HOW IMMIGRANTS IMPACT THEIR HOMELANDS

By Susan Eva Eckstein, Adil Najam

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2013 Duke University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-5381-2

Contents

List of Figures and Tables………………………………………….ixPreface…………………………………………………………..xiii1 Immigrants from Developing Countries An Overview of Their Homeland
Impacts SUSAN ECKSTEIN…………………………………………….12 Migration and Development Reconciling Opposite Views ALEJANDRO PORTES…303 How Overseas Chinese Spurred the Economic “Miracle” in Their Homeland
MIN YE……………………………………………………………524 Immigrants’ Globalization of the Indian Economy KYLE EISCHEN…………755 How Cuban Americans Are Unwittingly Transforming Their Homeland SUSAN
ECKSTEIN………………………………………………………….926 Immigrant Impacts in Mexico A Tale of Dissimilation DAVID SCOTT
FITZGERALD………………………………………………………..1147 “Turks Abroad” Redefine Turkish Nationalism RIVA KASTORYANO………….1388 Moroccan Migrants as Unlikely Captains of Industry Remittances,
Financial Intermediation, and La Banque Centrale Populaire NATASHA
ISKANDER………………………………………………………….1569 The Gender Revolution in the Philippines Migrant Mothering and Social
Transformations RHACEL SALAZAR PARREÑAS……………………………..19110 Beyond Social Remittances Migration and Transnational Gangs in Central
America JOSÉ MIGUEL CRUZ…………………………………………..21311 Economic Uncertainties, Social Strains, and HIV Risks The Effects of
Male Labor Migration on Rural Women in Mozambique VICTOR AGADJANIAN,
CECILIA MENJÍVAR, AND BOAVENTURA CAU…………………………………234Contributors………………………………………………………253Index…………………………………………………………….257

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Immigrants from Developing CountriesAn Overview of Their Homeland Impacts

SUSAN ECKSTEIN

Immigration constitutes one of the most important components of today’sglobalization. While not a new phenomenon, it has grown in scaleand significance since World War II, especially since the mid-1980s.The number of countries from and to which people have migrated hasgrown dramatically, with women playing an increasingly important rolein the world on the move, not merely as family dependents of men whoattain work abroad but as laborers in their own right.

When moving to new countries, today’s immigrants do not necessarilysever ties with their homelands. Through transnational engagementeven the most humble of immigrants may transform the communitiesand countries they left behind. Governments and other institutions attimes institute reforms to try to influence their impact. Their impactmay be unintended and far greater than they realize, owing to conditionsin which their home ties become embedded. Their impacts may be political,social, and cultural, even when their main impetus to migrate iseconomic.

This book addresses the homeland impacts that immigrants fromdeveloping countries have had. Most chapters richly detail the experiencesof specific immigrant groups. These chapters are written byscholars with deep understandings of the immigrants about which theywrite. This is the first book of such scope. This introduction providescontext for understanding the immigrant experiences detailed in theother chapters. It summarizes characteristics of emigrants, why theyuproot, where they mainly resettle and why, and how in moving theychanged their homelands.

Emigration from Developing Countries

WHO EMIGRATES?

Seventy-six percent of today’s immigrants were born in developingcountries. Mexico, India, China, and Turkey, concerns of the chapters inthis book, rank among the top ten countries from which people haveemigrated. Over 10 million Mexicans and Indians, 7 million Chinese,and 4 million Turks live outside their home countries. India and China,along with Brazil and Russia, constitute the so-called BRIC countries,perceived internationally as up-and-coming. The Indians and Chinesewho emigrated in such large numbers felt that their personal lives wouldimprove even more in leaving than were they to remain in their homelands,and they have contributed to the “economic miracles” in theirrespective countries by moving abroad.

The Philippines and Morocco, the focus of other chapters in thisbook, rank not among the top ten but among the top fourteen countriesin numbers of émigrés. As of 2005, 3.6 and 2.7 million people haveemigrated, respectively, from the Philippines and Morocco. Thesecountries rank among the better-off developing-country economies,but their job and earnings opportunities failed to grow apace with theirpopulations, and they do not offer opportunities comparable to those inricher countries.

