower levels of satisfaction, highlighting the contradiction in the Canadian immigration system which targets these migrants at the selection stage but lacks mechanisms that could help unlock their potential at the settlement stage. The study also demonstrates that migrants who have an ethnically diverse circle of friends are more satisfied with their settlement. At the contextual level, immigrant concentration was negatively associated with satisfaction. These findings speak in favour of settlement policies encouraging integration of newcomers into the receiving society.

Do Country‐of‐Origin Characteristics Help Explain Variation in Health Among Black Immigrants in the United States?

ObjectiveBlack immigrants in the United States migrate from a diverse set of countries, including countries in the Caribbean, Central America, South America, Europe, and Africa. This study evaluates whether disparate conditions in black immigrants’ birth countries help explain variation in their postmigration health.MethodsUsing data on black immigrants from the 2001 to 2012 waves of the March Current Population Survey (CPS) along with country data from the 2009 Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Programme, this study examines whether social, economic, and health conditions in black immigrants’ birth countries have an independent effect on their postmigration health.ResultsResults show that health is more favorable among black immigrants who migrate from countries with a relatively high combined gross enrollment ratio for primary, secondary, and tertiary education; low levels of income inequality; and high life expectancies at birth. After controlling for country conditions, relative to non‐African immigrants, African immigrants report the best health.ConclusionFuture studies on the health of immigrants should incorporate characteristics of immigrants’ birth countries. This information could provide valuable insights into the roles of selective migration and birth‐country conditions in explaining variation in immigrants’ postmigration health.

Immigration and the Distribution of Incomes

We review research on the impact of immigration on income distribution. We discuss routes through which immigration can affect income distribution in the host and source countries, including compositional effects and effects on native incomes. Immigration may affect the composition of skills among the residents of a country. Moreover, immigrants can, by changing relative factor supplies, affect native wage and employment rates and the return to capital. We then provide evidence on the level and recent increases in immigration to OECD countries and on the distribution of native and immigrant educational attainment. We next provide a decomposition of 1979-2009 changes in US wage inequality, highlighting the effects of immigration on workforce composition. We then consider the economic theory of the impact of immigration on income distribution, emphasizing labor market substitution and complementarity between natives and immigrants. Further, by changing job opportunities or child care availability, immigrants can affect family, as well as individual, income distribution. We review research methodologies used to estimate the impact of immigration on the native income distribution. These include the structural approach (estimating substitution and complementarity among factors of production, including capital and labor force groups) as well as the natural experiment approach (seeking exogenous sources of variation in immigration) to studying the labor market. We then discuss evidence on these questions for Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Portugal, Spain and the United States, as well as the impact of emigration on source country income distribution.

Foreign-born scientists: mobility patterns for 16 countries

A cross-country survey of research scientists in 16 countries finds considerable variation in immigration and emigration patterns.

Immigration and Housing Booms: Evidence from Spain

We estimate empirically the effect of immigration on house prices and residential construction activity in Spain over the period 1998-2008. This decade is characterized by both a spectacular housing market boom and a stunning immigration wave. We exploit the variation in immigration across Spanish provinces and construct an instrument based on the historical location patterns of immigrants by country of origin. The evidence points to a sizeable causal effect of immigration on both prices and quantities in the housing market. Between 1998 and 2008, the average Spanish province received an immigrant inflow equal to 17% of the initial working-age population. We estimate that this inflow increased house prices by about 52% and is responsible for 37% of the total construction of new housing units during the period. These figures imply that immigration can account for roughly one third of the housing boom, both in terms of prices and new construction.

Estimating the effects of immigration in one city

This paper presents a new method of estimating the effects of immigration on the labor market that does not require variations in immigration across cities. With a two-stage CES model that aggregates immigrant groups by age cohorts and aggregates cohorts into effective labor, the econometric estimation and the interpretation of parameters are particularly straightforward. The paper uses data from Hong Kong to estimate the elasticities of complementarity associated with increased immigration. A simulation study indicates that a 40% increase in the stock of new immigrants will lower wages by no more than one percent.

Post-1965 immigration to the United States: structural determinants

List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgments Introduction Post-1965 Immigration to the United States: Background, Trends, and Cross-National Variations Structural Determinants of Cross-National Variation in Immigration: A Theoretical Overview Data and Methodology Structural Determinants of Cross-National Variation in Total Immigration to the U.S.: A Cross-National Analysis General Applicability of the Analytical Framework Conclusion Appendix A: Immigration Preference Systems Appendix B: Countries and Their Classifications Used in the Analyses Appendix C: Measurement Models for Latent Variables in Final Causal Models Selected Bibliography

Diel Variation in Immigration of Fishes and Decapod Crustaceans to Artificial Seagrass Habitat

Fish and decapod entry into small (1.5 m2) artificial seagrass habitats positioned on an open sand area in a New Jersey estuary was examined to determine if immigration varied between day and night. To encounter the structured habitats, colonizers had to cross an expanse of bare sand, with its presumably higher predation risk. Contrasts in abundance in the artificial seagrass plots between dawn and dusk indicated higher nighttime immigration for four species, including the fishesFundulus heteroclitus andMyoxocephalus aenaeus, and the caridean shrimpsPalaemonetes vulgaris andHippolyte pleuracanthus. Size-frequency distributions of colonizers varied between day and night for two fish species,Menidia menidia andSyngnathus fuscus, with a greater proportion of smaller individuals immigrating to the artificial seagrass at night.Callinectes sapidus also displayed a diel contrast in size distribution but, for this species, proportionately more small individuals colonized the plots during the day. We suggest that diel variability in predation risk and/or diel patterns in motor activity may be responsible for these patterns in immigration.

