Comparative Migration Studies

UNLABELLED: This study examines the potential economic and labour market impacts of a hypothetical but plausible migration scenario of 250,000 new migrants inspired by Austria's experience in 2015. Using the agent-based macroeconomic model developed by Poledna et al. (Eur Econ Rev, 151:104306, 2023. 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2022.104306, the study explores the detailed labour market outcomes for different groups in Austria's population and the macroeconomic effects of the migration scenario...

The study of international migration and responses to it has experienced rapid growth in the last three decades: an institutionalisation of migration studies. This paper identifies and specifies infrastructural and semantic elements of institutionalisation by establishing a global Directory of Migration Research Institutions identifying 282 institutes focused on migration research that were operative between 1945 and 2020. We observe a clear geographical concentration in the Americas and Europe and find that most institutes are in countries with higher economic development (GDP) and net immigration (not emigration)...

Ethiopia is one of the major origins for international migrants to the Middle East in Africa regardless of the risks and the abuses that migrants face. The study aims to analyse the determinants of international migration of Ethiopians to the Middle East and its impact on the income of households staying behind particularly in the Dessie Zuria district of the Amhara region in Ethiopia. Data were randomly collected from 346 households and analysed using descriptive statistics, logit regression, and Propensity Score Matching (PSM) models...

Since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, people have been worried about COVID-19. As one of the risk groups, persons aged 65 and older are especially vulnerable. Additionally, minorities and migrants are hit harder by the pandemic than natives. Using data from the TransAge survey, a study including over 3000 older persons (65+) living in Switzerland and Italy, we show that the levels of worry about the pandemic are significantly higher among Italian international migrants living in Switzerland than among Swiss natives...

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between development and outgoing international student mobility (ISM) for the years 2003-2018 using data from UNESCO. Starting from migration transition theory, we expect that development and outgoing migration follows an inverted U-shape due to changes in capabilities and aspirations of populations. As predicted, we find that outgoing ISM also follows this pattern. Probing deeper into this finding, we investigated whether students from countries of different levels of development favor different destination countries, focusing on destination countries' academic ranking, GDP per capita, and linguistic and colonial ties...

This special issue of Comparative Migration Studies on the occasion of the IMISCOE 2021 Conference with the theme "Crossing borders, connecting cultures" features five invited contributions by several conference speakers as well as an article by the host university.

With a recent surge in the outward movement of the population, a new wave of emigration has been suggested to have started in Hong Kong. It is speculated that recent socio-political changes in Hong Kong may have contributed to this phenomenon. Therefore, five socio-political variables-mobility, sense of place, trust and confidence in the law and the legal system, global citizenship, and perception of inequality-are employed in this study as proposed determinants to investigate the intention of Hong Kong residents to migrate to mainland China and to other international destinations...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s40878-021-00275-9.].

For decades, Malaysia has been heavily dependent on unskilled and temporarily contracted migrant workers to fulfil labour gaps in the country. While Malaysia's economy continues to rely on migrant workers, the COVID-19 pandemic has further aggravated their precarious working and living conditions. In-depth interviews with Nepali migrant workers and community leaders in Malaysia and Nepal in 2021 revealed the incidence of labour rights violations, compounded by the lack of access to justice and effective remedies...

International students are conceived as essential contributors to the development of their countries of origin after they finished their studies abroad. Political decision-makers of the countries of origin therefore take measures that students will eventually return to their home countries and bring back their gained knowledge and consequently contribute to development back home. However, is a return always the best way to contribute to development in the country of origin or can international graduates contribute equally from abroad or through their high mobility between different countries? This article aims to address this question on the basis of an intensive three years mixed-methods-based investigation in six countries - Germany as country of study and Colombia, Georgia, Ghana, Indonesia and Israel/Palestinian territories as countries of origin...

