What have been the main trends and drivers of international migration over the last century, and to what extent have migration policies been effective in shaping the volume, direction, timing, and selection of immigration and emigration? This paper reviews the insights on migration trends, determinants and policy effects gained through the DEMIG (Determinants of International Migration) project. Questioning popular perceptions of accelerating international migration, the increase in global migration has remained proportional to the increase in world population. The main migratory shifts in the second half of the twentieth century have been directional, particularly through the decline of Europe as an area of origin and the emergence of Europe and the Gulf as new global destinations. This shift in migration movements towards Europe has been associated by an overall liberalisation of migration policies, which have increasingly focused on the selecting of migrants rather than controlling numbers per se. Most rules around legal entry, stay and exit of migrants have been relaxed, but a combination of visa and border control policies have served to prevent the entry of asylum seekers and other \u2018unwanted\u2019 migrants. Our analysis shows that it would therefore be excessive to conclude that borders are \u2018beyond control\u2019 (cf. Bhagwati 2003), and that migration policies are generally effective. Yet several \u2018substitution effects\u2019 limit or undermine the effectiveness of migration controls by (1) redirecting migration through other geographical routes and destinations (spatial substitution), (2) diverting migration through other legal and unauthorized channels (categorical substitution), (3) \u201cnow or never\u201d migration surges in anticipation of restrictions (intertemporal substitution) and (4) discouraging return and interrupting circulation (reverse flow substitution). These expose fundamental policy dilemmas as well as the importance to look beyond migration policies. Our results show the importance of accounting for the complex and often counterintuitive ways in which structural social, economic, and political factors affect migration in mostly indirect, but powerful ways that largely lie beyond the reach of migration policies.
\n \n\n \n \nDrawing on global migration data covering the 1990-2010 period, this paper investigates the relation between processes of development and migration patterns. We do so by conducting bivariate and multivariate analyses which estimate how several economic, technological, political, demographic, and cultural dimensions of social transformation shape patterns of emigration and immigration in complex yet systematic ways, and generate a series of hypothesizes for future empirical analysis. The findings corroborate the idea that there is an inverted U-shaped relation between processes of development and emigration. This challenges push-pull models and confirms \u2018transition theories,\u2019 which hypothesize that development and social transformation initially tend to boost emigration. While the incidence of warfare increases emigration, there is no significant effect of the level of political freedom on emigration levels, while the level of authoritarianism affect immigration levels positively. The absence of an effect of the \u2018youth bulge\u2019 (estimated by the share of 15-35 year olds) on emigration and its positive effect on immigration defy push-pull models and Malthusian explanations of migration, and show that demographic factors only play an indirect role in migration processes. The analyses also yield a robustly negative effect of urbanization levels and urban growth on emigration, suggesting that rural-to-urban migration can be a substitute for international migration in fast growing urban economies. Overall, the findings suggest that different social mechanisms are at play in explaining emigration and immigration, and thus, these need to be analysed simultaneously, yet separately. In general, the paper highlights the usefulness of adopting a broader social transformation perspective when analysing the relations between human development and migration.
\n \n\n \n \nThis paper questions the extent future generations of immigrants will engage in transnational religious institutions. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork involving observations, interviews, and content analysis, I examine the participation of the leaders of the next generation of Chinese-Canadian evangelicals in a \u2018negotiated transnational religious organization\u2019 named the Chinese Coordination Centre of World Evangelism (CCCOWE) Movement. CCCOWE\u2019s documents reveal it advances a notion of the \u2018Chinese elect\u2019 grounded on a pan-Chinese identity for global evangelism. I first demonstrate that this ethnically based mission is different from cross-cultural missions in mainstream evangelicalism. I then present how the subjects made sense of the CCCOWE experience at the global CCCOWE congress. I argue the rallying call grounded on Chinese ethnicity for global evangelism stands on tenuous grounds and propose linguistic, geographical, generational, and ideological fractures as salient factors that diminish future generations\u2019 participation in transnational religious organizations. I argue these developments will push \u2018negotiated transnational religious networks\u2019 into a state of \u2018renegotiation.\u2019
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