Encyclopedia of Migration

This International Encyclopedia of Migration will define and explicate terms, concepts and key topics with widespread usage and recurring relevance for learning about and developing the fields of both international and internal migration. With migration being partly defined in the modern era by law and public policy, the subject includes knowledge not only from these areas but also from a full array of academic disciplines. Hence, this encyclopedia will include material from such fields as anthropology, archaeology, criminology, demography, economics, education, ethnic studies, geography, health sciences, history, law, linguistics, public policy, political science, psychology and sociology. As migration has been such an important part of the peopling of all parts of the world, this encyclopedia will also include synopses of major geographic movements from ancient and early history.

The International Encyclopedia of Migration will be a significant resource for students, teachers, practitioners, scholars and researchers interested in or working on any aspect of migration in any field. It should be particularly useful for people seeking information and knowledge about migration from fields other than their own.

TOPICS AND SUBTOPICS: (first draft)

1. Basic Outlines of Migration

Migration comprises a foundational unit of the study of any population. Measured in conjunction with births and deaths, migration into and out of any place determines the ultimate size of the population. Migration is a specialized form of moving that involves distinct components of distance, duration and residence. Conceptually, migration is often differentiated into internal and international flows. Internal migration historically has consisted in large part of continued urbanization of a previously rural population, but it may also show counterstreams moving from cities to suburbs.

International vs. internal

• Distance and activity space, duration, and national versus local boundaries.

• Change in circulation
• Partial vs. total displacement migration

• International as product of Westphalian system of nation-states

• Growth of regulation in 20^th century
• Growth in typologies of migrants
• Diasporas may exist without nation-state identification

Kinds of migration

• Primitive, or nomadic
• Voluntary, or agent-based, within large groups or clans or small-scale, as individuals or households

• Authorized, legal, documented
• Unauthorized, illegal, undocumented; "aliens"

• Involuntary, or forced, impelled.

• Displacement, warfare; environmental degradation and disaster
• Human trafficking, slavery
• Refugees, asylees

• Circular, or returning migration, sojourner vs. settler
• Step migration

Non-migration

• International: students, tourists, business travelers; foreign-born vs. immigrants
• Internal: Recurrent movement (commuting, daily crossings, seasonal work)

II.     Measurement of Migration and Statistical Methodology

This topic covers the general demographic and statistical concepts underpinning migration research. Initially, migration research followed a standardized set of concepts and measurements derived from demographic research and often dependent upon the geographical units within which data are collected. However, the research has expanded into multiple fields with many methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative.

Demographic concepts

• Flows vs. stocks

• Areas of origin and destination
• Emigration and immigration
• Differential migration

• Gross and net migration
• Components of change (residual) estimation; forward survival.
• Status and propensity rates, probabilities, in-migration, out-migration rates, net migration
• Estimates and population projections
• Distance, distance decay, gravity models
• Efficiency: ratio of streams to counterstreams
• Migration histories

Economic and sociological models

• Econometric models and general models of inequality, within and between cities or countries
• Multivariate regression analysis
• Ethnographies

Spatial analysis

• Geographic Information Systems, with database of attribute information, boundary files, digital map layers, analysis tools and user interface.
• Political and data units: e.g. wards, counties, metropolitan areas, states, provinces, nations

III.    Migration Data

Migration data vary widely across countries, both in terms of scope of collection and basic understanding of the definition of migration. This section examines the types of data collection instruments and their components.

Censuses

• Frequency, coverage, de facto vs. de jure, usual residence, field checking, coverage error and content, net and differential undercounts, continuous measurement, migration questions, dual-system estimation, demographic analysis
• Types of files and unit coverage: e.g. region, division, state, county, minor civil division/townships, places, census tracts, block groups, blocks.

Administrative records

• Population registers, universal and partial; ports of entry and/or exit, passports and visas issued, immigration yearbooks, tax records, social welfare/security records, city directories, postal stops, school enrollments, construction permits, utility usage.

Surveys

• Sampling issues, sample bias, panel studies, attrition.

Other sources

• Naturalizations and change of migration status
• Apprehensions and deportations; denaturalizations
• Asylee petitions, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

IV.    Migration Theories

No one theoretical perspective dominates the study of migration. Rather, multiple social science perspectives, all relatively new, compete with one another. This section will cover each theory and the underlying social, cultural and economic concepts.

