Migration

Migration is a difficult concept to define because it includes people who move for different reasons across different spaces. A migrant can be a person who moves to another city or town within a nation; a refugee who crosses an international border to escape religious or political persecution; a jobseeker who moves to another country for better economic opportunities; a slave who is forcibly moved; or a person displaced by war or natural disaster. Demographers lack a single, operational definition for migration because it occurs under different conditions.

The causes of migration are related to the specific contexts in which they take place. First, the composition of migration streams are characterized by structural forces such as the global economy. Second, sociocultural differentials (gender, class, caste, etc.) have important implications for individual mobility.

Because migration occurs under different circumstances, the demographic implications for receiver populations change accordingly. For example, when large numbers of rural residents migrate to cities, infrastructure problems may arise in urban areas.

Given the variation possible in the migration process, all migrants cannot be analyzed with the same theoretical framework. However, although heterogeneous factors make a universal definition impossible, in general, migration is a process in which an individual or a group shifts their residence from one population (or place) to another. Apart from its spatial dimension, migration also implies the disruption of work, schooling, social life, and other patterns. A migrant is someone who breaks off activities and associations in one place and reorganizes their daily life in another place. A move within the same area is considered mobility, not migration, because the mover can continue day-today life (keep the same job or school, shop at the same stores, and socialize with the same people) without significant disruption (Weeks 1999).

Most demographers argue that migration must involve an essentially permanent territorial shift in residence to be distinguished from mobility. Hence, travelers and commuters are excluded from migration studies because they move across boundaries on a temporary basis and because their movement does not generally cause major change in any population. Categorizing movers strictly in terms of the permanence of their move can be problematic, however, because this method tends to disregard the social context of population movement. Temporary moves are typically absent from the census, and therefore do not register in demographic terms. In this perspective, a software engineer who makes a permanent move from San Francisco to Los Angeles is classified as a migrant, while a Mexican arriving in California as a seasonal agricultural laborer is not. However, the agricultural laborer's move is probably the most socially significant given language barriers, culture shock, and race discrimination encountered.

Just because a mover is not measured as a member of a population does not mean that their movement has had no measurable social impact on populations. Under the United States's bracero program (a system created in 1942 to help solve U.S. agricultural labor shortages), for example, the number of temporary Mexican laborers reached a point that U.S. policy makers reacted with mass deportations and the creation of a restrictive immigration act meant to keep Mexicans out. This policy created severe unemployment problems in Mexico, whose economy was not strong enough to reabsorb these workers. Hence, the program that previously encouraged mobility into the United States contributed to Mexican poverty after it was terminated in 1964. Even though they would not be counted as migrants, the mobility of Mexican agricultural workers left a deep impression on the Mexican economy, and it initiated changes to U.S. immigration policy.

Types of Migration

The relatively permanent movement of people across territorial boundaries is referred to as inmigration and out-migration, or immigration and emigration when the boundaries crossed are international. The place of in-migration or immigration is called the receiver population, and the place of out-migration or emigration is called the sender population. There are two basic types of migration studied by demographers:

1. Internal migration. This refers to a change of residence within national boundaries, such as between states, provinces, cities, or municipalities. An internal migrant is someone who moves to a different administrative territory.
2. International migration. This refers to change of residence over national boundaries. An international migrant is someone who moves to a different country. International migrants are further classified as legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, and refugees. Legal immigrants are those who moved with the legal permission of the receiver nation, illegal immigrants are those who moved without legal permission, and refugees are those crossed an international boundary to escape persecution.

Jay Weinstein and Vijayan Pillai (2001) denote a third classification: forced migration. Forced migration exists when a person is moved against their will (slaves), or when the move is initiated because of external factors (natural disaster or civil war). The distinction between internal and international migration is crucial because they happen for different reasons. Because structural barriers are more likely to impede the mobility of a potential international migrant than an internal migrant—international migration involves more administrative procedures, greater expense, and more difficulties associated with obtaining employment, accessing state services, learning a new language, and the like—the motivations behind international migration are usually stronger than those behind internal migration (Weeks 1999).

Theories of Migration

People move for different reasons. These differences affect the overall migration process. The conditions under which a migrant enters a receiver population can have broad implications for all parties involved. The expression migration experience refers to the fact that different causes for migration will produce different outcomes observable from a sociological perspective. For example, a person who moves within a nation will not have the same migration experience as a political refugee. In most cases, refugees need special services from the receiver population such as emergency shelter, food, and legal aid. The psychological trauma of fleeing their homeland and leaving family members behind can also complicate refugees' adjustment to their new environment. Considering that a migrant can be a slave, refugee, or job-seeker, or have some other reason for moving, no single theory can provide a comprehensive explanation for the migration process.

