Wiley: International Migration Review: Table of Contents

Citizen Advantage, Undocumented Disadvantage, or Both? The Comparative Educational Outcomes of Second and 1.5‐Generation Latino Young Adults

Caitlin Patler — Wed, 20 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

Recent research theorizes a widening sociopolitical gap between undocumented and documented immigrants — but also between citizens and noncitizens generally — with implications for mobility. How might legal inequality influence educational outcomes? Largely due to data constraints, much existing research is unable to distinguish between legal statuses. Yet, legal status may help explain inconsistent findings of “immigrant advantage” among Latinos. Using survey data from Latino young adults in California, I explore how legal status impacts high school completion, post-secondary enrollment, and labor market expectations. I find evidence of undocumented disadvantage and citizenship advantage in completion and enrollment, but no differences in expectations. Findings suggest that scholars should pay closer attention to the role of legal background in shaping mobility.

Inclusive or Exclusive? How Contact with Host Nationals May Change Immigrants' Boundary Perceptions and Foster Identity Compatibility

Kristina Bakkær Simonsen — Wed, 20 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

While immigrants may value their ethnic identities, the symbolic boundaries in many European nations are drawn in an exclusive manner, presenting ethnic identification as incompatible with host national belonging. Combining boundary drawing and contact theory, this article examines whether — in a context of exclusive boundary drawing — contact can lead to more inclusive boundary perceptions and foster identity compatibility. The analysis employs survey and interview data from Denmark, which is taken as a case of exclusive boundary drawing. Demonstrating both positive effects and the limits of contact in such a context, the article offers a critical assessment of contact's potential and contributes to nuancing our understanding of macro and micro conditions of immigrant identity.

Intimate Counter‐Spaces of Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon

Amrita Pande — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

This article examines new nodes of migrants' desire to disrupt the heteronormative focus on married mothers in the literature on migration and gender and the reification of normative notions of both gender and sexuality. It demonstrates that in the presence of intense raced and gendered surveillance of both private and public spaces in Lebanon, migrant domestic workers (MDWs) use public “counter-spaces” to forge intimate and sexual ties. It offers the frame of intimate counter-spaces to understand the wider politics of resistance mobilized by MDWs in their everyday lives. Intimate counter-spaces complicate debates around public/private, sacred/sexual, and confront state restrictions on migrant workers' sexuality. Despite their subversive power, such spaces can also reinforce the hypersexualization of the female migrant and highlight the paradoxical effects of everyday subversive practices used by migrant workers, not just in Middle East and Asia, but also across the world.

The New Third Generation: Post‐1965 Immigration and the Next Chapter in the Long Story of Assimilation

Tomás R. Jiménez, Julie Park, Juan Pedroza — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

Now is the time for social scientists to focus an analytical lens on the new third generation to see what their experiences reveal about post-1965 assimilation. This paper is a first step. We compare the household characteristics of post-1965, second-generation Latino and Asian children in 1980 to a “new third generation” in 2010. Today's new third generation is growing up in households headed by parents who have higher socioeconomic attainment; that are more likely to be headed by intermarried parents; that are less likely to contain extended family; and that, when living with intermarried parents, are more likely to have children identified with a Hispanic or Asian label compared to second-generation children growing in 1980. We use these findings to inform a larger research agenda for studying the new third generation.

Intermarriage and the Lifecycle Timing of Migration

Kate H. Choi, Marta Tienda — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

We document the relative permeability of ethno-racial boundaries between natives and immigrants who arrived at different stages of their lifecycle. The odds of crossing boundaries involving White spouses are highest among child migrants and lowest among adolescent migrants. By contrast, immigrants who arrive at older ages have lower odds of crossing the Black–Hispanic boundary in marriage. These findings illustrate the importance of the lifecycle timing of migration for marital sorting behavior and immigrant integration.