This article compares the paradoxical conditions of migrant care workers in two major receiving countries in Asia: Taiwan's policy regime has positioned live-in care workers as "unskilled" foreigners, who nevertheless have gained increasing desirability and mobility in the labor market. By contrast, Japan has maintained the regime of skilled migration but the recent expansion of the trainee program reinforces paternalistic control over migrant caregivers, who are considered culturally inadequate. Contesting the assumption that skills indicate desirability and mobility in the labor market, I argue that we must examine the context-dependent constitution of skills at the intersection of migration, care, and skill regimes...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

The global spread of the coronavirus pandemic has particularly dramatic consequences for the lives of migrants and refugees living in already marginalised and restricted conditions, whose ongoing crisis is at risk of being overlooked. But refugees are not only extremely vulnerable and at risk of infection, as several reports show, quickly develop their own protection measures like the production of hygienic products, the publication of their situation and calls for action and help. Therefore, this paper aims to research the effects of the coronavirus crisis on refugees in camp settings with a special ethnographic focus on how refugees actively deal with this crisis and if they, through already developed resilience, are capable of adapting to the restrictions as well as inventing strategies to cope with the difficult situation...

The promise of artificial intelligence has been originally to put technology at the service of people utilizing powerful information processors and 'smart' algorithms to quickly perform time-consuming data analysis. It soon though became apparent that the capacity of artificial intelligence to scrape and analyze big data would be particularly useful in surveillance policies. In the wider areas of migration and asylum management, increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence tools have been used to register and manage vulnerable populations without much concern about the potential misuses of the data collected and the overall ethical and legal underpinnings of these operations...

This article explores how multiple, interrelated violence(s) shape the ways in which migrants relate to democratic politics transnationally. It takes as a departing point the literature on violent democracies and violent pluralism in the Latin American context, and more specifically the situation in Colombia, where democratic institutions coexist with plural violence(s). Following on from studies of migrant transnational politics, the analysis focuses on the Colombian diaspora and how migrants coming from violent democracies engage politically with the home country...

To what extent has Covid-19 policy responses exacerbated the already existing multiple vulnerabilities of female migrants in Southern Africa? Using strategic conversations, the paper explores personal experiences of key conversants, to explore how gender blind policy responses to the pandemic have heightened female migrants' socio-economic challenges. The paper recommends gender sensitive and context specific policy responses to mitigate the existing socio-economic challenges.

This paper takes stock of the emerging literature on the governance and framing of both migration and asylum as 'crises'. This study carries forward this line of thinking by showing how the crisis governance of migration is not just a representation or a discourse but emerges as a mode of governance with specific features. The study focuses on the refugee emergency of 2015-2016, covering however a longer time frame (2011-2018) and a wide set of 11 countries (those neighbouring Syria: Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey; countries that were mainly transit points: Greece, Italy, Poland and Hungary; and countries that were mainly destination points (Austria, Germany, Sweden and the UK)...

The notion of migration as being at least partly about 'choice' is deeply rooted in both academic thought and public policy. Recent contributions have considered migration choice as step-wise in nature, involving a separation between 'aspiration' and 'ability' to migrate, whilst stressing a range of non-economic factors that influence migration choices. But such nuances have not prevented the emergence of a significant area of public policy that seeks to influence choices to migrate from Africa through 'irregular' channels, or at all, through a range of development interventions...

The paper first discusses why it is important to research the relations between migration, arts, and cultures. Second, it discusses the most promising methodological options to do it fruitfully. It concludes by claiming that the additional value of such investigations is both to allow a more comprehensive understanding of the migration process, and to move away from the victimization of migrants "rehumanize" them.

Today there is a disjuncture between migration flows that are complex, mixed and constantly evolving and the emerging global migration governance paradigm that seeks to impose clarity, certainty, regularity and order. Addressing the gap between policies and realities, this article explores lessons for migration policy and governance from mobile pastoralists' experience. Using examples from human migration flows within and between Europe and Africa and insights from pastoral systems from India, Italy and Kenya, the article identifies important similarities between international migration and pastoral mobility...