Yet, none of the twenty countries with the largest out-migrationsrank among the (thirty) countries with the highest percent of theirpopulations living abroad, countries with the greatest proportional demographiclosses. Jamaica ranks the highest in the world in the portionof its population living abroad. An extraordinary 39 percent of Jamaicanshave emigrated. Two other countries addressed in these chapters,El Salvador and Cuba, rank among the thirty countries in the world withthe highest percent of their populations having uprooted. El Salvadorand Cuba rank seventeenth and thirtieth, respectively. Sixteen percentof Salvadorans and 11 percent of Cubans live abroad. Salvadoran out-migrationspiraled as the country experienced a devastating civil war inthe 1980s that made living in the country unsafe. However, other Salvadoransfollowed in the footsteps of those who took refuge abroad,initially for economic reasons but more recently also for security reasons,when gang violence became pervasive. They perceived their life-prospectsto be better where their friends and relatives had resettled.The Cuban outmigration also began with a political exodus of opponentsto the country’s radical transformation after Fidel Castro tookpower, in 1959. However, out-migration expanded there as well to includeeconomic migrants, especially after the country experienced adeep recession, when Soviet aid and trade abruptly ended, following thebreak-up of the Soviet Union. The Salvadoran and Cuban cases illustratethat motives for migration may be mixed and that they may changeover time, in ways that will be shown to shape immigrant homelandimpacts.

In addition, many former Soviet bloc countries, as well as countries inthe Middle East, that experienced civil strife and civil wars, such as Serbia,Montenegro, and the West Bank and Gaza, rank among the countrieswith the highest rates of out-migration. Politically turbulent countrieslose their populations to migration, if not to bullets. Refugees, personswho flee their homeland, fearful of religious, ethnic, or political persecution,were they to stay, account for 8 percent of world immigrants.

WHERE DO EMIGRANTS GO?

Where do emigrants resettle? In 2005, reports indicate that 42 percentof emigrants from developing countries, from the so-called GlobalSouth, had moved to high-income countries that were members of theOrganization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), inthe Global North. Another 12 percent had moved to high-income non-OECDcountries. Since the late twentieth century, migrants from developingcountries have moved in ever-larger numbers to the UnitedStates, Australia, and Europe. This book primarily focuses on this migratoryflow from the Global South to the Global North.

Most developing-country migration used to be internal, not international—fromrural to urban areas. This was especially true in LatinAmerica, until the rates of urbanization in the region reached levelsnearly as high as those in industrial, well-to-do countries, even thoughtheir cities did not offer comparable economic opportunities. The urbanoption closed down, especially after the neoliberal restructuring ofmany economies in the mid-1980s, for reasons detailed below. Underthese circumstances, both rural and urban residents increasingly turnedto emigration as their best hope.

There is a patterning to where immigrants from particular regions,and countries within regions, move. Table 1.1 summarizes this patterning.The percentage of people who have moved from poor to rich countriesvaries by region. Eighty percent or more of emigrants from LatinAmerica, the Caribbean, East Asia, the Pacific, the Middle East, andNorth Africa have moved to countries in the Global North, whereasonly half of South Asian immigrants and no more than 36 percent ofCentral Asian and Sub-Saharan African immigrants have. In that immigrationto the Global North is greatest from middle-income developingcountries, the dynamics of global immigration keep peoples from thepoorest regions disadvantaged. In 2005 middle-income countries accountedfor 54 percent of immigrants to high-income OECD countries,low-income countries for only 12 percent.

And within regions, immigrants tend to gravitate to specific countries.Migrants on which chapters of the book focus illustrate the selectivity ofmigration. Mexicans, Philippines, Cubans, and Salvadorans have movedmainly to the United States, while Turks have moved mainly to Germanyand Moroccans to France. South Asian Indians, however, have immigratedin large numbers to countries in diverse regions of the world, andshifted their destination countries over the years. They mainly migratedto Great Britain, after it colonized India, and to South Africa, and thosewho were Muslims fled to Pakistan after it became an autonomous countryin 1947. In more recent times, Indians immigrated to Middle Easterncountries and the United States, with different classes of Indians movingto the two regions, laborers to the Middle East and high-skilled workers,on which Kyle Eischen’s chapter focuses, to the United States.