The Role of Migration Policy Changes in Europe for Return Migration to Senegal

Marie‐Laurence Flahaux — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

This study questions the role of migration policy changes in France, Italy, and Spain for return migration to Senegal, by analyzing biographic data from the Migration between Africa and Europe (MAFE-Senegal) survey and the contextual data of the Determinants of International Migration (DEMIG) VISA and DEMIG POLICY databases that cover major changes in migration policies in these destination countries for the different categories of migrants. Event history logistic regressions reveal that Senegalese migrants are less likely to return when the entry restrictions have become tighter. This result suggests that the decision to return depends on the possibility of migrating again after the return, which is crucial for both theory and policy regarding Western democracies' attempts to regulate migration.

From Work to Welfare: Institutional Arrangements Shaping Turkish Marriage Migrants’ Gendered Trajectories into a New Society

Vibeke Jakobsen, Anika Liversage — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

Using a mixed methods approach, this article examines gendered patterns of employment and of unemployment benefit uptake among Turkish marriage migrants in Denmark. The results show that men use co-ethnic networks to access entry positions. Subsequent eligibility for unemployment benefits enable these men to search for better jobs. Women enter employment more slowly and tell of such entry being related to entering the unemployment insurance system, enabling them to periodically conform to gendered expectations as homemakers. Pakistani marriage migrants display similar patterns, indicating the centrality of this institutional arrangement in low-skilled marriage migrants’ active adaptation to a new society.

Family Structure and the Well‐Being of Immigrant Children in Four European Countries

Matthijs Kalmijn — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

Data on secondary school children in England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden show that large differences exist in family structure within the minority population: In some groups, father absence is more common than among natives; in others, it is less common. These patterns reflect the differences in family structure in the origin countries, but the migration process also plays a role. Next, it is found that father absence has negative effects on immigrant children's well-being, but these effects appear weaker in minority groups where father absence is more common. Heterogeneous effects are interpreted in terms of different degrees of institutionalization of father absence in different minority groups.

Social Reproduction of Religiosity in the Immigrant Context: The Role of Family Transmission and Family Formation — Evidence from France

Thomas Soehl — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

This paper compares two aspects of the social reproduction of religion: parent-to-child transmission, and religious homogamy. Analysis of a survey of immigrants in France shows that for parent-to-child transmission, immigrant status/generation is not the central variable — rather, variation is across religions with Muslim families showing high continuity. Immigrant status/generation does directly matter for partner choice. In Christian and Muslim families alike, religious in-partnering significantly declines in the second generation. In turn, the offspring of religiously non-homogamous families is less religious. For Muslim immigrants this points to the possibility of a non-trivial decline in religiosity in the third generation.

The Effect of Visas on Migration Processes

Mathias Czaika, Hein de Haas — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

The effectiveness of migration policies has been widely contested. However, because of methodological and conceptual limitations, evidence has remained inconclusive. Moreover, prior studies focus on the effects of policies on inflows and fail to assess the simultaneous effect of policies on outflows. This is essential from a theoretical point of view as immigration restrictions may reduce both inflows and outflows and, hence, overall circulation. This renders the effect of immigration restrictions on net migration theoretically ambiguous. To fill this gap, and using unique migration and visa data from the Determinants of International Migration (DEMIG) project, this paper assesses the short- and long-term effects of travel visa policy regimes on bilateral immigration and emigration dynamics. The results suggest that travel visa policies significantly decrease inflows, but this effect is undermined by decreasing outflows of the same migrant groups. This confirms that migration restrictions decrease circulation and tend to encourage long-term settlement, and thereby sharply reduce the responsiveness of migration to economic fluctuations in destination and origin societies. We also identify asymmetric policy effects with migration flows declining only very gradually after a visa introduction but increasing almost immediately after visa removal.

Humanity at Sea: Maritime Migration and the Foundations of International Law. By Itamar Mann. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 244 pages. £69.99.

Nevena Nancheva — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

International Migration Review, Volume 51, Issue 4, Page e50-e51, Winter 2017.

Suspect Freedoms: The Racial and Sexual Politics of Cubanidad in New York, 1823–1957. By Nancy Raquel Mirabal. New York: New York University Press, 2017. 311 pages. $30.00.

Susan D. Greenbaum — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

International Migration Review, Volume 51, Issue 4, Page e52-e53, Winter 2017.

Reluctant Intimacies: Japanese Eldercare in Indonesian Hands. By Beata Switek. New York, NY: Berghahn, 2016. CCXXII, 226 pages. $90.00.

