Return home and start new businesses: internal migration in China

Internal migration patterns in China are characterised by rapid urbanisation and cross‐regional movement and more recently by the return of migrants to their native counties. This study investigates the drivers of migrants' permanent return and their likelihood of starting new businesses in their counties of origin. The results suggest that migrants are discouraged from permanent resettlement in urban areas because of family ties and the aspiration to start businesses in their villages of origin. The study also provides evidence that the probability of starting a business upon return is affected by the migrants' accumulation of work experience, business experience, the savings earned while away, financial stability, and the social capital they have in their home counties. The results provide important insights for emerging countries in overcoming rapid urbanisation and imbalanced regional economic growth.     

The collection of national household survey data in South Africa (1993-2001): Rendering labour migration invisible

This article explores the coverage of labour migration in four national questionnaires in South Africa - the Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development (1993), the National Census (1996 and 2001), the October Household Surveys (1995-9) and the Labour Force Survey (2000-1). Internal labour migration has been an integral part of South Africa's history and economic development. Whether this migration is changing, and how this will affect the rural household's access to resources, are surely important questions to be examined both now and in the future. A comprehensive investigation requires not only specific case study analysis, but also analysis of nationally representative data on households and the individuals who are part of these households, whether as resident or absent household members. Official household surveys in South Africa have been modified and revised over the years to improve the quality of information collected on individuals, households and their access to resources. However, questions of labour migration have received little attention in these revisions. Rather, the quality and quantity of information collected on migration and labour migrants specifically have declined such that in current sources of national data, the Labour Force Survey (2000-1) and the Census (2001), labour migrants are all but invisible.     

Geographical mobility of population in pre-industrial times

Abstract

Since 1821, the starting-point for Rosenberg's study, more or less complete series of information about migrants have been preserved in the parishes of the county of Uusimaa (Nyland), in the form of lists of persons moving out of or into the parish or change-of-domicile certificates filed by the migrants in the registry office of the parish to which they moved. It ends at roughly the time when publication of official migration statistics began in Finland (1878). The later years of the period coincide with the industrial take-off, so that the study deals almost exclusively with the pre-industrial period. Very little attention has been paid in previous research to the migratory movement of that period, one reason being the illusion that the migratory movement was caused by industrialisation and, accordingly, that the scale of migration was very small before the take-off. The main reason, however, must surely be the absence of accessible statistics. The primary material is dispersed in hundreds of church archives from which the researcher must himself select the emigrants and immigrants case by case. This is tedious, but it has the advantage of enabling him to classify the migrants in the manner best suited to his study without limiting him to the classification employed in the official statistics.     

移民网络促进FDI流入——基于中国经验的分析

近年我国智力外流现象严重,以致引起国内外众多媒体热逐以及学术界的关注,然而,研究中国不同教育层次移民对 FDI 流入影响的经验文献仍较缺乏.本文考察了中国在经合组织各国的移民网络是否促进了来源于该国家的 FDI 流入中国.实证结果显示:当地移民网络为中国 FDI 的流入提供了重要的推动力;其中,高等教育移民在 1%的水...     

Determinants of return migration intentions: Evidence from Zimbabwean migrants living in South Africa

This paper uses a dataset of Zimbabwean migrants living in South Africa to examine the determinants of the probability of their returning to their country of origin. It analyses migrants' return migration intentions using a logistic regression that examines 10 demographic and socioeconomic factors. Six factors – reason for migrating, the number of dependants supported in the home country, the level of education, economic activity in the host country, the level of income and the duration of stay in the host country – are found to be statistically significant determinants of the return migration intentions. The main policy implication of these findings is that the chances of attracting back skills are high if political and economic stability can be achieved.     

Economic freedom and migration: A metro area-level analysis

We examine the determinants of intra-U.S. population migration at the metropolitan area level (MSA), with an emphasis on the presence of policies that are consistent with economic freedom. We are the first to produce a multivariate regression analysis of migration and economic freedom at the local level. Combining a 1993–2014 unbalanced panel of MSA-to-MSA migration data from the Internal Revenue Service with a new economic freedom index for U.S. metropolitan areas, we find that a 10% increase in economic freedom of a destination MSA, relative to the economic freedom of an origin MSA, was associated with a 27.4% increase in net migration from the origin MSA to the destination MSA. If we use mean net migration flows as a benchmark, we would expect a 10% increase in relative economic freedom to increase net migration to the destination MSA by 22 workers per year from each other MSA.     

