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Before turning to how relative immobility and chain migration proceed, there is a need to explain how macro-conditions set the stage for ‘Why so few out of most places?’ and ‘Why so many out of very few places?’. Only these details are known about the starting conditions of migration processes and the setup under which migrant networks form later, can one hope to unearth the endogenous dynamics of international South to North migration flows. Domestically, developments of law took a turn in reinforcing international human rights law, concerning the civil rights of long-term residents. This helped the international human rights regime to gain validity, although in itself it lacks sufficient implementation and enforcement powers. Yet the very principles of modern welfare states that grant rights to alien newcomers primarily according to the residence principle have proved most important on the domestic level.

This chapter presents insights into the migration governance of host countries and its effects on immigration flows by drawing on the Immigration Policies in Comparison (IMPIC) dataset. The IMPIC dataset allows to fill a big gap in the literature and to take a closer look at how migration policies have developed over the last decades. The author argues that the immigration policies of OECD countries vary in terms of how liberal or restrictive they are. Between 1980 and 2010 immigration policies on family reunion, labor migration, and asylum have become more liberal. However, the control of these policies has become more restrictive, especially in the EU. Policies are more effective for migrant flows from countries with the same colonial heritage. The author analyzes migration flows in general and argues that while it is not yet possible to study environmental migration separately, it should follow the same pattern.

The chapter argues that to understand contemporary borders, there is a need to go beyond the geographical and physical ‘fences’, checkpoints and office counters. Based on a case study of the recent migration flow of Haitians to Brazil, from 2010 to 2015, the chapter explores how the North Amazon border, long forgotten by the Brazilian government, has become a place of migration, negotiation, resilience and political attention. Haitians moved from being a few dozen immigrants to Brazil in 2010 to become the main immigrant group in the formal labour market in the country in 2013, overtaking the classic migration flows to Brazil, such as the Portuguese. This resulted in a search of the Brazilian government for new policies and strategies to ‘control’ and ‘regulate’ this flow and the border. In conclusion, the unexpected migration of Haitians to Brazil set the country into global mobility and enlarged the complexity of Brazil’s migration history.

This chapter begins with the stories of three migrants to demonstrate the need to recognize that there might be different logics for migration, seek to identify the conditions under which each logic becomes salient, and devise diverse policies to achieve specific outcomes. It then discusses efforts to prevent undocumented migration that focus on border enforcement; the failure of alternative theories of migration to suggest straightforward policy prescriptions like the neoclassical model; ways of identifying “groups” of migrants; four contexts and four logics for migration; network effects in migration; and cultural expectations and family roles. The chapter also suggests general principles that can guide future research and policy.

This chapter provides an overview of the migration field, and a brief review of Mexico–U.S. migration flows up to 1965, the year the analysis here begins. It describes the data and methods that led the author to discover four groups among first-time migrants from Mexico to the United States between 1965 and 2010. The first cluster—mostly uneducated and poor men from rural communities—was the majority in the 1970s but dropped to a small minority by the 1990s. The second cluster—many of them teenage boys from relatively better-off families—peaked in the 1980s, becoming the majority group at that time, but declined consistently in size thereafter. The third cluster—mostly women with family ties to former migrants—was increasing slowly in size until it experienced a sudden spike in the early 1990s. And the fourth cluster—mostly educated men from urban areas—grew persistently over time, grabbing the majority status among all first-time migrants in the early 1990s.

This chapter discusses a particular group that dominated the migrant stream from Mexico to the United States in 1965. The group contained a large share of men—many of them household heads who were married with children—from rural central-western communities in Mexico. Migrants in the group typically had little education, worked in agriculture in both Mexico and the United States, and took multiple trips of short duration. This group is referred to as circular migrants. Circular migrants declined both in absolute numbers and in relative size over time, accounting for less than 10 percent of new migrants by 2010. Circular migrants declined in numbers as incomes in Mexico rose, real wages in the United States fell, and the budget dedicated to securing the border grew exponentially between 1965 and 2010.

This chapter discusses a particular group that continually increased its share among the first-time migrants between 1965 and 2010—from less than 10 percent to nearly 70 percent. This group, called urban migrants, included a large share of men, mostly from urban communities in the border, central-south, and southeastern regions of Mexico rather than the traditional migrant-sending rural communities in the central-west. Urban migrants were significantly more educated compared to the circular, crisis, and family migrants in the preceding chapters, and also relative to non-migrants at their time. The group worked mostly in manufacturing and construction in the United States, earned significantly higher wages than the other migrant groups, and made fewer return trips to Mexico.

This chapter examines the character and the destinations of the out-migration flows in four large housing estates in Sweden. It analyses the destinations of the out-movers in terms of different kinds of neighbourhoods and compares them with the stayers using logistic regression. The findings reveal that the person most likely to leave the estate regardless of the destination is a young person between twenty to thirty-four years old, who is single and who has a relatively high level of education.

