Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe growing flow of migrants' remittances has generated much interest in understanding the socio‐economic consequences of household migration for individuals and families in migrant‐sending areas. In this paper, I examine the effect of household migration on health status, as measured by nutritional status, of adults who have remained behind in rural Indonesia, a setting with a high rate of out‐migration and poor nutritional profiles. Assuming that remittances may improve household economic resources and thus change dietary intake and health‐related investment, household migration may be associated with the risks of both undernutrition and overnutrition. The analyses use longitudinal data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey and fixed‐effect regressions. The results show that adults in emigrant households were significantly less susceptible to being underweight than those in non‐migrant households, but that they did not have an increased risk of being overweight. The improved nutritional status was restricted to people in households with labour migrants, highlighting the role of remittances in improving nutritional intake. The health gain was also concentrated among women, increased with the number of out‐migrants and was revealed over time as remittances arrived. Overall, this study demonstrates the beneficial role of household migration, and especially the resulting remittances, in the health status of household members in resource‐constrained settings. Improving transfers of remittances would be helpful in reducing the problem of undernutrition in poor migrant‐sending areas.

Despite China's substantial internal migration, long‐standing rural–urban bifurcation has prompted many migrants to leave their children behind in rural areas. This study examined the consequences of out‐migration for children's education using longitudinal data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (N = 885). This study took into account the complex family migration strategies and distinguished various types of migration in China, including different forms of parental migration as well as sibling migration. The results showed that migration of siblings generates benefits for children's education, which is particularly pronounced for girls and children at middle‐school levels. But parental migration has not given children left behind a significant advantage in educational prospects as their parents had hoped. Younger children seem to be especially susceptible to the disruptive effect of parental out‐migration.

This paper examines the educational status of temporary migrant children in China, using a unique data set specifically designed to study this population across a wide range of migration destinations. The determinants of migrant children's schooling at both the micro-level (child- and family-level) and macro-level (city-level) were examined using multiple measures of schooling to provide a more complete picture. Emphasis has been placed on gender gap and city-level variations. Results show that household composition, family size and economic conditions are all strong predictors of migrant children's schooling. Based on contrasting children pairs within households using fixed-effect models, the study found no gender gap in migrant children's schooling, despite the persistent son preference in the rural areas where migrants came from. Importantly, variations across city-specific contexts are evident: migrant children in more coastal regions and in destinations with high levels of development and high concentration of migrants are especially disadvantaged, presumably due to the more restrictive migration controls in such areas. Results are shown to be robust to outliers, potential confounders as well as different proxy measures of migration controls.

This study draws on a case study of Wukan and interviews with migrants and peasants in other sites to examine how migration shapes popular resistance in migrant-sending communities (i.e. rural China). Findings demonstrate multidimensional roles played by migrants and returned migrants who act as a vehicle of informational and ideological transmission and at times directly participate in or even lead rural resistance in origin communities. Both the transmission and participation processes foster political consciousness and action orientations among peasants. The importance of migrants is exemplified in the Wukan protests but is also found in other settings under study. In general, migrants represent a latent political force that acts upon serious grievances back home. The findings provide a useful lens for understanding the diffusion of popular resistance and the linkage between urban and rural activism in China. (China Q/GIGA)

Why do high-skilled Canadian immigrants lag behind their US counterparts in labor-market outcomes, despite Canada's merit-based immigration selection system and more integrative context? This article investigates a mismatch between immigrants' education and occupations, operationalized by overeducation, as an explanation. Using comparable data and three measures of overeducation, we find that university-educated immigrant workers in Canada are consistently much more likely to be overeducated than their US peers and that the immigrant–native gap in the overeducation rate is remarkably higher in Canada than in the United States. This article further examines how the cross-national differences are related to labor-market structures and selection mechanisms for immigrants. Whereas labor-market demand reduces the likelihood of immigrant overeducation in both countries, the role of supply-side factors varies: a higher supply of university-educated immigrants is positively associated with the likelihood of overeducation in Canada, but not in the United States, pointing to an oversupply of high-skilled immigrants relative to Canada's smaller economy. Also, in Canada the overeducation rate is significantly lower for immigrants who came through employer selection (i.e., those who worked in Canada before obtaining permanent residence) than for those admitted directly from abroad through the point system. Overall, the findings suggest that a merit-based immigration system likely works better when it takes into consideration domestic labor-market demand and the role of employer selection.

Why do high-skilled Canadian immigrants lag behind their US counterparts in labor-market outcomes despite Canada's merit-based immigration selection system and more integrative context? This article investigates a mismatch between immigrants' education and occupations, operationalized by overeducation, as an explanation. Using comparable data and three measures of overeducation, we find that university-educated immigrant workers in Canada are consistently much more likely to be overeducated than their US peers and that the immigrant-native gap in the overeducation rate is remarkably higher in Canada than in the United States. This article further examines how the cross-national differences are related to labor-market structures and selection mechanisms for immigrants. Whereas labor-market demand reduces the likelihood of overeducation in both countries, the role of supply-side factors varies: a higher supply of university-educated immigrants is positively associated with the likelihood of overeducation in Canada but not in the United States, pointing to an oversupply of high-skilled immigrants relative to Canada's smaller economy. Also, in Canada the overeducation rate is significantly lower for immigrants who came through employer selection (i.e., those who worked in Canada before obtaining permanent residence) than for those admitted directly from abroad through the point system. Overall, the findings suggest that a merit-based immigration system likely works better when it takes into consideration domestic labor-market demand and the role of employer selection.

In recent years, the government of Texas has enacted multiple restrictions and funding limitations on women's health organizations affiliated with the provision of abortion services. These policies have caused numerous clinic closures throughout the state, drastically reducing access to reproductive health care. We study the impact of these clinic closures on fertility rates by combining quarterly snapshots of health center addresses from a network of women's health centers with restricted geotagged data of all Texas birth certificates for 2008–2013. We calculate the driving distance to the nearest clinic for each ZIP-code and quarter, and find that an increase of 100 miles to the nearest clinic results in a 1.2 percent increase in the fertility rate. This increase is driven by a 2.4 percent increase in the fertility rate for unmarried women, while there is no statistically significant change for married women.