Although a comprehensive theory is unattainable, it remains a crucial task of demographers to explain why people migrate. Theories of migration are important because they can help us understand population movements within their wider political and economic contexts. For example, if outmigration from Third World nations is shown to be a result of economic problems caused by the global economy, then such migration could be managed with better international economic agreements instead of restrictive immigration acts. Indeed, rather than slowing Mexican in-migration to the United States, termination of the bracero program actually increased the amount of illegal immigration because it exacerbated Mexican poverty.

Ernest Ravenstein is widely regarded as the earliest migration theorist. Ravenstein, an English geographer, used census data from England and Wales to develop his "Laws of Migration" (1889). He concluded that migration was governed by a "push-pull" process; that is, unfavorable conditions in one place (oppressive laws, heavy taxation, etc.) "push" people out, and favorable conditions in an external location "pull" them out. Ravenstein's laws stated that the primary cause for migration was better external economic opportunities; the volume of migration decreases as distance increases; migration occurs in stages instead of one long move; population movements are bilateral; and migration differentials (e.g., gender, social class, age) influence a person's mobility.

Many theorists have followed in Ravenstein's footsteps, and the dominant theories in contemporary scholarship are more or less variations of his conclusions. Everett Lee (1966) reformulated Ravenstein's theory to give more emphasis to internal (or push) factors. Lee also outlined the impact that intervening obstacles have on the migration process. He argued that variables such as distance, physical and political barriers, and having dependents can impede or even prevent migration. Lee pointed out that the migration process is selective because differentials such as age, gender, and social class affect how persons respond to push-pull factors, and these conditions also shape their ability to overcome intervening obstacles. Furthermore, personal factors such as a person's education, knowledge of a potential receiver population, family ties, and the like can facilitate or retard migration.

Several theories have been developed to treat international patterns of migration on their own terms, but these too are variants of push-pull theory. First, neoclassical economic theory (Sjaastad 1962; Todaro 1969) suggests that international migration is related to the global supply and demand for labor. Nations with scarce labor supply and high demand will have high wages that pull immigrants in from nations with a surplus of labor. Second, segmented labor-market theory (Piore 1979) argues that First World economies are structured so as to require a certain level of immigration. This theory suggests that developed economies are dualistic: they have a primary market of secure, well-remunerated work and a secondary market of low-wage work. Segmented labor-market theory argues that immigrants are recruited to fill these jobs that are necessary for the overall economy to function but are avoided by the native-born population because of the poor working conditions associated with the secondary labor market. Third, world-systems theory (Sassen 1988) argues that international migration is a by-product of global capitalism. Contemporary patterns of international migration tend to be from the periphery (poor nations) to the core (rich nations) because factors associated with industrial development in the First World generated structural economic problems, and thus push factors, in the Third World.

Migration and the Family

Explanatory frameworks premised on the push-pull hypothesis tend to overemphasize the role of the individual in the migration process. Critics of this perspective argue that the decision to migrate is based on group experience, in particular the costs and benefits to the family. Rather than being an isolated calculation, an individual's decision to migrate is conditioned by multiple social and economic factors. For example, a member of a rural family may be motivated to migrate if urban employment translates into the diversification and amelioration of the family economy, or if rural productive resources are not enough to sustain an extended family. Such out-migration probably would not occur if it was likely to produce an economic deficit for the family unit. Apart from this, the decision to migrate is not calculated from an exclusively economic standpoint. An individual can have an economic opportunity in another place, but not take it up if their departure would cause emotional hardship in the sender community. In Sarah Harbison's words, the family "is the structural and functional context within which motivations and values are shaped, human capital is accrued, information is received and interpreted, and decisions are put into operation" (1981, p. 226).

The family is the crucial agent of an individual's capacity and motivation to migrate. Harbison argues that the complexities of the family structure characterize the migration process because the family unit mediates between the individual and society, and thus it can prioritize its needs over the individual's in many instances. Three factors give the family unit significant importance in the migration process (Harbison 1981; Boyd 1989).