Maria Rosario Piquero‐Ballescas — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

International Migration Review, Volume 51, Issue 4, Page e54-e55, Winter 2017.

From Deportation to Prison: The Politics of Immigration Enforcement in Post‐Civil Rights America. By Patrisia Macías‐Rojas. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2016. 240 pages. $28.00.

Tanya Golash‐Boza — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

International Migration Review, Volume 51, Issue 4, Page e56-e57, Winter 2017.

Undocumented Fears: Immigration and the Politics of Divide and Conquer in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. By Jamie Longazel. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2016. 204 pages. $27.95, paperback.

Pablo Bose — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

International Migration Review, Volume 51, Issue 4, Page e58-e59, Winter 2017.

Negotiating Belongings: Stories of Forced Migration of Dinka Women from South Sudan. By Melanie Baak. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2016. vii, 231 pages. $54.00.

Katarzyna Grabska — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

International Migration Review, Volume 51, Issue 4, Page e62-e63, Winter 2017.

Benevolent Empire: U.S. Power, Humanitarianism, and the World's Dispossessed. By Stephen R. Porter. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. 296 pages. $65.00.

Lisa Bhungalia — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

International Migration Review, Volume 51, Issue 4, Page e64-e66, Winter 2017.

Is Multiculturalism Dead? By Christian Joppke. Cambridge and Malden: Polity, 2017. ii, 213 pages. $24.95.

Patrick Imbert — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

International Migration Review, Volume 51, Issue 4, Page e60-e61, Winter 2017.

Issue Information ‐ TOC

Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

International Migration Review, Volume 51, Issue 4, Page 821-822, Winter 2017.

Understanding Membership in a World of Global Migration: (How) Does Citizenship Matter?

Irene Bloemraad, Alicia Sheares — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

This article synthesizes the literature on citizenship and immigration to evaluate the heft of citizenship and theorize why it matters. We examine why citizenship laws vary cross-nationally and why some immigrants acquire citizenship while others do not. We consider how citizenship influences rights, identities, and participation and the mechanisms by which citizenship could influence lives. We consider frameworks, such as cultural and performative citizenship, that de-center legal status and the nation-state. Ultimately, we argue for a claims-making approach to citizenship, one that is a relational process of recognition, includes actors outside the individual/state dyad, and focuses on claims to legitimate membership.

Assessing the Effectiveness of Pay‐to‐Go Policies: Evidence from Spain's Voluntary Return Program

Catalina Amuedo‐Dorantes, Susan Pozo — Fri, 08 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

Pay-to-go programs are incentive-based policies implemented by immigrant-receiving nations with the intention of enticing migrants home. Spain introduced such a program following its recent economic downturn. We assess its effectiveness using a difference-in-differences methodology. We test if the policy lowered the unemployment likelihood of eligible migrants by comparing changes in their propensity to be unemployed from before to after program implementation to changes experienced by similar non-eligible migrants. The Spanish pay-to-go policy did not entice immigrants to return home, except among Latin Americans, who enjoyed statistically and economically significant reductions in their unemployment likelihood following program implementation.

Estimates of Global Bilateral Migration Flows by Gender between 1960 and 2015

Guy J. Abel — Fri, 24 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0800

An indirect estimation method is used to derive country to country migration flows from changes in global bilateral stock data. Estimates are obtained over five- and 10-year periods between 1960 and 2015 by gender, providing a comprehensive picture of past migration patterns. The estimated total of global international migrant flows generally increases over the 55-year time frame. The global rate of migration over five- and 10-year periods fluctuate at around 0.65 and 1.25 percent of the population, respectively. The sensitivity of estimates to alternative input stock and demographic data are explored.

Migration Disruption: Crisis and Continuity in the Cambodian Mass Returns

Maryann Bylander — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 00:00:00 -0700

In 2014, Thailand experienced the mass exodus of 220,000 Cambodian migrant workers, an event precipitated by a military coup and rumors of an impending migrant crackdown. This movement was reportedly the largest in South-East Asia since the 1970s. Yet while the mass returns were outwardly articulated as a “crisis” moment, migrants largely understood the exodus as a more extreme version of the everyday. The most significant features of the exodus—financial loss, indebtedness, involuntary immobility, and fear of violence and deportation—have been and continue to be regular features of the Cambodian–Thai migration system. In light of these findings, I suggest that taking migration disruptions seriously requires (1) decentering the language and logic of “crisis” and (2) considering what migration disruptions reveal about ordinary times.

