Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe evolution of income inequality in host countries affects the migrants working there. As a significant number of these migrants do not earn high incomes, this evolution tends to significantly affect migrants' abilities to send money back to their home countries. We test this hypothesis considering the evolution of income inequality in 59 countries with Portuguese emigrants through observations from 1996 to 2014. Using the system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator, we found that an increase in income inequality leads to fewer remittances per emigrant. We also controlled income inequality with several determinants of remittances, including the real GDP per capita, unemployment rate, education skills, and the self‐employment rates of the host countries.

AbstractWe investigate wage differential by migrant status across white‐collar and blue‐collar occupations in Australia. Migrants are observed to have a higher wage; this difference, however, does not exist once we control for covariates. The unconditional wage differential varies over wage distribution as well as by occupation. Significant wage differentials are found above the median: positive for white‐collar workers and negative for blue‐collar workers. Using recently developed decomposition methods based on Firpo, Fortin, and Lemieux (2009) we decompose wage differentials across their distribution. Overall, the wage advantage of migrants reflects their superior labour market characteristics, and in particular, their levels of education. We find that English language proficiency plays an important role in wage differences among immigrants from non‐English speaking countries.

AbstractSome literature depicts refugees as more passive than active when selecting a destination country. We draw on surveys of over 35,000 people in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Australia, to show that most potential asylum seekers and refugees of Hazara, Rohingya, Muslim and Tamil backgrounds prefer some destination countries over others and that many refugees from these groups surveyed in Australia specifically had Australia in mind as a destination country. We show how Australia's asylum seeker policy was a key reason why many refugees chose Australia in 2011 and 2012 and that subsequent restrictive asylum seeker policy changes appear to be reflected in potential asylum seeker considerations in 2014. We find that despite the restrictive asylum seeker policy changes, perceptions of Australia as a highly functioning civil society, relative to other potential destination countries, may explain why Australia remains a country of choice for asylum seekers from west and south Asia.

AbstractThis article provides evidence on irregular immigration to the US from Mexico in the years 1963–2014. It aims to answer to two questions. The first is: how much is irregular immigration responsive to changes in the US labour market? Compared with legal immigration, irregular immigration seems to be more sensitive to short‐run economic cycles as it is not directly regulated by the policies of the destination country. Second, what effect does border enforcement have on irregular immigration? One of the proposals of the recent bill is the construction of a double layer fence on the Southern border. We do not know, however, to what extent a further increase in border security will prevent irregular immigration and at which economic cost. The contribution of this article is dual: first, it provides empirical evidence on irregular immigration to the US Second, it provides evidence about the effect of US border policies on irregular immigration.

AbstractThis article explores the impact of asylum support systems on refugee integration focusing on the UK and the Netherlands. Both have adopted deterrent approaches to asylum support. The Dutch favour the use of asylum accommodation centres, segregating asylum seekers from the general population. The UK disperses asylum seekers to housing within deprived areas, embedding them within communities. Both countries have been criticized for these practices, which are viewed as potentially anti‐integrative: something of a paradox given that both promote the importance of refugee integration. We analyse national refugee integration surveys in both countries and provide original empirical evidence of negative associations between asylum support systems and refugees' health, which differ in relation to mental and physical health. The integration and asylum policy implications of these findings are discussed.

AbstractVisa policies today are a central instrument for filtering wanted and unwanted types of travellers, leading to a hierarchy of mobility rights. While there is evidence of a "global mobility divide", we still know little about the role of regional integration when it comes to the distribution of mobility rights and the (re)structuring of mobility spaces. Against this background, the article examines the structure of visa relations in different bodies of regional integration (EU, MERCOSUR, ASEAN, ECOWAS, EAC, NAFTA, SADC and SICA). The article compares visa policies in the member states of these institutions in 1969 and 2010 from a social network perspective. While one would generally expect each institution's member states to become more similar with regard to both internal and external mobility regulations, we find that not all regional clusters align their visa policies. Potential explanations for this state of affairs are investigated.