Evolution of migration theories

• Ravenstein’s laws
• Intervening opportunities (Stouffer)
• Intervening obstacles (Lee)
• Demographic transition
• Population pressure
• "Push-pull"

Classical and neoclassical economics

• Macro- and micro-theory
• Regional labor supply and demand
• Equilibrium wage markets
• Opportunity costs
• Marginal productivity of labor
• Rational-actor and human capital models
• Factor mobility
• Discounted net returns over time
• Expected earnings gap vs. absolute wage differential

New household economics

• Credit and risk markets, insurance for crops, unemployment and retirement
• Household-level decision making
• Relative deprivation
• Migration and intermediate investment

Labor-market segmentation

• Structural inflation and status (occupational) hierarchies
• Reference wages
• Economic dualism and bifurcated labor markets; primary and secondary sectors
• Ethnic enclaves and enclave economies
• Demographic shifts in labor supply

World systems

• Historical-structuralist view of uneven development; dependency theory
• Core-periphery dichotomy
• Brain drain
• Land consolidation and agricultural displacement
• Export-processing zones
• Cultural linkages
• Global cities and hourglass economy

Structuration; institutional theory

• "Structure-agency problematic" (Giddens)
• Intermediary institutions connect potential migrants to jobs

Social networks

• Role of information
• Chain migration, "auspices" of migration (Tilly and Brown)
• Forms of fungible capital: social, human, financial, cultural

• Enforceable trust
• Strong and weak ties

• Utility maximization

Cumulative causation

• Social context of migration
• Culture of migration
• Social labeling of jobs
• Migration hump, density function, cumulative density function

Political economy and state structure

• Hegemonic stability in a geopolitical order

  <

• Labor importation

V.     Migrant Selectivity

Particular types of people are more likely to migrate than others. This section describes these typologies and the theoretical and practical considerations of migrants.

Adjustment causes vs. induced causes of residential mobility (Clark)

• Adjustment: Housing/tenure, neighborhood effects, physical environment, public services, and accessibility, commuting
• Induced: employment, job change, retirement
• Induced: life cycle change

• Household formation, change in marital status
• Change in household size
• Gender, age differentials

Place utility

• Depends on stress threshold function for mobility decision
• Stream of information
• Residential preferences
• Field theory approach to searching

Return migration

• Duration-dependence
• Socioeconomic mobility
• Chronic movers
• Seasonal dependence, snowbirds

Health of immigrants

• Paradox of declining immigrant health in wealthier destination countries
• Fertility changes
• Reference group changes

VI.   Urbanization

For more than a century, the dominant trend in worldwide migration has been urbanization, so that for the first time in history, more than half of the world’s population lives in an urban area. This section describes the aspects of urban growth related to migration.

Urban transition

• Rural-urban continuum

• Megalopolis/urban agglomeration
• Transnational urban systems

Degree and pace of urbanization

• Transportation, commuting costs; natural evolution theory
• Fiscal, social stresses

• Land conversion, water availability, infrastructure

Primate cities, megacities, global cities

• Rank-size rule, balanced urban system

Density

• Crowding, slums, squatters, gentrification
• Central cities, suburbs, exurbs
• Urban sprawl, multiple nuclei
• NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) movements

Theoretical perspectives of urbanization

• Chicago School and human ecology, concentric zones, sector models; edge cities
• Structural approach; uneven development (Harvey, Lefebvre); circuits of capital
• Los Angeles school; post-Marxian, postmodernist epistemologies
• Political economy and urban growth machines
• Urban economics

• Location theories (e.g. least-cost, economic base, incubator, industrial specializations and nodal metros; maquiladoras; export processing zones, employment poles)
• Consumer functions, central place theory, retail gravitation

VII.  Theories of Incorporation

This section describes the best-known theories of assimilation and incorporation.

Acculturation

• Language acquisition, bi- or multilingualism, Fishman model of language acquisition
• Customs, values and practices
• Consonant and dissonant

Assimilation

• Classical/canonical accounts: race relations cycle, structural assimilation, melting pot (triple melting pot), social distance, social networks, ethnic association, ethclass
• Newer accounts: "Anglo-conformity," straight-line vs. bumpy line assimilation, neo-institutionalism, incorporation, immigrant generation.

Multiculturalism and pluralism

• Ethnic construction and reconstruction, panethnicity
• Boundary formation, bounded solidarity
• Symbolic ethnicity; mosaic metaphor
• Visible minorities

Ethnic Disadvantage

• Ethnic hierarchy and structural disadvantage
• Mainstream, "core" society

Segmented assimilation

• Divergent paths
• Downward mobility, oppositional subcultures, neighborhood effects
• Selective acculturation, ethnic retention

Transnationalism

• Globalization and transnational cultural studies
• Transmigrants vs. diasporas

VIII. Kinds of Incorporation

Immigrants adjust to their destination society in multiple dimensions. This section expounds on the variety of responses to immigration by immigrants and the host society.

Identity formation

• Public opinion toward immigration,

• Negative: xenophobia, alien, prejudice, racism, self vs. Other, scapegoating
• Positive: Model minority, "American Dream"

• Multiracial identification; phenotype
• Selective identification
• Hyphenated identification

Socio-cultural incorporation

• Religious and linguistic change
• Ancestry studies
• Second-generation revolt
• Endogamy and exogamy rates

Economic incorporation

• Opportunity structure: blocked mobility, hourglass economy
• Ethnic economy
• Educational opportunity: affirmative action

Spatial assimilation

• Place stratification vs. spatial integration
• Segregation mechanisms: steering, redlining, mortgage discrimination
• Residential preferences
• Home ownership and suburbanization

Political incorporation

• Non-citizen: legalization, naturalization, civic association
• Citizen: voting, political participation

<

Cultural citizenship

IX.   Migration Policy

Policy strongly affects both internal and international migration. This section describes current and past policies across a range of countries. It includes legislation, legal cases, specific government offices and informal policy practices.