Negotiating Identity and Belonging through the Invisibility Bargain: Colombian Forced Migrants in Ecuador

Jeffrey D. Pugh — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 00:00:00 -0700

This article argues that an “invisibility bargain” constrains migrants’ identities and political participation, demanding their economic contributions plus political and social invisibility in exchange for tolerance of their presence in the host country. In response, migrants negotiate their visible identity differences, minimize social distance from the host population, and build informal coalitions with non-state brokers to avoid citizen backlash against overt political activism. Examining Colombian forced migrants in Ecuador, the article challenges state-centric governance approaches, underscoring migrant agency in negotiating identity to influence social hierarchies, coexistence, and human security. Its findings advance the broader understanding of migration in the Global South.

Reconceptualizing Context: A Multilevel Model of the Context of Reception and Second‐Generation Educational Attainment

Renee Luthra, Thomas Soehl, Roger Waldinger — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0700

This paper seeks to return scholarly attention to a core intellectual divide between segmented and conventional (or neo-)assimilation approaches, doing so through a theoretical and empirical reconsideration of contextual effects on second-generation outcomes. We evaluate multiple approaches to measuring receiving country contextual effects and measuring their impact on the educational attainment of the children of immigrants. We demonstrate that our proposed measures better predict second-generation educational attainment than prevailing approaches, enabling a multilevel modeling strategy that accounts for the structure of immigrant families nested within different receiving contexts.

Determinants of Homeownership among Immigrants: Changes during the Great Recession and Beyond

Kusum Mundra, Ruth Uwaifo Oyelere — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 00:00:00 -0700

In this paper, we explore factors correlated with immigrant homeownership before and after the Great Recession. We focus solely on immigrants because of recent evidence that suggests homeownership rates declined less for immigrants than natives in the United States during the recession and onward. Specifically, we examine to what extent an immigrant's income, savings, length of stay in the destination country, citizenship status, and birthplace networks affected the probability of homeownership before the recession, and how these impacts on homeownership changed since the recession. We examine these questions using microdata for the years 2000–2012. Our results suggest that citizenship status, birthplace network, family size, savings, household income, and length of stay are significant for an immigrant's homeownership. In comparing the pre-recession period to the period afterward, we find that the impact of birthplace networks on homeownership probabilities doubled while the impact of savings slightly declined.

Varieties of Transnationalism and Its Changing Determinants across Immigrant Generations: Evidence From French Data

Mirna Safi — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 00:00:00 -0700

In this article, I use the French Trajectories and Origins survey to describe patterns and trends of cross-border ties across immigrant generations. Transnational activities are measured through a wide range of cross-border ties, grouped into three dimensions: sociopolitical, economic, and a third dimension that I call re-migration. Three sets of determinants are taken into account: variables measuring exposure to the country of origin, variables describing incorporation in the host country, and variables that are specific to each generation. Conversely to the straight-line assimilation paradigm, the findings put the analytical power of the generational variable into perspective by (1) highlighting the wide variability of transnationalism within each generation and (2) measuring distinct intergenerational trends along different types of cross-border engagement. A thorough investigation of the sources of within-generation heterogeneity emphasizes the explanatory power of state-level, religious, and ethnoracial variables.

Job Mobility as a New Explanation for the Immigrant‐Native Wage Gap: A Longitudinal Analysis of the German Labor Market

Hanna Brenzel, Malte Reichelt — Wed, 22 Mar 2017 00:00:00 -0700

In industrialized countries, wages between migrants and natives usually differ. Previous studies that mostly focused on human capital theory and cross-sectional wage differences failed to fully explain the wage gap. We offer a new explanation and assume that differences in the employment trajectories of migrants and natives contribute to diverging wages after labor market entrance. Utilizing longitudinal data for Germany, we analyze the job mobility of migrants and natives and distinguish among voluntary, involuntary, and internal job changes. Indeed, we find evidence for differences in transition patterns and — using several fixed-effects regressions — are able to explain a substantial part of the gap in hourly wages. The results suggest that the higher number of involuntary changes among migrants increases the wage gap. In contrast, support for more voluntary and internal job changes among migrants should help to counteract diverging earnings trajectories.

