RURAL–URBAN MIGRATION AND UNEMPLOYMENT: THEORY AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS*

ABSTRACT We develop a regional model where, in the city, unemployment prevails because of too high (efficiency) wages, while, in the rural area, workers are paid at their marginal productivity. We characterize the steady‐state equilibrium and show that it is unique. We then consider two policies: decreasing urban unemployment benefits and subsidizing urban employment. We find that decreasing the unemployment benefit in the city creates urban jobs and reduces rural–urban migration since new migrants have to spend some time unemployed before they can find a job in the city. On the other hand, raising employment subsidies increases urban employment but may also increase urban unemployment because it triggers more rural–urban migration. In this respect, the employment subsidy policy can backfire by raising rather than reducing urban unemployment.     

Analysis of Interregional Labor Migration in Spain Using Gross Flows

In this paper we study the economic determinants of Spanish interregional labor force flows from an aggregate perspective. The study is based on a matching model of the labor market applied to migration, and uses gross rather than net flows as other studies do. Among the main results, we find that unemployment increases out-migration because unemployed people search more actively, but when the unemployment rate is above a certain level this effect is reduced. We also find that the rate of change of relative wages is a significant determinant of migration in Spain.     

“The Dirty Scruff”: Relief and the Production of the Unemployed in Depression‐era British Columbia

Abstract: In this article, I examine this nexus between the social and political meaning of unemployment and the political responses that follow. I focus on Depression‐era Vancouver and investigate the broad ideologies, representations and practices that contributed to the derision of the unemployed, which in turn, informed the establishment of rural relief camps that aimed to address the unemployment crisis of the 1930s. The social and political meaning of unemployment shaped the contours of the Federal Unemployment Relief Scheme, which housed men in work camps and aimed to both discipline and rehabilitate the unemployed. However, the relief camps were plagued by several contradictions exploited by the Relief Camp Workers Union, which constructed oppositional understandings of unemployment. In discussing the relationship between unemployment and relief I attend to questions of space, highlighting the urbanisation of unemployment and the ideological distinctions between the city and the country.     

The Political Economy of Unemployment Insurance based on Individual Savings Accounts: Lessons from Chile

In recent years, unemployment protection systems based on individual savings have been instituted in several developing countries. Chile was one of the first to establish such a system, which at the time was widely cited as a model for other countries. This article discusses the particular political context in which the Chilean system was created before examining how it works in terms of coverage and levels of benefits received by unemployed workers. The authors undertake a detailed analysis of the administrative data produced by the system and conclude that the insurance covers only a small proportion of the unemployed, as most workers generally had precarious jobs that did not allow them to contribute to the system consistently. The Chilean case illustrates how difficult it is to establish functioning unemployment insurance in developing countries with precarious labour markets. Based on the interaction between employment characteristics and the conditions imposed by the benefit system, the article assesses the efficacy of the Unemployment Insurance Savings Accounts (UISA) system and analyses whether it can indeed serve as a model for other developing countries.     

Politics and unemployment organisations in France

In recent years French unemployment organisations have been relatively successful in fusing the energies of the unemployed for political purposes and in harnessing public sympathy for their cause. This achievement has been hailed in some quarters as an example of organisations overcoming political impoverishment. This article argues that the involvement of the organisations in politics has not come without important caveats, both in terms of the political significance of that involvement and in terms of the political ‘militancy’ of unemployed people. The article assesses the political significance of the 20‐odd‐year political activities of French unemployment organisations.     

Masculinity and domesticity in 1930s South Wales: did unemployment change the domestic division of labour?

This article examines masculinity in an area suffering from sustained high unemployment and unremitting hardship during the 1930s: the South Wales coalfield had some of the highest rates of male unemployment and the lowest participation rates of married women in paid employment in Britain. Particular attention is drawn to power relations between husband and wife by looking at the domestic division of labour and whether male unemployment affected the split in domestic responsibilities. Personal testimonies are used to assess how men filled their time whilst unemployed and the meanings they attached to their activities and relationships. It will be shown that some unemployed men engaged more in the home and that many men were able to maintain existing power relations with their wives by finding or creating alternative manual work and maintaining an elastic relationship with the home by continuing to spend the majority of their time in the company of other men.     

