Migration,Human Resource Transfers,and Development Contexts: A Logit Analysis of Venezuelan Data

This paper is concerned with the reciprocal relationship between migration and development in Third World settings. Using individual-level data for Venezuela, migration behavior is related to a person's age, educational attainment, gender, and characteristics of his/her place(s) of residence as an out-migrant, in-migrant, or stayer. Place characteristics are in terms of four groups based on employment patterns: the core, regional centers, resource frontiers, and traditional rural areas. Four questions are of concern. First, does development influence migration? All analyses indicate this is so. Second, does migration influence development? Findings are ambiguous in that places experiencing improvement in their mix of human capital lagged in the net number of persons obtained through migration whereas a gain in numbers was accompanied by deterioriation in human capital profiles. Third, was incipient polarization reversal occurring in Venezuela in the late 1960s, early 1970s? This paper departs from the usual approach by addressing this question in terms of human capital attributes instead of population aggregates. On this basis, polarization reversal is in evidence, particularly in regional centers. Finally, this study answers in the affirmative that places with different development characteristics generate migration streams differing in type, magnitude, explanation, and impact.     

Book reviews

Australian politics

Cora Vellekoop Baldock, Volunteers in Welfare (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990) pp.xii + 171. $19.95 ISBN 0 04 442213 X.

Hugh V. Emy and Andrew Linklater (eds.), New Horizons in Politics: Essays with an Australian Focus (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990) pp.vii+207. $17.95 ISBN 0 04 442269 5.

P. Hay, R. Eckersley and G. Holloway, Environmental Politics in Australia and New Zealand (Hobart: University of Tasmania, 1989) pp.200. $n.p. ISBN 0 85901 405 3.

Peter Larmour (ed.) The Greening of Government: The Impact of the Labor/Green Accord on Government in Tasmania (Hobart: Royal Australian Institute of Public Administration, 1990) pp.iv + 74. $12.00.

Ian McAllister, Malcolm Mackerras, Alvaro Ascui and Susan Moss Australian Political Facts (Longman Cheshire, 1990) pp.x + 234. $12.99 ISBN 0 582 71258 0.

John Summers, Dennis Woodward and Andrew Parkin (eds.), Government, Politics and Power in Australia (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 4th edition, 1990) pp.375. $n.p. 0 582 86843 2.

Comparative and international politics

Archie Brown (ed.), Political Leadership in the Soviet Union (London: Macmillan, 1989) pp.xi + 245. $14.99 ISBN 0 333 41343 1.

Henry P. Frei, Japan's Southward Advance and Australia—from the sixteenth century to World War II (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1991) pp.xvii + 303. $34.95 ISBN 0 522 843921.

Manuel Antonio Garreton, The Chilean Political Process (Translated by Sharron Kellum and Gilbert W. Merkx) (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989) pp.xix + 220. $39.95 ISBN 0 04 497069 2.

Timothy Garton Ash, We The People, The Revolution of ‘89, Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin & Prague (Cambridge: Granta Books, 1990) pp.156. $12.99 ISBN 0 14 014023 9.

Misha Glenny, The Rebirth of History: Eastern Europe in the Age of Democracy (London: Penguin, 1990) pp.xiii + 245. $14.99 ISBN 0 14 014394 7.

Dennis Gilbert, Sandinistas: the party and the revolution (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988, paperback edition, 1990) pp.xii + 238. $29.95 ISBN 1 55786 072 6.

Dennis Kavanagh and Peter Morris, Consensus Politics from Attlee to Thatcher (Basil Blackwell, 1989) pp.ix + 137. £6.95 ISBN 0 631 16566 5.

Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Southeast Asian Affairs 1990. (Southeast Asian Studies, 1990) pp.x + 395. $US37.00 ISBN 0377 5437.

David Lane, Soviet Society under Perestroika (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990) pp.xv + 401. $34.95 ISBN 0 04 445167 9.

Ralph Miliband, Divided Societies: Class Struggle in Contemporary Capitalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989) pp.x + 277. $n.p. ISBN 0–19827535–8.

J.D.B. Miller and John Vincent (eds.), Order and Violence: Hedley Bull and International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990) pp.viii + 220. $55.00 ISBN 0 19 827555 2.

Peter Riddell, The Thatcher Decade: How Britain has changed during the 1980s (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989) pp.x + 236. $39.50 ISBN 631 16274 7.

Carlyle A. Thayer, War by Other Means: National Liberation and Revolution in Vietnam 1954–1960 (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1989) pp.xxx + 256. $19.95 ISBN 0 04 370187 6.

Malcolm Waters, Class and Stratification: Arrangements for Socioeconomic Inequality Under Capitalism (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1990) pp.ix + 199. $n.p. ISBN 0 582 86833 5.

Political theory and methodology

Rodney Barker, Political Legitimacy and the Stale (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 990) pp. 216. $62.50 ISBN 0 19 827495 5.

John Braithwaite and Philip Pettit, Not Just Deserts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990) pp.viii + 229. $65.00 ISBN 0 19 824233 6.

David Gauthier, Moral Dealing: Contract, Ethics, and Reason (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990). pp.377. $14.95 ISBN 0 8014 2431 3.

G.T. Kaplan and C.S. Kessler (eds.), Hannah Arendt (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1989) pp.xi + 178. $16.95 ISBN 0 04 920109 3.

David W. Lovell, Marx's Proletariat: The Making of a Myth (N.Y.: Routledge, 1988) pp.261. $27.59 ISBN 0–415–00116–1.

Schmidtz, David. The Limits of Government: An Essay on the Public Goods Argument (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991) pp.xviii + 197. $21.00 ISBN 0 81 330871 2.

Michael Thompson, Richard Ellis, Aaron Wildavsky, Cultural Theory (Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford: Westview Press, 1990) pp.xiv + 296. $49.95 ISBN 0 8133 7863 X.