New from IMR: Migration, Identity, and Economic Assimilation
April 25, 2023
The Winter 2021 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, family, and health outcomes. The second section discusses identity, life satisfaction, and migration. The third section is about economic assimilation, immigrant status, and employment. Lastly, this edition includes eight book reviews, which are free to access.
A Global Meta-analysis of the Immigrant Mortality Advantage
Eran Shor and David Roelfs
A large body of research on the “Healthy Immigrant Effect” (or “Paradox”) has reported an immigrant mortality advantage. However, other studies do not find such significant effects, and some even present contradictory evidence. This article is the first systematic meta-analysis that investigates the immigration-mortality relationship from a global perspective, examining 1,933 all-cause and cardiovascular mortality risk estimates from 103 publications. Our comprehensive analysis allows us to assess interactions between origin and destination regions and to reexamine, on a global scale, some of the most notable explanations for the immigrant mortality advantage, including suggestions that this paradox may be primarily the result of selection effects. We find evidence for the existence of a mild immigrant mortality advantage for working-age individuals. However, the relationship holds only for immigrants who moved between certain world regions, particularly those who immigrated from Northern Africa, Asia, and Southern Europe to richer countries. The results highlight the need in the broader migration literature for an increased focus on selection effects and on outcomes for people who chose not to migrate or who were denied entry into their planned destination country.
International Migration and the (Un)happiness Push: Evidence from Polish Longitudinal Data
Jan Brzozowski and Nicola Coniglio
This article analyzes the impact of (un)happiness on the international migration decision. It uses a rich longitudinal household-level database, the Polish Social Diagnosis, to identify migration intentions, as well as subsequent actual migration, allowing us to overcome the issue of reverse causality present in previous studies of the nexus between happiness and migration. In addition, we assess the role of individual and household levels of happiness on migration behaviors and find that unhappy individuals from unhappy households are significantly more likely to declare their intentions to migrate abroad. In terms of actual migration, however, the unhappiness push significantly affects the odds of international migration only for selected subgroups, such as women and employed individuals. For other individuals, the unhappiness-induced migration plans remain mostly unrealized. Our article shows that push and pull factors, including happiness, might exert heterogenous effects on migration intentions and actual realizations. As a consequence, migration scholars should be careful when drawing conclusions on the determinants of actual migration behaviors by looking at determinants of migration intentions.
Immigrant Women’s Economic Outcomes in Europe: The Importance of Religion and Traditional Gender Roles
Agnieszka Kanas and Katrin Müller
This article contributes to previous research on immigrant integration by examining how religiosity and gender roles in European countries influence immigrant women’s labor market outcomes. Moreover, we extend theoretical work on the importance of the receiving country’s norms and values by hypothesizing and testing whether receiving countries’ influence varies with immigrant women’s religiosity and gender-role attitudes. Using the European Social Survey data and multilevel regression models, we find that religious immigrant women participate less in the labor market and work fewer hours than nonreligious immigrant women. Immigrant women’s traditional gender-role attitudes partly explain the negative relationship between individual religiosity and labor market outcomes. While the receiving country’s religiosity is negatively related to immigrant women’s labor market outcomes, this negative relationship is significantly weaker for religious and gender-traditional immigrant women than for nonreligious and gender-egalitarian women. These findings suggest that the economic benefits of residing in countries that support female employment are limited to immigrant women who are ready and positioned to embrace gender-egalitarian norms and values.
MIGRATION, FAMILY, AND HEALTH OUTCOMES
A Global Meta-analysis of the Immigrant Mortality Advantage
Eran Shor and David Roelfs
Does Emancipation Matter? Fertility of Chinese International Migrants to the United States and Nonmigrants during China’s One-child Policy Period
Wanli Nie and Pau Baizan
IDENTITY, LIFE SATISFACTION, AND MIGRATION
“New White Ethnics” or “New Latinos”? Hispanic/Latino Pan-ethnicity and Ancestry Reporting among South American Immigrants to the United States
Rebecca A. Schut
International Migration and the (Un)happiness Push: Evidence from Polish Longitudinal Data
Jan Brzozowski and Nicola Coniglio
Bargaining Power: A Framework for Understanding Varieties of Migration Experience
Michael C. Ewers, Justin Gengler, and Bethany Shockley
ECONOMIC ASSIMILATION, IMMIGRANT STATUS, AND EMPLOYMENT
Bonding Social Capital, Afghan Refugees, and Early Access to Employment
Matteo Vergani, Ihsan Yilmaz, Greg Barton, James Barry, Galib Bashirov, and Siew Mee Barton
Bridges or Barriers? The Relationship between Immigrants’ Early Labor Market Adversities and Long-term Earnings
Tingting Zhang and Rupa Banerjee
“No Place for Old Men”: Immigrant Duration, Wage Theft, and Economic Mobility among Day Laborers in Denver, Colorado
Rebecca Galemba and Randall Kuhn
Immigrant Women’s Economic Outcomes in Europe: The Importance of Religion and Traditional Gender Roles
Agnieszka Kanas and Katrin Müller
BOOK REVIEWS
The Braided River: Migration and the Personal Essay
Diane Comer
Reviewed by Azadeh Ghanizadeh
The Fight for Time: Migrant Day Laborers and the Politics of Precarity
Paul Apostolidis
Reviewed by Adrián Félix
Soviet Signoras: Personal and Collective Transformations in Eastern European Migration
Martina Cvajner
Reviewed by Ievgeniia Zasoba
Resident Foreigners: A Philosophy of Migration
Donatella Di Cesare
Reviewed by Mark F. N. Franke
Stagnant Dreamers: How the Inner City Shapes the Integration of Second-Generation Latinos
Maria G. Rendón
Reviewed by Eli R. Wilson
The Rise of the Latino Vote: A History
Benjamin Francis-Fallon
Reviewed by Álvaro J. Corral
What the Oceans Remember: Searching for Belonging and Home
Sonja Boon
Reviewed by Sabrien Amrov
Global Nomads: An Ethnography of Migration, Islam, and Politics in West Africa
Susan Fioratta
Reviewed by Cathy Conrad Suso