1. Because migration requires resources for transportation and to establish a new home, family support is paramount, especially because most migrants are young and lack sufficient personal savings to finance a move. In most cases, the family unit is the essential unit of economic production and thus determines the allocation of resources to individuals and specifies economic roles. Apart from the economic needs of the family, differential access to family resources and the social division of labor have important implications for individual mobility. The socioeconomic framework of the family can facilitate or restrict migration. In a situation where males control family resources, and females are assigned strict domestic roles in the division of labor, women's mobility will be structurally limited or at least determined by men.
2. The family is the primary socializing unit. Through the framework of kinship, customs, values, social obligations, and the like, the family unit conditions the individual to fill a basic role in society. For example, in societies where migration is crucial for the putative well-being of the group, patterns of socialization will develop to prepare certain individuals to migrate. The primogeniture system—under which real estate passes to first-born sons—assisted the mobility of later-born sons because they were often provided an education or military placement in lieu of inheritance.
3. The family is an enabling economic and social network. The geographic dispersion of kin members partially determines the migration destination. Many people move to where they have family members (rather than where economic opportunities are most fruitful) because they can be relied upon to provide food, shelter, and information, which help them cope with their new environment. The presence of kin will also reduce the psychological impact of culture shock through the perpetuation of old customs in the new place. For these reasons, ethnic groups have tended to concentrate in specific regions and neighborhoods.

Harbison (1981) points out that while the family's function as a subsistence unit, agent of socialization, and support network shapes the motivations and incentives for migration, these are also conditioned by sociocultural factors, such as marriage rules and kinship rights. Of particular importance is the gender division of labor. For the most part, migration studies have been gender-blind, and this obviously has serious implications from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective. Many studies (Bjerén 1997; Chant 1992; Kelson and DeLaet 1999) have shown that women's migration experience is fundamentally different from men's. Because gender is a primary organizing principle of the family and society, it follows that gender structures the migration process to a significant degree.

Migration and the Global Economy

Before the international economic downturns that began in the 1970s, the composition of international migration generally held to Ravenstein's hypothesis that the primary motivation for migration was economic, and that young males predominated long-distance travel. Since the 1970s, the pattern of migration has transformed with global economic changes. Moreover, the composition of migration streams transformed because earlier waves of migration created support networks that helped more recent migrants overcome intervening obstacles and difficulties associated with adjusting to a new environment (Boyd 1989). As people settled in new places, they became valuable sources of information and economic assistance for prospective migrants to draw upon. As Monica Boyd (1989) notes, while structural forces form the basic incentives for migration, push-pull factors are filtered through social networks that connect sender and receiver populations. Various patterns of migration (e.g., Mexican immigration to the United States) have become institutionalized as these networks took root.

However, while family contacts often determine where migrants move, structural forces remain powerful causal factors. Douglas Massey and colleagues (1994) point out that most empirical evidence suggests that a crucial impetus for international migration is the combination of systemic unemployment in the sender population and good employment prospects in the receiver population. World-systems theorists argue that one effect of globalization has been to keep Third World economies dependent on agriculture and the exportation of raw materials and simple commodities. Slow industrialization and relatively high fertility rates have generated acute unemployment in these nations, and this partially explains why net migration streams have generally flowed in a unilateral (from periphery to core nations) under the global economy. Economic problems associated with globalization have made labor migration an important survival strategy for many Third World families. For some nations labor has become a major export economy, and states have facilitated migration to capitalize on its economic benefits. Shu-Ju Cheng (1999) notes that there were over two million documented Filipino migrant workers worldwide by 1995, and they remitted U.S. $18 billion between 1975 and 1994. Massey and colleagues (1994) point out that Mexican remittances were so great in certain communities that there were more U.S. dollars in circulation than their peso equivalent. In 1995, the total of world remittances from migrant laborers amounted to U.S. $70 billion (Taylor 1999).

Migration connections between rural economies and urban and international labor markets are particularly important for Third World consumption and production. Out-migration from rural populations to external labor markets has stimulated consumption and productivity in many Third World countries. As Massey and colleagues (1994) note, one study of two Mexican rural communities showed that remittances from domestic urban centers and the United States sustained a level of consumption 37 percent higher than gross production therein. J. Edward Taylor (1999) remarks that for every dollar Mexican migrant laborers sent home from the United States, Mexico's Gross National Product (GNP) increased between $2.69 and $3.17. Contrary to neoclassical theory, these studies demonstrate the potential nonunitary impact of labor migration. Besides increasing household consumption, income transfers have had a dynamic impact on some Third World economies. Remittances often initiate economic improvements because they are used for productive investments, and thus increase household incomes, productivity, and the GNP.

See also:Global Citizenship; Home; Homeless Families; Immigration; Industrialization; Kinship; Poverty; Rural Families; Socialization; Socioeconomic Status; Stress; Unemployment; Urbanization; War/Political Violence; Work and Family

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ZHENG WU