This chapter discuses a particular migrant group that doubled in size, as well as in its relative share among first-time migrants from Mexico to the United States, between 1987 and 1990. This group encompassed more than one-third of all migrants at its peak in 1991 and contained a large majority of women and migrants with family ties to previous U.S. migrants. The migrants in this group are called family migrants. The sudden increase in the number of family migrants occurred right after the enactment of Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986, an immigration law that opened the path to legalization for more than 2 million undocumented Mexicans in the United States. Family reunification was a major factor that pulled family migrants from Mexico to the United States. The group included a large share of wives and daughters joining their husbands and fathers, who were already there.

The introductory chapter provides an overview of the book’s main themes. This book is about Mexico–U.S. migration flows between 1965 and 2010. It seeks to characterize and explain the diversity in the Mexican migrant stream, which, in this period, changed remarkably not only in its composition and origins in Mexico, but also in its destinations and settlement patterns in the United States. The book has three central theses. First, Mexicans may be on the move to the United States for a variety of reasons. Second, the different reasons underlying migration depend on individual interests, but these interests are shaped by the structural or cultural contexts these individuals inhabit, or seek to inhabit, by migrating. Third, different theories may be more or less relevant to explain migration behavior to the extent that the conditions they deem essential to the process are at work in a given place or period or for a specific group of individuals.

This chapter revisits North Carolina's four-hundred-year history of migration to the state. It first describes the arrival of Europeans, the first immigrants of North Carolina. Next, it discusses the “century of immigration”, the period of migration in post-Civil War North Carolina when an estimated 33 million people arrived in the state between 1820 and 1920. The chapter also considers the historical factors that have shaped current national and state trends, including immigration reforms and migration flows for three centuries.

This chapter discusses a new migrant group that replaced the circular migrants as the predominant group among the first-time Mexican migrants to the United States between 1980 and 1990. The group consisted mostly of young men—often the younger sons—from relatively wealthy rural households, and peaked in numbers following the economic crises in Mexico. This group is called crisis migrants. Crisis migrants accounted for just one in ten new migrants in the 1960s. The share of the group climbed to one-half in the mid-1980s, and dropped to one-fifth by the late 1990s. The trend in this group tracked almost perfectly to the inflation rates in Mexico, capturing the volatile economic environment in the country in the aftermath of the peso devaluations between 1976 and 1985. The group also responded to regional events like the coffee crisis in the early 1990s and the earthquake in 1985, increasing disproportionately fast in the affected regions compared to the rest of the country.

This chapter provides the context for the volume as a whole. It starts with a brief outline of the social and historical background of many migration flows observed today. It continues with a summary of the chapters of the book, carefully relating each chapter to the general text. The book is divided into two parts. The first comprises an account and a discussion of different kinds of migration, representative of many population flows of recent times, and provides a general overview of research methodologies. The second part is an analysis of how societies are shaped by immigration, focused on aspects such as migration policies, family reunification, the integration of migrants and social cohesion.

This introductory chapter discusses the relationship between social change, religion, and women's lives and self-definition in the contemporary world. Using international and interdisciplinary perspectives reflective of different religious traditions, this volume pays attention to the specific experiences and positions of women, or particular groups of women, to understand current patterns of religiosity and religious change. Recent studies have shown that there is a strong connection between processes of change — such as the impact of globalization, increased intercultural and transcultural interaction and exchange, migration flows, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) — and religious identities. Overall, recent literature has revealed a great complexity and often contradiction in late modern negotiations of religion and secularism by women and men, and a range of possibilities for change.

This chapter details women's contribution to interfaith dialogue in the Mediterranean. This area is often referred to a uniform region and usually depicted as highly problematic, since conflicts and migration flows pose considerable risks to the security of the entire region. Moreover, the Mediterranean is not only an area of crisis and conflict, but also a space for opportunities and dialogue. Interreligious dialogue is a powerful tool for achieving peace and stability. Today, institutions for intercultural dialogue and cooperation, religious representatives, and interfaith organizations are working together to build mutual understanding in the region. This chapter shows that the interreligious dialogue has been changing its nature through a twofold enlargement centred on the gender dimension: vertical, by women belonging to intellectual elites; and horizontal, through a growing involvement of civil society.

This chapter focuses on how politics, warfare, and revolutions disrupt migration flows, dislocate people, and sever homeland ties, sometimes forever. Revolutions in China, 1949, and Cuba, 1959, transformed both societies and altered the fabric of transnational Chinese merchant communities. Ironically, exiles fleeing Communism in China were confronted with a similar political upheaval in Cuba just ten years later. Both longtime residents and newer Chinese migrants joined the Cuban exodus in the wake of the revolution. The Chinese Communist Revolution contributed to the Cuban government's increasingly hardline stance toward its political opponents. In 1950, the government shut down the Communist newspaper Hoy. When a group of Chinese protested, their own publication Kwong Wah Po in Santiago de Cuba became a target of government censorship and repression.