The United States has been the magnet for the most immigrants. In2005, 38.4 million foreign-born lived there, more than three times asmany as lived in Russia, the country with the second-largest number ofimmigrants. Most immigrants to the United States (as well as to Canada,Australia, and New Zealand) used to come from Europe, untilopportunities there expanded, first with reconstruction after WorldWar II and then with the formation of the European Union (EU), whichallowed labor to move freely among member countries. A dramaticdecline in the fertility rate in Europe led to a further drop in transatlanticimmigration, and contributed to Europe’s shift from a net exporterto a net importer of labor.

Against this backdrop, several European countries, including Germany,France, and Spain, as well as oil-rich Saudi Arabia and Canada,came to rank among the top ten immigrant-receiving countries. Theimmigration to Saudi Arabia reflects the growing complexity and diversityof destination countries, as select developing countries have becomenew nodes of economic development. Sparsely populated SaudiArabia, along with other Gulf oil states, has come to rely on foreignlabor for oil-related activity, construction, and service work.

The demographic importance of immigrants in receiving, as well assending, countries depends not merely on the absolute number of peopleinvolved, but also on the size of the native-born populations. Althoughimmigrants have come to constitute about 10 percent of thepopulation in high-income OECD countries (involving European countries,including some former Soviet bloc countries in Central Europe,and countries such as Canada, New Zealand, Turkey, and Japan), and 13percent in the United States, they account for more than triple thatpercentage in some of the smaller, high-income non-OECD countries(Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Israel, and other wealthy MiddleEastern countries) and in several former Soviet bloc countries.

To a certain extent, refugee flows also differ when viewed in absolutenumbers and relative to the size of the population of the country wherethey move. As of 2005, Germany and the United States ranked amongthe ten countries with the most refugees. But neither Germany nor theUnited States, nor any other high-income OECD country, ranked amongthe thirty countries with refugees accounting for most of their immigrants.Refugees accounted for 6 percent of German immigrants and for1 percent of U.S. immigrants. In contrast, refugees accounted for 14percent of immigrants to developing countries in general, and for 23percent of immigrants to the least developed countries. Thus, the countriesthat can best afford to absorb the humanitarian costs of accommodatingdisplaced persons do not assume their “fair share.” Moreover,rich countries tend to acquire refugees in a regularized manner, by criteriathey establish, whereas poor countries receive refugees mainly bydefault, their governments too weak to control who enters their borders.Because most refugees need to flee their homeland quickly when theirlives are at risk, they mainly move to neighboring countries. Most suchrelocations transpire within the Global South. Nine of the ten countrieswith refugees accounting for the highest percentage of their immigrantsare located in the Middle East and Africa. The other country is Armenia,in Eurasia. Also, the partitioning of India and Pakistan, within theGlobal South, unleashed one of the largest population movements inrecorded history, as tens of millions of Hindus and Muslims (and, secondarily,other ethnic and religious groups) relocated across the newlyformed borders, to find a safe religious haven, Hindus in India, Muslimsin Pakistan.

HOW TO EXPLAIN THE PATTERNING OF IMMIGRATION?

While refugees demonstrate that the motivation for migration may bepolitical, the key driving force is typically economic, rooted in differencesin global opportunities. But whatever the reason inducing specificindividuals to uproot, immigration must be understood in the context ofmacrohistorical and institutional processes. State policies, changing demographics,colonial legacies, and transnational social dynamics thatimmigrants themselves put in place all influence from where and towhere people in today’s world move.

The economic forces behind migration to the Global North haveshifted over the years, as the world economy, and the role of specificcountries within it, has changed. In some countries, immigrants havebeen central to how economies evolved, and in so doing they influencedsubsequent migration flows. The massive migration to the UnitedStates in the early twentieth century, for example, was intricately associatedwith the country becoming the world’s most dynamic industrialnation, on a small native-born population base. Then, after World WarII, northern European countries rebuilt their industrial economies withso-called guest workers from North Africa and Turkey, the focus ofNatasha Iskander’s and Riva Kastoryano’s chapters in this book, respectively.