国民经济恢复时期北京的失业知识分子救济政策及其成效

国民经济恢复时期,面对失业和人才需求关系的矛盾,城市失业知识分子受到党和政府的高度关注。北京市的失业知识分子虽人数不多,但呈现出一定程度的复杂性。为此,北京市根据党和国家的政策,从首都社会秩序的稳定和首都建设的人才需求出发,在较短的时间内,有计划有步骤地对失业知识分子进行了必要的社会救济,达到了预期的目标。同时,实际操作中也遇到了一些不容回避的问题。     

Settlement Dimensions of the Vietnam-Born Population in Metropolitan Sydney

Australia has the largest Indochinese population per capita in the world, and Sydney supported sizeable populations from Vietnam in 1986. These populations became socially visible because of physical characteristics and clustering and have generated the response by some commentators that ghettos are forming. This paper examines the extent of residential concentration of Vietnamese-bom population in Sydney and changes over time in the distribution of settlement with reference to new immigration and internal migration. Gravitation group migration has reinforced concentration, but the result has not been ghettos, although there have been specific local problems of unemployment and housing access which may constrain residential mobility for some time. Manufacturing and residential restructuring have affected unemployment and have constrained dispersion. Institutional factors have reinforced concentration. Some residential mobility will be required for entry into a diversity of labour markets, if unemployment is to be reduced in the context of the restructuring of manufacturing production.     

THE IMPACT OF SKILL‐SPECIFIC MIGRATION ON REGIONAL UNEMPLOYMENT DISPARITIES IN GERMANY

Differences in regional unemployment are still pronounced in Germany, especially between eastern and western Germany. Although the skill level seems important for the relationship between regional disparities and labor migration, corresponding empirical evidence is scarce. Applying dynamic panel models, we investigate the impact of labor mobility differentiated by educational attainment of the workers on regional unemployment disparities between 2000 and 2008. The impact of low‐ and medium‐skilled migration is consistent with traditional neoclassical reasoning, suggesting that labor mobility reduces differences in regional unemployment rates. In contrast, the migration of high‐skilled workers tends to reinforce disparities.     

The effects of internal migration on regional wage and unemployment disparities in Canada

"This paper examines the role of the migration mechanism in the context of a general interregional factor flow adjustment model. Using an estimation technique, which pools cross-section and time series data, the direct effects of migration flows and regional investment on the growth of regional wages and unemployment [in Canada] are examined. The results suggest that migration has a small, but significant impact on regional wages and unemployment rates."     

Urban Unemployment and Migrants in Africa: Evidence from Harare 1985–1994

Unemployment is a major problem in urban centres in sub‐Saharan Africa. The impact of policies associated with structural adjustment programmes has frequently meant major formal job losses in both the public and private sectors. Although it is widely recognized that there has been a major (further) shift into the informal sector, it is also often claimed that ‘unemployment’ rates have greatly increased. When it is also assumed that net rural–urban migration has continued at a rapid pace, this is believed to be a significant contributor to the rise in unemployment. However, because ‘unemployment’ and ‘underemployment’ are hard to measure and to keep discrete when studying urban Africa, it is apparent that there is much confusion over current levels and trends in unemployment. This article discusses the problems of analysing African urban unemployment, drawing in particular on a recent ILO report, and presents evidence from long‐term research on migrants in Harare which casts doubt on the extent to which net in‐migration is a major factor contributing to unemployment in contemporary, economically adjusting sub‐Saharan Africa.     

Migration and Changing Employment Status: A Hazard Function Analysis

The effects of different employment-status transitions on migration choices are considered from a search-theoretic perspective. A discrete-time hazard function for migration decisions is estimated on data for young males of rural origin in France. Employment-status transitions are handled as endogenous time-varying covariates. The model is estimated by distance of move. The results show that the long-distance migration hazard is significantly related to labor market variables, and, ceteris paribus, is highest among job-gainers compared to the other transition groups. The probability of contracted (long-distance) migration is found to be higher than that of speculative migration for unemployed workers, especially those who are low-educated. Evidence consistent with cumulative inertia is found for long-distance moves. Short-distance migration hazards are found to be unrelated to labor market variables (including employment-status transitions) and to display no systematic pattern of duration dependence.     

Inter-regional migration and social change: a study of South East England based upon data from the Longitudinal Study

"Data from the [Office of Population Censuses and Surveys] Longitudinal Study are used to trace the social class effects of migration between the South East region and the rest of England and Wales in the period 1971-81. The analysis begins with the migration streams into and out of the South East of those people who were in the labour market (including the unemployed) at both census dates. The paper then proceeds to an analysis of the migration streams of those who entered or left the labour market between 1971 and 1981. Finally, the effects of the migration streams on the social class composition of both the South East and the rest of England and Wales are summarised. The results are interpreted in the light of debates about change in the British urban and regional system."     