Immigration Policy and Immigrants' Ages

IN INDUSTRIAL COUNTRIES where fertility is below replacement, immigration can provide a substantial guarantee against the prospect of long-run population loss. In Austria in 1985, for example, net immigration of 7,300 persons was sufficient to offset a slight natural decrease and produce a small gain in total population. Deaths outnumbered births by 1 18,000 in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1985, but the country's 83,000 net immigrants were almost enough to prevent population from declining. And the United Kingdom's 50,000 net immigrants accounted for nearly 40 percent of its total population growth in 1985.' In studying how fertility and immigration produce changes in population size and composition, typically we hold constant the age composition of immigrants and examine changes in the annual volume of immigration.2 Demographers have given little regard to how sensitive population might be to variation in immigrants' ages.3 Nor have policymakers paid much attention to the demographic implications of influencing the ages at which immigrants are admitted. It is generally assumed that the distribution of immigrants' ages does not matter much demographically, so that immigrant numbers and not immigrant ages are the proper focus of policy. Now that industrialized countries are beginning to face the possibility of population decline due to low birth rates, and countries like the United States, Australia, and Canada have adopted or are considering procedures to allocate a portion of immigrant visas in part according to age, it is appropriate to examine the demographic impacts of age-targeted immigration policies. We do so, using the United States as our point of reference.

The Distribution and Abundance of Tallgrass Prairie Plants: A Test of the Core-Satellite Hypothesis

Levins (1969) and Hanski (1982a,b) presented dynamic models that describe the fraction of population sites occupied by species. Levins' model predicts a unimodal distribution of species at sites, whereas Hanski's model yields a bimodal distribution: a mode of widespread "core" species, and a mode of rare "satellite" species. The existence of this dichotomy is the core-satellite hypothesis. Hanski's model also predicts a positive correlation between the fraction of sites occupied by a species (distribution) and the average population size within occupied sites (abundance). Levins' model generates no such correlation between distribution and abundance. We find that a large set of quadrat data on tallgrass prairie plants matches some of the predictions of Hanski's model: for plants of seven different soil series, distribution and abundance are positively correlated, and the distribution of species at sites is bimodal. The bimodality is obscured if distributions from the seven soil series are aggregated. Two earlier hypotheses have been proposed to explain the core-satellite dichotomy. Williams (1964) showed that the degree of bimodality in species distributions depends on the number of quadrats examined: specifically, the smaller the sample, the larger the size of the core mode, and this is true even for randomly assembled communities of species. For our data, the size of the core mode correlates negatively with sample size, as Williams predicted. However, a computer simulation showed that the observed core modes were significantly larger than would be expected by chance. Thus, Williams' sampling hypothesis does not entirely account for the bimodal distribution of prairie plant species. Raunkiaer (1934, see "law of distribution of frequencies") argued that the core mode represented those species best adapted to a particular habitat. He also noted that when quadrats of dissimilar habitat were combined, the bimodality disappeared. The distributions of tallgrass prairie plants, however, do not conform to Raunkiaer's explanation: core species tend to be widespread across all soil series. If Raunkiaer's hypothesis were correct, each species would be widespread on only a few soil series, and each soil series would support a different assemblage of core species. Although our analyses confirm the existence of the core-satellite dichotomy, they do not provide an explicit test of Hanski's model. The essence of the models by Hanski and Levins is that the distribution of each species is dynamic and fluctuates owing to stochastic variation in immigration and local extinction. The strongest test of Hanski's model would be to demonstrate that the distribution of each species varied through time and that the composition of the core and satellite modes was not constant. Long-term data about the distribution of species in a community are needed for such comparisons.

Finding and Losing Host Plants by Phyllotreta: Patch Size and Surrounding Habitat

This study examined the effects of size and surrounding habitat of food plant patches on the density, immigration, and emigration of two specialized phytophagous insects. Two flea beetles, Phyllotreta cruciferae and P. striolata, were censused for 3 wk in host plant patches of four sizes, with background vegetation of three types. Densities of both beetle species declined with decreasing patch size. Single isolated host plants (collards) were without flea beetles because of high rates of emigration. By releasing and recapturing marked flea beetles, I found that the emigration rates of both beetle species consistently increased with decreasing patch size. This sensitivity of emigration to host patch size may be common among phytophagous insects because of simple changes iin perimeter:area ratios. When this is the case there may be a “critical patch size” below which host islands do not sustain herbivore populations. Immigration rates were also affected by patch size and habitat, but only in P. striolata, not in P. cruciferae. Even in P. striolata, variation in immigration was less consistent and less dramatic than was variation in emigration. Beetles wandering out of patches apparently do not readily return to the host patch. To quantify how far beetles would have to wander before “losing” their host patch, I released marked beetles in two different habitats (a goldenrod field or a cultivated garden) at varying distance (2, 4, 6, or 8 m) from a target patch of collards. For both beetles species, the percentage of individuals discovering the collards after 1 d declined rapidly beyond 2 m and was dramatically reduced by the persence of goldenrod between released beetles and the collard target.