Longing for the Blue Sky: Urban air quality and the individual decision to immigrate

Based on China Migrants Dynamic Survey data and the air quality data from China National Environmental Monitoring Centre, we empirically investigated whether immigration decision-making is associated with urban air quality. The empirical results from the Logit model revealed ‘vote by foot’ rule in the immigration decision in China, implying migrants commonly attempt to move to cities with good air quality. We additionally found that among determinants of immigration, air quality was inferior to GDP, industrial structures, wages, and public services. We also observed heterogenous impacts of urban air quality on the individual decision to immigrate by gender, age, education, and migration patterns. Specifically, migrants in female and elderly groups have a stronger desire for good urban air quality, whereas those with high education level have a lower desire for the same. Moreover, urban air pollution decreased the probability of interprovincial migration. Rural migrants were less affected by urban air pollution when immigrating to cities. We finally put forward policy implications to balance labour forces migration and economic development.     

Employers and Foreign Migrants in the Labor Markets of Major Russian Cities: Interactions in a New Economic Reality

Materials of focus groups with employers who hire foreigners, in-depth interviews with labor migrants, and expert interviews with decision-makers, as well as statistical data, serve as groundwork for investigating the new migrant labor practices that have arisen from the radical restructuring of the migration legislation since early 2015 and those that remain since the economic crisis of 2008–2009 (the latter prevail). The conclusion has been drawn that employers are generally not ready to refrain from hiring labor migrants, despite the increased costs of migrant labor.     

An SVAR Model of Fluctuations in U.S. Migration Flows and State Labor Market Dynamics

Large internal migration flows are typically viewed as evidence of flexible U.S. labor markets adjusting to asymmetrical regional demand shocks. Yet, amenity-induced migration flows suggest that they may not necessarily facilitate adjustment to demand shocks and instead may be destabilizing. This paper employs a structural vector autoregression model with long-run identifying restrictions to account for both labor-demand and labor-supply shocks in examining the role of migration in U.S. regional labor-market fluctuations. The results reveal that less than one-half of innovations in state migration flows are responses to labor-demand shocks. It is not until the third period that migrants fill a majority of demand-induced jobs in a typical state, while it takes about 7 to 8 years for migration flows to fully adjust to labor-demand shocks. The extent of the migration response also has implications for how much state and local economic development policies benefit original residents.     

城乡人口空间迁移模式的比较研究

农村移民过度集聚不利于城市化可持续发展。文章利用第六次全国人口普查数据的研究结果显示,农村移民表现出显著的单向迁移特征,空间分布高度集中化。但城镇移民双向迁移特征更为明显,空间分布更为均衡。从劳动力市场条件的角度解释认为:户籍制度约束使得农村人口迁移仅基于经济因素考虑,因而空间集聚度很高。而城镇人口由于能够免受此类约束,迁移决策不仅基于经济因素,而且基于社会、文化、环境等多因素考虑,因而空间分布更为均衡。文章认为,建立一种相对均衡的农村移民空间迁移模式,关键是要彻底改革户籍制度,使农村移民享有与城镇居民同等的公共服务获取权。     

Internal migration and external benefit: The impact of labor migration on the wage structure in urban China

China provides a unique experience of massive internal (within-country) migration but with high segregation of jobs between migrants and natives. Thus, migration has a complementary external effect on native wages: the elasticities of complementarity of migrants are about 31.7%, 20.3%, and 19.9% for native workers with a college, high school and less than high school education, respectively. After the wage is deflated by the housing price, the elasticities decline to 11%, 8.2% and −4.4% for the respective education groups, which provides the lower-bound analysis results. In addition, migration has widened wage dispersion, as well as increasing the education premium and residual inequality. The elasticity of substitution in jobs between migrants and natives is very low due to the hukou restriction, and increasing proportions of migrants in any given labor force widen the migrant/native wage gap. Job segregation is an important factor that explains particular labor market findings in China.     