The Impact of a Customs Union with the European Union on Internal Migration in Turkey

Abstract The impact of the recent Customs Union (CU) agreement between Turkey and the European Union on internal migration is studied using an intra‐industry trade Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model with intersectoral capital mobility under two alternative specifications for the labor market: the traditional Harris‐Todaro approach and the existence of a “wage curve” in the urban sector. Under both specifications, the numerical results show that the CU is welfare enhancing and causes a reduction of the urban‐rural wage gap as suggested by theoretical studies. At the same time, it leads to rural‐to‐urban migration and raises the capital rent, results that are counter intuitive with respect to the dual economy literature. Furthermore, the rise in formal labor demand and the migration response to the CU have not resulted in an increase in urban unemployment (i.e. the “Todaro paradox”), but rather to a fall in the unemployment pool. The study also shows that the Bhagwati‐Srinivasan proposal of maximizing welfare by uniformly subsidizing the entire labor market is impracticable, especially if the high wage union sector can negotiate employment conditions.     

Unruly topographies: unemployment, citizenship and land settlement in inter-war Wales

Between 1934 and 1939, over 5000 people, mainly ex-miners and their families, were settled in government-owned land settlements in England and Wales. This policy emerged as a response to mass unemployment, and complemented other schemes for the unemployed developed by the inter-war National Government. This paper will consider the geographical conditions that were imagined, realized and contested in these settlements. Acknowledging the hybrid and liminal nature of these spaces, the paper mobilizes new work in cultural and historical geography and draws out the heterotopic potential of the settlement programme.     

A Conditional Logit Approach to U.S. State-to-State Migration

This paper uses a conditional logit approach to study interstate migration in the United States for each of eleven years, from 1986–1987 to 1996–1997. We test substantive hypotheses regarding migration in the United States and demonstrate the richness of the conditional logit approach in studies of place-to-place migration. We investigate migration responses to relative economic opportunities (unemployment rate, per capita income) and the associated costs of moving (distance between origin and destination and its square). We also investigate how noneconomic factors, such as amenities, affect migration between states through a state fixed effect. Finally, we study the magnitude of unmeasured costs associated with a particular migration. The conditional logit model also allows us to compute various trade-off and other values that are of interest in migration analysis.     

Net migration estimation in an extended,multiregional gravity model

A multi-regional framework is developed in order to analyze net migration over time to all 10 Canadian provinces within an integrated system of equations. "An extended gravity model is the basis for the equation specification and the use of constrained econometric estimation techniques allows for the provincial interdependence of the migration decision while at the same time ensuring that an important system-wide requirement is respected." The model is estimated using official Canadian data for the 1960s and 1970s. "The results suggest the predominance of the push factor for interprovincial migration for most provinces, although net migration to the Atlantic provinces is also shown to be subject to pull forces from the rest of the country." The effects of wage rate variables, unemployment, and political disturbances in Quebec on inter-provincial migration are noted.     

The Effect of Job Advertising Policies on Interregional Labor Migration

A simulation model of a multiregional labor migration process is developed. Information about employment conditions in alternative regions is transmitted in a combination of three channels. The adopted emission policies directly control the amount of information available to potential migrants which, in turn, determines the potential migrant's perception of the level of welfare in the other regions. The effect of several different advertising policies on migration streams is examined. Employers can pursue a number of policies designed to maximize their return. Other agencies adopt policies that facilitate the matching process between unemployed workers and vacant jobs. Results are presented for a number of simulation experiments.     

SPATIAL HETEROGENEITY AND THE WAGE CURVE REVISITED*

ABSTRACT Most “wage curve” studies ignore the geography of local labor markets. However, when a local labor market is in close proximity of other labor markets, a local shock that increases unemployment may not lead to lower pay rates if employers fear outward migration of their workers. Hence, the unemployment elasticity of pay will be greater, the more isolated the local labor market is. Wages are also expected to be higher in regions that interact strongly with other regions. These hypotheses are confirmed by means of an estimation of wage curves with data for 327 regions of western Germany over the period 1990–1997.     

Justice Not Benevolence

Abstract

Although there are many migration theories that purport to explain why people migrate, many theologies and ethics of migration rely on neoclassical migration theory, which views migration solely as the result of poverty and unemployment in sending countries. This paper reviews various migration theories in order to argue that Catholic social teaching on migration has primarily relied on neoclassical theories of migration. This over-reliance on neoclassical migration theory has led to flawed policy recommendations and ethical analyses.

Christian ethics must respond to the reality of migration as described by migration systems theory, which suggests that migration systems are actually initiated by the policies of receiving countries, primarily colonial and organized guest worker recruitment. The ethical principles required to respond to migration are not only benevolence and hospitality. Christian ethics must begin by seeing migration as a problem of exploitative relationships between citizens and migrants.