Jack DeWaard

Migration Systems in Europe: Evidence From Harmonized Flow Data

Empirical tests of migration systems theory require consistent and complete data on international migration flows. Publicly available data, however, represent an inconsistent and incomplete set of measurements obtained from a variety of national data collection systems. We overcome these obstacles by standardizing the available migration reports of sending and receiving countries in the European Union and Norway each year from 2003–2007 and by estimating the remaining missing flows. The resulting harmonized estimates are then used to test migration systems theory. First, locating thresholds in the size of flows over time, we identify three migration systems within the European Union and Norway. Second, examining the key determinants of flows with respect to the predictions of migration systems theory, our results highlight the importance of shared experiences of nation-state formation, geography, and accession status in the European Union. Our findings lend support to migration systems theory and demonstrate that knowledge of migration systems may improve the accuracy of migration forecasts toward managing the impacts of migration as a source of social change in Europe.

Recovery migration after hurricanes Katrina and Rita: spatial concentration and intensification in the migration system

Changes in the human migration systems of the Gulf of Mexico coastline counties affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita provide an example of how climate change may affect coastal populations. Crude climate change models predict a mass migration of “climate refugees,” but an emerging literature on environmental migration suggests that most migration will be short-distance and short-duration within existing migration systems, with implications for the population recovery of disaster-stricken places. In this research, we derive a series of hypotheses on recovery migration predicting how the migration system of hurricane-affected coastline counties in the Gulf of Mexico was likely to have changed between the pre-disaster and the recovery periods. We test these hypotheses using data from the Internal Revenue Service on annual county-level migration flows, comparing the recovery period migration system (2007–2009) with the pre-disaster period (1999–2004). By observing county-to-county ties and flows, we find that recovery migration was strong: the migration system of the disaster-affected coastline counties became more spatially concentrated, while flows within it intensified and became more urbanized. Our analysis demonstrates how migration systems are likely to be affected by the more intense and frequent storms anticipated by climate change scenarios, with implications for the population recovery of disaster-affected places.

Compositional and temporal dynamics of international migration in the EU/EFTA: A new metric for assessing countries' immigration and integration policies

In this article, I derive estimates of migrants’ expected years of residence in each of 31 countries in the European Union and European Free Trade Association each year from 2002 to 2007. A country-level measure summarizing the temporal dynamics of international migration, I compare my results against the often used compositional measure of the percent foreign born, and show that these two measures reflect different population processes. I likewise demonstrate the utility of the measure derived here as a tool to assess countries’ integration policies on long-term residence per their scores in the Migrant Integration Policy Index. Key theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

Beyond Group-threat: Temporal Dynamics of International Migration and Linkages to Anti-foreigner Sentiment

Prior research on the association between country-level patterns of international migration and anti-foreigner sentiment shows that larger foreign-born concentrations increase perceptions of threat among native-born individuals in receiving countries, which, in turn, give rise to exclusionary preferences. While recent work has assembled a list of limiting conditions that shape the strength of this association, I argue that these efforts are premature because they are based on a narrow way of conceptualising and measuring international migration. In contrast to concepts and measures privileging the size of the foreign-born population in receiving countries, I draw from other literatures highlighting the temporal dynamics of migration. In considering the role of the temporal dynamics of international migration in explaining variation in anti-foreigner sentiment, the question is whether and how the temporal stability of the foreign-born population in receiving countries matters. My results suggest that it does. The size and temporal stability of the foreign-born population play opposing roles in aggravating and ameliorating anti-foreigner sentiment, respectively, with each operating via different pathways at the individual level. My work thus breaks new ground by challenging existing theoretical constructs and operationalisations in the group-threat literature.

Migration and Gender in China’s HIV/AIDS Epidemic

China today is considered to be a low HIV prevalence country. In 2007 there were an estimated 700,000 HIV cases corresponding to 0.1% of the adult population. HIV infections tend to be concentrated in relatively well-defined population subgroups, such as injecting drug users (IDUs), former plasma and blood donors, and female sex workers (FSWs) and their clients. Despite this low HIV prevalence, the Chinese HIV epidemic is considered to be in the stage of “rapid spread” (Grusky et al. 2002; Qian et al. 2005 cited in Hong and Li 2008), and concerns about a growing epidemic through heterosexual contact persist. Injecting drug users and former commercial blood and plasma donors currently comprise about 55% of all infections, while 44% of infections are among female sex workers, their clients and partners. In 2005, 49% of new cases were attributed to heterosexual contact (MOH, UNAIDS and WHO 2006). The extent to which HIV will spread through heterosexual transmission in China’s general population depends largely on the levels and distribution of sexual activity in the population. Results from an empirically grounded compartmental mathematical model used to explore the implications of the observed Chinese regime of sexual relations for the progression of HIV/AIDS (Merli et al. 2006) suggested that levels of sexual activity must cross a certain threshold for a given input to have a sizeable impact on the simulated epidemic curve. In China, overall levels of sexual activity

