New from IMR: Incorporation, Migrant Families, and Bureaucracy in Migration

June 7, 2023

The Winter 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 incorporation, assimilation, and migration policy. The second section discusses migrant families: gender, marriage, and parenthood. The third section is about geopolitics, humanitarian aid, and bureaucracy in migration. Lastly, this edition includes three book reviews, which are free to access.

The Effect of Immigrant Integration Policies on Public Immigration Attitudes: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in the United Kingdom
Michael Neureiter

Drawing on intergroup threat theory, this article argues that immigrant integration policies can improve public attitudes toward immigrants and, particularly, toward refugees and asylum-seekers. Examining evidence from an original survey experiment conducted in the United Kingdom, I find that support for admitting asylum-seekers increases when respondents are made aware that prospective asylum-seekers will be required to partake in language and civic-education courses. This effect is particularly strong among respondents who were more likely to perceive asylum-seekers as a symbolic threat (i.e., conservatives). Similarly, support for admitting asylum-seekers increases when respondents are told that future asylum-seekers will only have limited access to welfare. This effect is stronger among respondents who were more likely to view asylum-seekers as a material threat (i.e., conservatives and individuals with low socioeconomic status). These findings have important implications for the literatures on immigrant integration policies, intergroup threat theory, and public immigration attitudes generally. Importantly, the results reported in this article illustrate the significance of structural determinants for the study of immigration attitudes and demonstrate the importance of disaggregating immigrant integration policies when evaluating their effects.

Gendered and Stratified Family Formation Trajectories in the Context of Latin American Migration, 1950 to 2000
Andrés F. Castro Torres and Edith Y. Gutierrez-Vazquez

The interdependence of migration and family formation has been studied extensively, but studies that consider the embeddedness of this interdependence within gender and class relations are less common. Most existing research on family and migration treats gender and social class as separate determinants of family events or transitions, instead of analyzing how the intersections of both shape full family formation trajectories, defined as all partnership and childbearing statuses throughout an individual life course. We overcome this gap by using an intersectionality framework to analyze trajectories of family formation and migration collected by the Mexican and Latin American Migration projects (1982–2016). Using retrospective information, we reconstruct full family formation and dissolution trajectories (i.e., individuals’ marital statuses and number of children born from ages 15 to 39) for 16,000 individuals and apply sequence and cluster analysis to define a six-category typology of ideal family formation trajectories. Next, we associate this typology with individuals’ sex, age at migration (domestic, international), and educational attainment as a way to measure individuals’ social class position. Our results suggest that the relationship between migration and typical family trajectories depends on the intersection of individuals’ social class and gender. Previous studies have neglected this intersection by overly focusing on the “average” migrant’s experience. Migration research must acknowledge and account for migrants’ heterogenous experiences and pay more attention to how intersecting social categories mediate the relationship between migration and other demographic processes.

Implications of the Rohingya Relocation from Cox’s Bazar to Bhasan Char, Bangladesh
Md. Didarul Islam and Ayesha Siddika

This IMR Dispatch attempts to elucidate the different concerns of human right groups and international communities over the relocation of the Rohingyas, a forcefully displaced ethnic minority of Myanmar, from the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps, in mainland Bangladesh, to a newly developed island, Bhasan Char, in the Bay of Bengal. Of the nearly 1 million Rohingyas currently living in Cox’s Bazar camps, the Bangladesh government has started relocating 100,000 Rohingyas to Bhasan Char. International organizations have expressed three concerns over this relocation strategy: first, that the Rohingyas have been relocated to Bhasan Char forcibly, second, that since Bhasan Char is a newly built island, there are potential environmental risks for the Rohingyas, and third, that this relocation does not ensure that the Rohingyas’ human rights will be respected on the island. The Bangladesh government, however, has dismissed these allegations, arguing that the relocation of 100,000 Rohingyas is voluntary and that the island provides them an opportunity for improved living. This IMR Dispatch reflects on those allegations concerning the relocation strategy, with the goal of drawing migration scholars’ attention to these developments. Since the Rohingyas are already a forcibly displaced community, migration scholars should pay close attention to this re-migration or onward migration of large numbers of Rohingyas to a new island and its implications for host-country approaches to forced migration.

INCORPORATION, ASSIMILATION, AND MIGRATION POLICY

Components of Context: Respecifying the Role of Context in Migration Research
Francisco Lara-García

Ireland’s White Paper to End Direct Provision (2021): Migrant Accommodation and Control
Liam Coakley and Piaras MacEinri

The Effect of Immigrant Integration Policies on Public Immigration Attitudes: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in the United Kingdom
Michael Neureiter

Spatial Assimilation at a Halt? Intergenerational Persistence in Neighborhood Contexts among Immigrant Minorities in Norway
Are Skeie Hermansen, Pål Oskar Hundebo, and Gunn Elisabeth Birkelund

MIGRANT FAMILIES: GENDER, MARRIAGE, AND PARENTHOOD

Gendered and Stratified Family Formation Trajectories in the Context of Latin American Migration, 1950 to 2000
Andrés F. Castro Torres and Edith Y. Gutierrez-Vazquez

Transnational Parenthood and Migrant Subjective Well-Being in Italy
Francesca Tosi and Roberto Impicciatore

Badante or Bride? Patterns of Female Migration in Italy, Japan, Korea, and Spain
Margarita Estévez-Abe and Tiziana Caponio

GEOPOLITICS, HUMANITARIAN AID, AND BUREAUCRACY IN MIGRATION

Implications of the Rohingya Relocation from Cox’s Bazar to Bhasan Char, Bangladesh
Md. Didarul Islam and Ayesha Siddika

The Tradeoff of Temporariness: Economic and Social Impacts of H-2A Status on Mexican Migrant Men
Shelby O’Neill