Migration Industries and the State: Guestwork Programs in East Asia

Kristin Surak — Sun, 29 Jan 2017 00:00:00 -0800

Studies of migration industries have demonstrated the critical role that border-spanning businesses play in international mobility. To date, most research has focused on meso-level entrepreneurial initiatives that operate in a legal gray area under a state that provides an environment for their growth or decline. Extending this work, the present article advances a taxonomy of the ways states partner with migration industries based on the nature of their relationship (formal or informal) and the type of actor involved (for-profit or non-profit). The analysis focuses on low-paid temporary migrant work programs — schemes that require substantial state involvement to function — and examines cases from the East Asian democracies with strong economies that have become net importers of migrants: Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. The conclusion, incorporating cases beyond Asia, explicates the properties and limits of each arrangement based on the degree of formality and importance of profit.

Self‐Selection and Host Country Context in the Economic Assimilation of Political Refugees in the United States, Sweden, and Israel

Debora Pricila Birgier, Christer Lundh, Yitchak Haberfeld, Erik Elldér — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 00:00:00 -0800

We study the interplay between host countries' characteristics and self-selection patterns in relation to refugees' economic assimilation using a natural experiment in which immigrants from one region migrated to three destinations under similar circumstances. We focus on emigrants fleeing from Argentina and Chile during the military regimes there to the United States, Sweden, and Israel. We find that those refugees show patterns of selection and assimilation similar to those of economic immigrants. Immigrants to the United States and Israel exhibit better selection patterns and consequently faster assimilation than immigrants to Sweden even considering the positive effect of the Swedish market structure.

International Migration and the Academic Performance of Mexican Adolescents

Bryant Jensen, Silvia Giorguli Saucedo, Eduardo Hernández Padilla — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 00:00:00 -0800

We analyze path models of a nationally representative sample of Mexican adolescents in 2008 to explore how migration variables interact with school retention to shape their migration plans, effort in school, and achievement on a standardized measure of Spanish literacy. Among other findings, we discover that more immediate plans are associated with lower performance for students considering migration and that this relationship varies by family socioeconomic status. We also find that parent migration exposure negatively affects achievement for some groups. We interpret findings in terms of structural inequalities in Mexico and conclude with recommendations to enrich academic learning opportunities for children and youth within migrant families and communities.

Selections Before the Selection: Earnings Advantages of Immigrants Who Were Former Skilled Temporary Foreign Workers in Canada

Feng Hou, Aneta Bonikowska — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 00:00:00 -0800

This study examines the earnings advantage of economic immigrants who initially arrived as temporary foreign workers (TFWs) over immigrants who were directly selected from abroad. Using the Longitudinal Immigration Database, this study finds that skilled versus non-skilled prior Canadian work experience matters significantly to after-immigration earnings. Former skilled TFWs had much higher initial earnings than immigrants who first arrived in Canada as landed immigrants. This earnings gap narrowed in the first 10 years but did not disappear. In comparison, former non-skilled TFWs had significantly lower initial earnings and slower earnings growth than immigrants without prior Canadian experience.

Spiritual Citizenship: Immigrant Religious Participation and the Management of Deportability

Melissa Guzman Garcia — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 00:00:00 -0800

This article advances the concept of spiritual citizenship to examine how some religiously active migrants employ religion to see themselves as, and to try to become, less deportable. Drawing from ethnographic observations and interviews with Central American and Mexican immigrants in the United States, I find that undocumented migrants use religion to redefine their own sense of self and to position themselves as spiritual citizens of “good moral character.” This research examines how the priorities of religious organizations can operate in relation to and through a neoliberal context. While religion supports migrants as they endure criminalization, my discussion of spiritual citizenship shows how the benefits of religious participation can also depend on migrants’ willingness to become deserving neoliberal citizens.