Putting trapped populations into place: climate change and inter-district migration flows in Zambia

Research shows that the association between adverse climate conditions and human migration is heterogeneous. One reason for this heterogeneity is the differential vulnerability of populations to climate change. This includes highly vulnerable, “trapped” populations that are too poor to migrate given deep and persistent poverty, the financial costs of migrating, and the erosion of already fragile economic livelihoods under climate change. Another reason for this heterogeneity is the differential vulnerability of places. However, despite the growing list of studies showing that the climate-migration relationship clearly varies across places, there is surprisingly little research on the characteristics of places themselves that trap, or immobilize, populations. Accordingly, we provide the first account of the “holding power” of places in the association between adverse climate conditions and migration flows among 55 districts in Zambia in 2000 and 2010. Methodologically, we combine high-resolution climate information with aggregated census micro data to estimate gravity models of inter-district migration flows. Results reveal that the association between adverse climate conditions and migration is positive only for wealthy migrant-sending districts. In contrast, poor districts are characterized by climate-related immobility. Yet, our findings show that access to migrant networks enables climate-related mobility in the poorest districts, suggesting a viable pathway to overcome mobility constraints. Planners and policy makers need to recognize the holding power of places that can trap populations and develop programs to support in situ adaptation and to facilitate migration to avoid humanitarian emergencies.

Climate Vulnerability and Human Migration in Global Perspective

The relationship between climate change and human migration is not homogenous and depends critically on the differential vulnerability of population and places. If places and populations are not vulnerable, or susceptible, to climate change, then the climate–migration relationship may not materialize. The key to understanding and, from a policy perspective, planning for whether and how climate change will impact future migration patterns is therefore knowledge of the link between climate vulnerability and migration. However, beyond specific case studies, little is known about this association in global perspective. We therefore provide a descriptive, country-level portrait of this relationship. We show that the negative association between climate vulnerability and international migration holds only for countries least vulnerable to climate change, which suggests the potential for trapped populations in more vulnerable countries. However, when analyzed separately by life supporting sector (food, water, health, ecosystem services, human habitat, and infrastructure) and vulnerability dimension (exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity), we detect evidence of a relationship among more, but not the most, vulnerable countries. The bilateral (i.e., country-to-country) migration show that, on average, people move from countries of higher vulnerability to lower vulnerability, reducing global risk by 15%. This finding is consistent with the idea that migration is a climate adaptation strategy. Still, ~6% of bilateral migration is maladaptive with respect to climate change, with some movement toward countries with greater climate change vulnerability.

Migration from New-Accession Countries and Duration Expectancy in the EU-15: 2002–2008

European Union (EU) enlargements in 2004 and 2007 were accompanied by increased migration from new-accession to established-member (EU-15) countries. The impacts of these flows depend, in part, on the amount of time that persons from the former countries live in the latter over the life course. In this paper, we develop period estimates of duration expectancy in EU-15 countries among persons from new-accession countries. Using a newly developed set of harmonized Bayesian estimates of migration flows each year from 2002 to 2008 from the Integrated Modelling of European Migration Project, we exploit period age patterns of country-to-country migration and mortality to summarize the average number of years that persons from new-accession countries could be expected to live in EU-15 countries over the life course. In general, the results show that the amount of time that persons from new-accession countries could be expected to live in the EU-15 nearly doubled after 2004.

Comparison of Human and Non-human Migration Governance Under Climate Change

Climate change affects human and non-human migration patterns. The migration of people and other species have been studied in isolation, despite similarities and differences that can inform new policies for both. Human and non-human species have differential vulnerability to climate change, and migration is one adaptation strategy to reduce vulnerability. Current policy dialog does not fully acknowledge such shared characteristics but assumes equivalent responses across populations, focuses on traditional ‘in-situ’ biodiversity conservation and emphasizes the economic dimensions of human movement. We argue that recognition of migration as adaptation, with learning across migratory species, can inform new migration policies that recognize the multi-causal nature of human and non-human movement and include climate as a migration driver.

Disaster and Life Course Processes

Disasters exist by virtue of the fact that persons and places are adversely affected by environmental hazards, which raises important questions about the characteristics and origins of differential vulnerability to such hazards in the first place. In this chapter, I consider the import of a life course perspective for studying the differential vulnerability of persons and places to environmental hazards. I also consider the utility of life course perspective for understanding disasters as processes (versus events), which persist in time and desist slowly. I demonstrate these ideas in the context of a stylized model. Implications and avenues for future research on disaster and life course processes are discussed.