By the time global immigration began to reach unprecedented levelsin the 1980s, many of the manufacturing jobs in the Global North haddisappeared, as companies relocated in poorer countries where laborcosts were lower, including in the very developing countries from whichmany of today’s immigrants come. The removal of barriers to trade andinvestment under global neoliberal restructuring led people with capitalto relocate production wherever in the world they believed theycould maximize their profits, and then export to global markets.

Under these circumstances, today’s immigrants to the Global Northmove increasingly to high- and low-skilled service-based economies.They gravitate to work that native-born people would rather not do, orlack the skills to do, in sufficient numbers. Particularly noteworthy,women’s growing participation in the labor force and the rise in lifeexpectancy in countries in the Global North have contributed to a feminizationof immigration. Women from developing countries have respondedto a new demand to do work that women in the Global Northpreviously performed, unpaid, as homemakers. Chapters in the bookelucidate the range of high- and low-skilled service-sector jobs maleand female immigrants from developing countries now do. They workas nurses, nannies, and maids, but also as high-skilled technicians andfinanciers.

Nonetheless, the increasingly service-based economies have not entirelyeliminated demand for foreign labor for other work. Agribusinesses,for example, want immigrants for low-paid farm work, workthat the native-born, with better options, resist doing.

People in developing countries respond to demand for their labor,and sometimes even create demand for their labor, in the Global North,largely because economic opportunities in their own countries compareunfavorably. This has been especially true since the neoliberal restructuringthat began in the 1980s. Against the backdrop of the severe balanceof payments deficits and associated debt crises, governments indeveloping countries introduced reforms, under pressure from the InternationalMonetary Fund (IMF), that caused living costs to rise, earningsopportunities to decline, income inequality to worsen, and, in manycountries, poverty rates to rise. Victims of the reforms came to envisionemigration as their best hope. The removal of trade barriers, for example,subjected developing-country economies to foreign competitionthat often worked to their disadvantage. Mexico is a prime example, asDavid FitzGerald’s chapter shows. Implementation of the North AmericanFree Trade Agreement (NAFTA), in 1994, removed tariffs betweenthe United States, Canada, and Mexico. In Mexico, small-scale agriculturalistswho could not compete with imports from U.S. agribusinesslost their means of livelihood. Perceiving few labor-market options intheir country, farm laborers looked to the United States for work. Underthese circumstances, Mexicans became the main immigrants to theUnited States.

Yet, no single economic rationality accounts for the economic forcesat play. Immigration that serves the interests of certain groups mayconflict with the interests of other groups. In particular, immigrationthat is rational from the vantage point of business, or, more accurately,certain businesses, may not be rational from the vantage point of governments.For example, employers who want a large supply of cheap,foreign-born labor to minimize their production costs, drive up fiscalexpenditures for governments that address the social welfare needs ofimmigrants. Governments may also need to contend with antiforeign,nativistic political backlashes, especially during economic downturns.Native-born workers who believe that immigrants undermine their employmentoptions and weaken their earning power at times channeltheir resentment politically.

Indeed, behind the “invisible” global market forces propelling migrationare governments with their own priorities. Governments in theGlobal North have adapted their admit policies over the years, primarilydue to their changing economic concerns, but also due to their changingpolitical and humanitarian concerns. With their economies offeringthe best global economic opportunities, they are well positioned todetermine whom they let in with legal rights, including how many people,from which countries, with what skills, and on what terms (that is,whether for a defined period of time or indefinitely). Peoples in developingcountries are not free to decide for themselves whether to emigrate,where to move, and for how long.

Although governments in the Global North opened their doors tosubstantially more peoples from developing countries since the 1960s,they nonetheless remain highly selective in who they let in. Washington,for example, gives preference to skilled and moneyed entrants, andto relatives of citizens (after having allotted entry on the basis of nationalquotas that favored northern Europeans, between the 1920s and1960s). Over the years, it used immigration as an instrument to maintainand advance its dominant position within the global economy. TheIndian information technology (IT) immigrants Kyle Eischen describesin his chapter are beneficiaries of the skill bias of current U.S. immigrationpolicy. So too are the Philippine nurses Rhacel Parreñas describesin her chapter. The demand for medical assistants increased whenWashington instituted Medicaid and Medicare in the 1960s.
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