Rural–urban migration and urbanization in China: Evidence from time-series and cross-section analyses

Since 1978, China has experienced a rapid and unprecedented process of urbanization, created by the history's largest flow of rural–urban migration in the world. This article attempts (a) to assess the role of the cityward migration in China's urbanization in 1978–1999 and (b) to empirically investigate factors behind the migration boom with time-series and cross-section data. We find that (a) rural–urban migration made dominant contributions to Chinese urban population growth; (b) while moving together with the Chinese economy, the causal link runs from economic growth to migration, not vice versa; (c) interprovince migrants were encouraged by the rural–urban income gap and discouraged by their geographic distances to destinations; and (d) the amount of intraprovince migrants is positively related to rural–urban income gap and urban population in that province.     

Migration to the agricultural frontier and wealth accumulation, 1860-1870

I use a new data set of households linked between the 1860 and 1870 censuses to study frontier migration. Households that moved to the frontier to farm were more likely than non-migrants to have been poor, landless, and illiterate, and to have had young children. Also, after controlling for observable differences, migrants had below average abilities to accumulate wealth. These findings suggest fewer opportunities for migrants to accumulate wealth in non-frontier areas and a reason for their migration. Nonetheless, migrants fared well, accumulating wealth at high rates. The gains in wealth of migrants, especially those with long tenure on the frontier, suggest the extraordinary benefits of migration.     

A comparison of the migration process to an urban barrio and to a rural community: two case studies

The results of 2 case studies on migration in Colombia are outlined and compared. The 1st study examines inmigration to a shantytown, El Carmen, in Bogota. The 2nd study involves inmigration to a community in the eastern interior of Colombia, Granada. Migrants' motives, paths of migration, and personal characteristics are examined, suggesting hypotheses for future studies. Economic reasons were most often listed as motives for moving by both the residents of Granada and El Carmen. The type of economic motives varied greatly between the 2 communities. Reasons such as "looking for land," "establishing a business," or "to find a better life" ranked high in importance among Granada residents. These motives, along with the flight from violence, indicate that the independence provided by land and small business affords the inmigrants to Granada a certain security. Inmigrants to El Carmen were seeking employment. Only 34% of the migrants to El Carmen made 1 or more moves before settling in Bogota. 90% of the rural to rural migrants made 1 or more stops before moving to Granada. 68% of the migrants to El Carmen were born within 100 miles of Bogota while only 18% of the migrants to Granada were born within a 100 mile radius of the community. The usual pattern of the migrant to Granada was to move to a neighboring village, town, or city regardless of whether it was closer to Granada or not. The majority of inmigrants to Granada moved from distances greater than 100 miles. Over 70% of the inmigrants were born in towns and villages of more than 2000 population. If a nucleus of 10,000 inhabitants or more are considered urban, then 46% of the rural to rural migrants resided in urban areas prior to moving to Granada. This suggests that a sizable proportion of the migration to Granada is really urban to rural frontier. Studies done in Colombia and Brazil indicate that migrants to rural areas have a lower educational level than migrants to urban areas. Data from El Carmen and Granada gives similar results. 20% of the migrant residents of El Carmen have a primary school education (5 years) compared with only 7% of the inmigrants to Granada. 81% of the migrant residents of El Carmen were in their teens, 20s, and 30s at the time of migration, while only 52% of the inmigrants to Granada were in the same category. Approximately 56% of the inmigrants to Granada were in the occupational categories of farm owner operator and farm renter or laborer as compared to only approximately 40% of the inmigrants to El Carmen. The data indicate that a majority of the shantytown inmigrants come directly from small communities and travel short distances to Bogota. This is consistent with other findings of rural to urban migration. It is hypothesized that the socioeconomic level of migrants in a certain migratory stream is related to the perceived opportunity in the receiving area.     

People＇s Mobility and Guanxi Networks： A Case Study

The increase in the movement of people from rural to urban areas since the mid-1980s represents the largest labor migration ever experienced in China. Because migration is a process of selection, it is imperative that the major dynamics determining the selection are studied. What are the critical characteristics of migrants that help them to realize their mobility from rural areas to urban areas？ While educational attainment, gender, age, marital status and personal skills are important variables in the selection process, the present paper examines how social networks （guanxi connections） play a significant role in the process of migration selection in China. A case study from one of the northern villages in rural China is used to explore how social networks have shaped and given meaning to migration. The present paper elaborates on how people＇s social mobility has coincided with and been reinforced by people＇s physical mobility.     