Age at Immigration and the Educational Attainment of Foreign‐born Children in the United States: The Confounding Effects of Parental Education

Andrew Clarke — Tue, 11 Oct 2016 00:00:00 -0700

A substantial empirical literature confirms an educational disadvantage for foreign-born children that arrive in their host countries at older ages. In the presence of a negative correlation between parental education and age at immigration, estimates of the educational attainment age at immigration gradient, neglecting controls for parental education, will tend to overestimate this disadvantage. The results indicate a considerable overestimation (up to almost 28%) of the disadvantage for immigrant children that arrive at older ages. Moreover, a considerable portion (69%) of the total bias associated with omitted controls for parental education reflects the non-random educational selection of immigrant parents across the age at immigration distribution.

Types of Migration: The Motivations, Composition, and Early Integration Patterns of “New Migrants” in Europe

Renee Luthra, Lucinda Platt, Justyna Salamońska — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 00:00:00 -0700

Applying latent class analysis to a unique data source of 3,500 Polish migrants in Western Europe, we develop a new typology of Polish migrants under “free movement” following the 2004 expansion of the European Union. We characterize these diverse migrant types in terms of their premigration characteristics and link them to varied early social and economic integration outcomes. We show that alongside traditional circular and temporary labor migration, European Union expansion has given rise to new migrant types who are driven by experiential concerns, resulting in a more complex relationship between their economic and social integration in destination countries.

Economic Integration of Skilled Migrants in Japan: The Role of Employment Practices

Hilary J. Holbrow, Kikuko Nagayoshi — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 00:00:00 -0700

Scholars argue that institutional arrangements shape migrants' economic integration trajectories, and yet few studies empirically substantiate this. This study identifies employment institutions in Japan that affect skilled foreign workers. We demonstrate that practices ostensibly introduced to benefit these workers are associated with lower pay, after adjusting for human capital and firm characteristics. High levels of gender inequality also severely disadvantage female skilled migrants. These findings demonstrate that in the Japanese case, detrimental employment institutions often cancel out skilled foreign workers' returns to human capital. The results may explain why Japan has failed to attract and retain more skilled migrants.

How Period Data Influence the Estimates of Recently Arrived Immigrants in the American Community Survey

Elizabeth M. Grieco, Luke J. Larsen, Howard Hogan — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 00:00:00 -0700

The American Community Survey (ACS) includes a “year-of-entry” question that asks the foreign born when they came “to live in the United States.” Researchers have used these data to analyze “recent” immigrants — usually defined as arriving within the last five to 10 years — noting that the number of new arrivals is considerably lower than those who arrived in prior years and suggesting the size of the recent immigrant population may be underestimated. This paper shows the primary cause of the lower-than-expected estimates to be the ACS data collection methodology, which causes an inherent downward bias in survey-year arrivals.

The Impact of 9/11 on the Self‐Employment Outcomes of Arab and Muslim Immigrants

Chunbei Wang — Sun, 28 Aug 2016 00:00:00 -0700

This paper examines the effects of 9/11 on the self-employment outcomes of Arab and Muslim immigrants. Using CPS Data 2000–2005 and a difference-in-differences approach, I analyze the changes in their self-employment entry/exit decisions and earnings after 9/11 using native whites as the main comparison group. I find that the Arab and Muslim immigrants are less likely to enter self-employment after 9/11, especially into industries that require higher levels of capital investment. However, there is no evidence that 9/11 has negative impacts on their exit decisions or earnings. The paper further documents a shift of Arab and Muslim immigrants’ businesses toward industries such as construction, finance/real estate/insurance services, and professional services after 9/11, areas in which they have performed well.

Growing Restrictiveness or Changing Selection? The Nature and Evolution of Migration Policies

Hein de Haas, Katharina Natter, Simona Vezzoli — Mon, 01 Aug 2016 00:00:00 -0700

This paper demonstrates that, since 1945, migration policies have overall become less restrictive. Challenging common assumptions, this long-term trend is robust across most of the 45 countries included in the DEMIG POLICY database. While the period after 1989 is characterized by a slowing down of the rapid post-WWII liberalization of migration policies, liberal policy changes have continued to outnumber restrictive policy changes until today. Yet policy developments differ across policy types and migrant categories: Entry and integration policies have become less restrictive, while border control and exit policies have become more restrictive. Also, while policies towards irregular migrants and family migrants have been tightened in recent years, less restrictive changes have dominated policies targeting high- and low-skilled workers, students, and refugees. The essence of modern migration policies is thus not their growing restriction, but their focus on migrant selection.

