New from IMR: Data Methods, Economic Mobility, and Migration Flows

The Spring 2022 edition of the International Migration Review (IMR) is now available online and in print through paid or institutional subscription. This edition is thematically sorted into three sections. The first section has articles about migration data ethics, big data, and databases. The second section discusses international migration, economic mobility, and migrant vulnerabilities. The third section is about shaping migration flows. Lastly, this edition includes eight book reviews, which are free to access.

Precarious Times, Professional Tensions: The Ethics of Migration Research and the Drive for Scientific Accountability
Irene Bloemraad and Cecilia Menjívar

How should migration scholars navigate tensions between our ethical responsibilities to research participants and growing “open science” calls for data transparency, replication, and accountability? We elaborate a three-step process to navigate these tensions. First, researchers must understand core principles behind open-science initiatives and the mandates of research ethics boards, especially those related to privacy, confidentiality, and protection from harm, and take them seriously. Second, migration researchers must think beyond routinized or mandated procedures to carefully consider the unique vulnerabilities of migrants in their study, which depend on socio-political context. Third, if vulnerabilities are significant, migration researchers should modify (or challenge) procedures elaborated in the name of open science or routinized research ethic board mandates, if inappropriate for their study. We, thus, encourage migration scholars to engage with open-science advocates but also to educate colleagues on migrants’ vulnerabilities and to double-down on data security, including vis-à-vis government authorities, as evolving technologies continue to change research practices.

The Impact of Place of Origin on International and Domestic Graduates’ Mobility in China
Keyu Zhai and Marta Moskal

This article addresses the cumulative effect of graduate migration and opportunities for career development. Using data from an online survey of 756 master’s-level graduates educated in China and the UK, it examines their geographical mobility patterns and reveals significant differences between Chinese students who graduated from domestic universities and those who were educated abroad. Spatial autocorrelation analysis shows that international returnees, who usually had more privileged family backgrounds, clustered in China’s highly developed core cities of the Bohai Economic Rim and Yangtze River Delta regions, such as Beijing and Shanghai, while domestic graduates tended to work and live in less affluent medium-sized cities around these regions. Women international graduates were more mobile than their men counterparts. Our results provide new evidence that draws attention to migration’s role in graduate career development opportunities and highlights inherent economic discrimination within China, which is perpetuated by the national residency permit system — Hukou. The case of Chinese graduates shows that the mobility patterns of international and domestic graduates are influenced by and contribute to growing regional inequalities for career development in China.

Mass Preferences for the Free Movement of People in Africa: A Public Opinion Analysis of 36 Countries
Steven Gordon

The African Union (AU) has identified opening borders to cross-national mobility as a prime strategic goal, and AU leaders have heralded regional free movement as a vital tool for economic growth and skills development on the continent. Little, however, is known about the level (or determinants) of public support for opening borders in the AU. This article examines public preferences for free movement among 36 African countries. Using data from the sixth round of the Afrobarometer Survey (N = 53,935), the analysis presented here shows a remarkable degree of variation in mobility-related preferences both within and between nations, and explores whether a utilitarian model of attitude formation can explain mass preferences for open borders across African countries. Investigating both macro- and micro-level determinants of public attitudes toward border control, the article shows that the utilitarian model had greater explanatory power at the macro-level than at the micro-level. In addition, some support was found for identity-based predictors (e.g., nationalism versus cosmopolitanism) of support for free movement. These outcomes point toward a new way of understanding public attitudes toward regional integration in Africa. The article concludes by discussing future avenues of public opinion research toward mobility rights on the continent and beyond.

MIGRATION AND METHODS: DATA ETHICS, BIG DATA, AND DATABASES

Precarious Times, Professional Tensions: The Ethics of Migration Research and the Drive for Scientific Accountability
Irene Bloemraad and Cecilia Menjívar

Toward an Early Warning System for Monitoring Asylum-Related Migration Flows in Europe
Joanna Napierała, Jason Hilton, Jonathan J. Forster, Marcello Carammia, and Jakub Bijak

A Liberal Region in a World of Closed Borders? The Liberalization of Asylum Policies in Latin America, 1990–2020
Omar Hammoud-Gallego

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, ECONOMIC MOBILITY, AND MIGRANT VULNERABILITIES

Navigating to the Top in an Egalitarian Welfare State: Institutional Opportunity Structures of Second-generation Social Mobility
Arnfinn H. Midtbøen and Marjan Nadim

The Impact of Place of Origin on International and Domestic Graduates’ Mobility in China
Keyu Zhai and Marta Moskal

Understanding Adverse Outcomes in Gulf Migration: Evidence from Administrative Data from Sri Lanka
Asanga Nilesh Fernando and Alison Lodermeier

Immigrant Men’s Economic Adaptation in Changing Labor Markets: Why Gaps between Turkish and German Men Expanded, 1976–2015
Jonas Wiedner and Johannes Giesecke

SHAPING MIGRATION FLOWS: CONFLICT, PUBLIC OPINION, AND POLICY

Remittances and Protests against Crime in Mexico
Sandra Ley, J. Eduardo Ibarra Olivo, and Covadonga Meseguer

The Legacy of Conflict: Reconstruction and Migration in the Aftermath of Civil War in Tajikistan
Michelle L. O’Brien

Mass Preferences for the Free Movement of People in Africa: A Public Opinion Analysis of 36 Countries
Steven Gordon

The Map and the Territory: The Use of Country Information in Asylum Assessments
Tone Maia Liodden

BOOK REVIEWS

Migranthood: Youth in the New Era of Deportation
Lauren Heidbrink
Reviewed by Daina Sanchez

The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants
Adam Goodman
Reviewed by Yajaira Ceciliano-Navarro

Migrant Conversions: Transforming Connections Between Peru and South Korea
Erika Vogel
Reviewed by M. Cristina Alcalde 

Immigrant Japan: Mobility and Belonging in an Ethno-nationalist Society
Gracia Liu-Farrer
Reviewed by Yunchen Tian

Deviant Destinations: Zimbabwe and North to South Migration
Rose Jaji
Reviewed by Abel Chikanda

Organizing While Undocumented: Immigrant Youth’s Political Activism Under the Law
Kevin Escuerdo
Reviewed by Ala Sirriyeh

Risking Immeasurable Harm. Immigration Restriction and U.S-Mexican Diplomatic Relations, 1924-1932
Benjamin Montoya
Reviewed by Marcela López Arellano

Chinese Diasporas: A Social History of Global Migration
Steven B. Miles
Reviewed by Els Van Dongen