Remittances and development: the impact of migration to South Africa on rural livelihoods in southern Zimbabwe

The development potential of remittances has not received much policy attention in the migrants' countries of origin. The Homelink facility established by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe in May 2004 excludes undocumented migrants, who are unlikely to use formal channels to send their remittances back home, and studies on international migration from Zimbabwe to South Africa have neglected the role of remittances, especially from undocumented migrants. However, some countries have realised this potential and developed strategies to encourage the flow and investment of remittances, which can contribute significantly to poverty reduction and development. Without such regulations and policies, which require the collaboration of government, migrant groups, the local community, non-governmental organisations and other international organisations, migrant remittances will continue to be used mainly for consumption, with a very small proportion being invested in sustainable investment.     

Constructing migration: Infrastructure,poverty and development in KwaZulu‐Natal

Migration and population movement are probably the most neglected of the significant dynamics behind rural poverty in South Africa. Little is known about how people move from place to place, and much of what we thought we knew may be incorrect. In KwaZulu‐Natal job search is no longer the single dominating reason given for migration. Instead, infrastructure ties with it for first place today, with land close behind. The first article in this two‐part report notes that as many as two thirds of the province's disadvantaged families have broken away from their communities of origin and moved at least once during their lifetimes. Perhaps three million have migrated in the last fifteen years. A second unexpected finding is the predominance of rural‐to‐rural migration. Three quarters of all moves recorded were rural to rural, with many orientated towards advantaged rural areas around small towns and secondary cities. Results show how streams are channelled towards poverty or opportunity, and argue for a review of prevailing concepts of rural‐urban relations which structure delivery efforts. The second article, to follow later, notes that recorded income levels are now higher in some rural destination areas than in the urban shack communities that accommodate rural‐to‐urban migrants. Results of various studies presented show how access to information affects migration patterns, and the article also explores the role of infrastructure as a determining force in the regional distribution of population and as a factor in people's own bootstrap anti‐poverty efforts.     

库区移民 和谐三峡 生态文明——以忠县为例

三峡移民工程是关系国计民生的世界级难题,而库区移民的安稳致富是难中之难。忠县作为重庆库区第二大移民县,其移民的稳定和致富情况关乎移民工作全局,对和谐三峡乃至和谐社会的构建起到举足轻重的作用。当前,移民搬迁安置工作已经接近尾声,三峡移民工作的重心已由搬迁安置逐步转向安稳致富与和谐发展,移民安置工作遗留的问题逐渐凸显出来,引起了各级党委、政府的高度重视,均在积极加强调查研究,探讨相关政策措施,以利移民稳定和库区长治久安。移民安稳致富与和谐发展是一项牵动全局、意义深远的伟大工程,对构建和谐三峡工作的研究是一个长期性的历史任务,需要我们不断地探索、思考。     

Migrants’ self‐selection in the early stages of modern economic growth,Spain (1880–1930)

Drawing on a large database from the register of inhabitants of Madrid, this article confirms that the literacy levels of internal migrants moving to the Spanish capital city in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were higher than that of those who remained in their provinces of origin. This article also explores the different factors influencing the nature and intensity of the selection process. The empirical exercise stresses that the stock of previous migration was a fundamental factor in allowing less literate individuals to join the migration process as well. Interestingly, distance to Madrid hardly affected the profile of male migrants, but it was a strong influence on female migration, although its importance diminished over time. Lastly, the results presented here show that other internal destinations were attracting different types of migrants, often resulting in negative self‐selection.     

Modelling regional imbalances in English plebeian migration to late eighteenth‐century London†

Using a substantial set of vagrancy removal records for Middlesex (1777–86) giving details of the place of origin of some 11,500 individuals, and analysing these records using a five‐variable gravity model of migration, this article addresses a simple question: from which parts of England did London draw its lower‐class migrants in the late eighteenth century? It concludes, first, that industrializing areas of the north emerged as a competitor for potential migrants—contributing relatively fewer migrants than predicted by the model. Rising wage rates in these areas appear to explain this phenomenon. Second, it argues that migration from urban centres in the west midlands and parts of the West Country, including Bristol, Birmingham, and Worcester, was substantially higher than predicted, and that this is largely explained by falling wage rates and the evolution of an increasingly efficient travel network. Third, for the counties within about 130 kilometres of the capital, this article suggests that migration followed the pattern described in the current literature, with London drawing large numbers of local women in particular. It also argues that these short‐distance migrants came from a uniquely wide number of parishes, suggesting a direct rural‐to‐urban path.