From Refuge to Riches? An Analysis of Refugees' Wage Assimilation in the United States

Animesh Giri — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 00:00:00 -0700

Given that refugees may be fleeing from political, social, racial, ethnic, or religious persecution, they are not expected to be economically independent upon arrival to the United States. Considerable state and federal resources are specifically aimed at the economic assimilation of refugees in the United States. In this article, I examine the extent to which average refugee wages have assimilated toward those of their native counterparts in the United States. Among synthetic cohorts from 1990 to 2000, most recent young refugees increase average refugee wages by approximately 17 percent within a decade. Similarly, in the period between 2000 and 2010, the gains for young and recent refugees increase average refugee wages by approximately 22 percent. In contrast, across both decades, duration effects for the oldest refugee cohorts — irrespective of their length of stay in the United States — exert a considerable downward push on average refugee wages. The contrasts in wage contributions for the oldest and youngest cohorts are less extreme for non-refugee immigrants. These findings underscore the importance of age at entry into the United States for wage assimilation, especially in the case of refugees.

Locking the Borders: Exclusion in the Theory and Practice of Immigration in America

Amy Buzby — Thu, 30 Jun 2016 00:00:00 -0700

This paper highlights the means for the exclusion of groups deemed undesirable within the Lockean liberal tradition, particularly as the American Federalists modified it. It further explores the consequences of the practical application of this vision for immigration in the American case. The author contends that controversies about immigration in America demonstrate a deeply communitarian strain within Lockean liberalism that feeds rationalized exclusionary practice. This argument turns on an analysis of liberal theories of consent in Locke and early American thinkers. The goal of the paper is to make the Lockean tradition and its American adaptations speak more clearly about immigration, so that the issue can be better defined. In framing both the use and abuse of immigrants and the foundations of such behavior as problematic, the author hopes to provoke fresh thinking about the nature of and possible solutions to American exclusionism.

Weathering the Storm? The Great Recession and the Employment Status Transitions of Low‐Skill Male Immigrant Workers in the United States

Blake Sisk, Katharine M. Donato — Thu, 30 Jun 2016 00:00:00 -0700

Using matched data from the Current Population Survey from 2005 to 2011 (n = 5,507), we use multinomial and binary logistic regression models to examine employment transitions related to the Great Recession for five groups of men with less than a high school degree: foreign-born Mexicans, other foreign-born, and US-born whites, blacks, and Latinos. We find that, during the recession, Mexican immigrants were the most likely to remain continuously employed. However, immigrant workers also experienced high levels of involuntary part-time employment during the recession, suggesting that their relative success in remaining employed was not without its costs.

Male Migration and Female Labor Market Attachment: New Evidence From the Mexican Family Life Survey

Qing Wang — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 00:00:00 -0700

This study examines the impact of male migration to the United States on female labor market outcomes in Mexico, using the longitudinal data set from the Mexican Family Life Survey. I differentiate between domestic and cross-border migration, as well as other types of absence, and account for their differential effects. The first-difference approach is employed to address the econometric issues of endogeneity and self-selection. Findings show that the effects of cross-border migration on the labor market outcomes of left-behind women appear to be limited in the short term. Domestic migration is not a major factor that influences the labor market outcomes of women.

Mexican‐American Educational Stagnation: The Role of Family‐Structure Change

Richard Neil Turner, Brian Thiede — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 00:00:00 -0700

High school dropout rates among Mexican Americans decline markedly between the first and second immigrant generations and, consequently, move closer to non-Hispanic white levels. However, the third generation makes little progress in closing the remaining gap with whites despite their parents having more schooling on average than those of the second generation. Utilizing 2007–2013 Current Population Survey data, we examine whether an inter-generational shift away from two-parent families contributes to this educational stagnation. We also consider the effect of changes in sibship size. The analysis involves performing a partial regression decomposition of differences between second- and third-generation Mexican-American adolescents (aged 16–17 years) in the likelihood of having dropped out. We find that Mexican third-generation teens are close to nine percentage points less likely than second-generation peers to live with two parents. The decomposition results suggest that this change in family structure offsets a substantial portion of the negative influence of rising parental education on third-generation dropout risk.