International migration

• Entrance policies

• Health and literacy tests
• Quotas

• Visa requirements, types of visas

• Permanent vs. temporary visa types
• Priorities for admittance, employment categories
• Family reunification and sponsorship

• Exit policies

• Deportation and denaturalization
• Criminalization of immigrants
• Residence requirements
• Incorporation policies, job banks and civics and language training
• Citizenship

• Jus soli vs. jus sanguinis
• Dual citizenship

• Guest workers

• Specific flows, e.g. Gastarbeiter, braceros
• Repatriation
• Restrictions on employment

• Control of immigration

• Border policies
• Bureaucracies

• Migrants’ rights

• Civil protections
• Secondary and tertiary education; tuition
• Access to jobs

Internal migration

• Home ownership, mortgage interest tax deductions, lending practices, housing institutions
• Transportation: commuting, highway systems and public transportation
• Job training, job transfers and tax policy
• Residency requirements (e.g. hukou in China) and floating populations

X.    Global Institutions

A large body of literature covers the global economic and political institutions that enable transfer of capital, investment, and the movement of people. This section covers some of the institutional actors and treaties that have enabled global movement of goods and people, from the Pax Romana to the Peace of Westphalia to the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

XI.    Fiscal and Economic Aspects of Migration

This section explores the effects of immigration on receiving and sending countries, to the economy as a whole and as a net fiscal burden at the national and regional levels.

• Remittances

• Multiplier (second round) effects
• Short-run income effects (income elasticities) and income distribution
• Consumption vs. investment uses
• Repatriation of foreign earnings
• Community development

• Economic effects

• Returns to scale
• Wages of natives
• Productivity of labor and capital

• Revenues and expenditures

• Welfare expenditures
• Tax streams

 

XII.  Major Migration Streams

A comprehensive account of migration will include the major migrations of both historical and contemporary times. These will include international settlements and internal displacements.

Receiving Countries

• Colonization: USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Siberia, South Africa, Israel, Latin America
• Contemporary labor importation: Europe, Japan, Middle East, Africa (refugees)

Sending countries

• Traditional: Europe, China, India, Philippines
• Contemporary: East Asia, South Asia, Africa, Latin America, Caribbean

Prehistoric migrations

• Homo erectus, Neanderthals, Cro-Magnon
• Paleo-Indian
• Indo-European
• Aboriginal seafarers

Early historical migration

• Mediterranean (e.g. Phoenician, Greek, Roman)
• Celtic
• Bantu
• Lapita in New Guinea
• Turk and Mongol, steppe peoples
• Huns and those they displaced: Goths and Vandals
• Anglo-Saxon
• Arab
• Viking in western Europe and Russia
• Norman
• Germans eastward
• Toltec and Aztec
• African slaves

Historical diasporas:

• Jews
• Roma
• Italians and other Europeans
• Chinese
• Armenians

XIII.  Other

 

Dr. Ueda is a historian of the United States and of migration.  He has explored global migration and its effects on societies and regions in Postwar Immigrant America (St. Martin's Press) and Crosscurrents:  Atlantic and Pacific Migration in the Making of a Global America (Oxford University Press).  He studied the role of local migrations in the rise of public education in Avenues to Adulthood (Cambridge University Press). 

Dr. Ueda was a research editor of the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (awarded the Waldo Leland Prize of the American Historical Association) and co-editor (with Mary C. Waters and Helen Marrow) of New Americans (Harvard University Press).

He is also co-editor of the Journal of Interdisciplinary History (MIT Press).

Dr. Ueda's research  has been supported by fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Charles Warren Center at Harvard.

Dr. Bean is a social scientist with 35 years of experience as a researcher, teacher, administrator and public policy analyst. His PhD is in sociology and his dissertation was written in social psychology. As a graduate student at Duke University, in addition to his work in sociology and social psychology (with Alan C. Kerckhoff, Kurt Back and Edward E. Jones), he took courses in demography and worked on research projects for three distinguished demographers (Reynolds Farley, Nathan Keyfitz and Hal Winsborough), all of whom subsequently became foundational leaders in population studies at prestigious universities in the United States (Michigan, Harvard and Wisconsin respectively). As the founding Director of both the Population Studies Center and the Immigration Policy Research Center at The Urban Institute in Washington, DC, Dr. Bean has also conducted work in and developed extensive knowledge about the economics of population and migration. He is currently Chancellor's Professor of Sociology and Economics at the University of California, Irvine.

Dr. Brown is a tenured Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. She is a sociologist/demographer whose areas of specialization are immigration, residential segregation and urban sociology. As a result of conducting research in these areas, she has also developed considerable expertise in geography and urban policy. In addition to her academic and research specializations, she also brings more than fifteen years of journalistic experience as a reporter and editor starting when she was on the staff of the Harvard Crimson and including nearly twelve years with the St. Louis-Post Dispatch.