Life Satisfaction of Cross‐Border Marriage Migrants in South Korea: Exploring the Social Network Effects

Sojin Yu, Feinian Chen — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 00:00:00 -0700

This study examines the recent phenomenon of “cross-border marriage” in South Korea: foreign brides migrating into Korea to get married to Korean bachelors. Using data from the National Survey of Multicultural Families 2009, one of the biggest data sets on marriage migrants, we analyze how the difference in migrants' initial methods of entry affects the level of their life satisfaction. The findings show greater life satisfaction for those who used personal social networks, when compared with those who used commercial brokers as a method of entry. The analyses also reveal the importance of current social networks and their role in moderating the effect of the initial methods of entry after a prolonged period of residence.

What Do You Fear? Anti‐Immigrant Sentiment in Latin America

Covadonga Meseguer, Achim Kemmerling — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 00:00:00 -0700

In this article, we study the material determinants of anti-immigrant sentiment in Latin America. Based on new data on immigration to non-Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, we use the workhorse distributive theories that anticipate who wins and who loses from immigration and test their predictive capacity in labor-abundant countries. We exploit the variation in regional immigration rates, in the skill composition of natives versus migrants, and in the relative generosity of Latin American welfare states. We find that fears of labor-market competition are weak predictors of anti-immigrant sentiment. In contrast, fears of greater tax burdens are strong and robust predictors of anti-immigrant sentiment. We conclude that studying Latin American public opinion opens new avenues for theorizing about anti-immigrant sentiment in developing countries.

Enrollment in Religious Schools and the Educational Achievements of Children of High‐Skill Immigrants

Svetlana Chachashvili‐Bolotin, Sabina Lissitsa — Thu, 14 Apr 2016 00:00:00 -0700

The present study examines the effect of studying in schools of different levels of religiosity on academic achievements of first- and second- generation immigrant students from English-, Spanish-, and French-speaking countries in Israel. The sample included 52,043 students who completed twelfth grade in 2011. The findings of the Israeli case study indicate that choice of school based on religiosity interferes with the educational achievements of immigrant students. In spite of high socio-economic background of immigrant students, those who were enrolled in religious schools were less likely to earn matriculation certificates, as compared to those attending other types of schools.

Internal versus International Migration: Impacts of Remittances on Child Labor and Schooling in Vietnam

Michele Binci, Gianna Claudia Giannelli — Thu, 14 Apr 2016 00:00:00 -0700

This paper focuses on the effects of domestic and international remittances on child labor and schooling. Using data from the 1992–1993 and 1997–1998 Vietnam Living Standards Surveys, we investigate school attendance and child labor in remittance recipient and non-recipient households. The results of our binomial logit and two-sided censored regression panel analysis indicate that remittances increase schooling and reduce child labor. Although international remittances are found to have a stronger beneficial impact than domestic remittances in the cross-section, the panel analysis, taking account of fixed effects, reverses this result, showing that the only significant impact stems from domestic remittances.

Remittances for Collective Consumption and Social Status Compensation: Variations on Transnational Practices among Chinese International Migrants

Min Zhou, Xiangyi Li — Thu, 14 Apr 2016 00:00:00 -0700

This paper focuses on a special type of remittances — monetary remittances sent by international migrants to their hometowns to build symbolic structures and cultural facilities for collective consumption. We develop an analytical framework to examine the motives behind migrants’ remitting behavior and the mechanisms for realizing their remitting objectives based on a comparative study of two emigrant groups from China. We find that the sending of remittances for collective consumption serves as a unique mechanism for social status compensation. Such behavior is not only affected by migrants’ socioeconomic circumstances or government policies, but also by intersecting contextual and institutional factors at multiple levels transnationally.