National Cultural Frames and Muslims’ Economic Incorporation: A Comparison of France and Canada

This article shows that differences in the economic incorporation of Muslims and other immigrant minorities in France and in Canada are mainly related to immigrant selectivity, labor market structures, and welfare transfers. Differences in ethno-specific penalties due to national cultural frames — related to multiculturalism in Canada and secular republicanism in France — are small, affect only the second generation, and are related both to minority household patterns and to treatment in mainstream institutions. Using data on household incomes from two large-scale surveys (Trajectories and Origins in France 2008–2009 and the Canadian National Household Survey 2011) and taking account of cross-setting differences in Muslim and other minority origins, we model cross-generational economic trajectories reflecting the impact of immigrant selectivity, labor market structures, and welfare transfers. Within this framework, we examine four ways that cultural frames may affect minority economic disadvantage: the significance of religion relative to race, citizenship access, labor market discrimination, and minority household patterns, including employment of women in couples and intergenerational cohabitation. Across all minorities, we find a striking cross-national difference in intergenerational economic trajectories: flat in France and upward in Canada, plausibly reflecting institutional differences. Net of sociodemographic controls, both religion and race matter in each setting, and net Muslim disadvantage is similar in each. Citizenship differences have little impact. Labor market earnings discrimination appears similar. A small potential effect of cultural frames appears in second-generation Muslim households: in France, lower female employment rates reduce household incomes, while in English-speaking Canada, more frequent cohabitation with more affluent parents increases household incomes. Yet even these findings do not necessarily diminish the overriding significance of immigrant selectivity, labor market structure, and welfare transfers.

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

As the H-2A visa program expands to become a core component of contemporary Mexican migration to the United States, questions emerge about the tradeoffs migrants face between temporary and undocumented statuses. This article employs propensity score matching of participants in the Mexican Migration Project—an extensive binational survey of Mexican migrants and their families—to compare economic and social outcomes of H-2A visa recipients vis-à-vis undocumented migrants. Findings indicate that although H-2A visas offer benefits like a lower cost of living while abroad, they do not produce a discernible effect on wages relative to wages earned by undocumented migrants. While H-2A migrants are more likely to work in the formal economy, they are also less likely to build social capital or language proficiency in the United States than undocumented migrants, indicating a degree of social isolation that can be exploited by employers. This comparison contributes to a growing literature on the proliferation of temporary migratory statuses and the marginality experienced by migrants within these statuses.

Immigration, Identity, and Anonymity: Intentionally Masked Intolerance in Ireland

Newcomers to Ireland confront a context of reception shaped by large-scale historical emigration and more recent immigration defined by an increasingly diverse set of origin contexts, both within and outside the European Union (EU). How has the Irish population responded to these groups, and how openly do Irish residents express their views toward different immigrant groups? We test this response using a survey experiment, which offered respondents an anonymous way to express any negative attitudes to immigrant groups they may have had. Results from the survey experiment show that Irish residents’ support for Black and Polish immigrations is overstated when expressed directly. In contrast, their sentiment toward Muslim immigrants is notably insensitive to the level of anonymity provided, indicating little difference between overt and covert expression of support (or antipathy). In other words, when race/ethnicity or EU origin is made salient, Irish respondents are more likely to mask negative sentiment. When Islam is emphasized, however, Irish antipathy is not masked. We find that in-group preferences, instead of determining support in an absolute sense, shape the reluctance with which opposition to immigrant groups is overtly expressed.

Does Aid Drive Migration? Evidence from a Shift-Share Instrument∗

Foreign aid payments have been a key policy response by Global North countries to reduce increased migration flows from the Global South. In this article, we contribute to the literature on the relationship between aid and international migration flows and estimate the contemporaneous effect of bilateral aid payments on bilateral, international migration flows. The fundamental problem in analyzing this relationship is endogeneity, or reverse causality. To address this issue and achieve causal inference, we use a shift-share, or Bartik, instrument. Examining migration flows between 198 origin countries and 16 OECD destination countries over 36 years (1980−2015), we find a positive relationship between aid and migration. A ten-percent increase in aid payments will increase migration by roughly 2 percent. We further document non-linearity in the relationship between aid and migration and find an inverted U-shaped relationship between aid and migration flows. The findings presented here have implications for the design of bilateral and multilateral aid policies and for achieving various United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by stressing the importance of a better coordination between aid and immigration policies.

Point of Reference: A Multisited Exploration of African Migration and Fertility in France

A considerable literature explores whether the fertility of migrants from high-fertility contexts converges with that of women in lower fertility destinations. Nonetheless, much of this research compares migrants’ reproductive outcomes to those of native-born women in destination countries. Drawing on research emphasizing the importance of transnational perspectives, we standardize and integrate data collected in France (the destination) and in six high-fertility African countries (the senders). We show that African migrants in our sample had higher children ever born (CEB) than native French women but lower CEB than women in corresponding origin countries. These findings suggest that socialization into pronatalist norms is an incomplete explanation for migrant fertility in the first generation, an insight that is overlooked when analyzing destination settings only. Next, we conduct multivariate analyses that weight migrants’ background characteristics to resemble women in both origin and destination countries. Findings indicate that observed differences between African migrants in France and women in African origin countries help explain differences in CEB between the two groups, which supports selection. We also demonstrate that African migrants in France had delayed transitions into first, second, and third births and lower completed fertility compared to women in origin countries, thus disputing the disruption hypothesis. Finally, we show that observed differences between African migrants in France and native French women explain differences in CEB between the two groups, which supports adaptation. These multifaceted findings on selection, disruption, and adaptation would be obscured by analyzing destination settings only, thus validating a multisited approach to migrant fertility.

Transnational Parenthood and Migrant Subjective Well-Being in Italy

Transnational parents are migrant mothers and fathers who have at least one child left behind in the home country. Despite their non-negligible prevalence in many destination countries, scarcity of data on the topic has caused a lack of attention to this phenomenon in both policy and scholarship. In particular, little is known about how the interplay between migration and family relations at a distance affects the individual well-being of both migrant parents and their left-behind children, especially in a European context. This article evaluates the subjective well-being of migrant couples currently residing in Italy who have children left behind, compared with childless migrants and with migrant parents living with their children in Italy. Multivariate logistic regression applied to individual-level data from Istat's Survey on Social condition and integration of foreign citizens, 2011–2012, shows that transnational parents experienced lower levels of self-rated health compared with migrants with different family statuses and that the well-being loss associated with transnational parenthood is strongly gendered. Controlling for individual characteristics, socio-economic conditions, the presence of minor children, and migration background, our analysis demonstrates that men's subjective wellbeing did not vary based on their family status while transnational mothers experienced significantly lower well-being compared with childless migrant women. Our research suggests the need for adopting a transnational approach to migration starting from data gathering, for instance through the design and implementation of multi-sited and retrospective surveys.

Trajectories of Spatial Assimilation or Place Stratification? A Typology of Residence and Workplace Histories of Newly Arrived Migrants in Sweden

In most societies, resources and opportunities are concentrated in neighborhoods and workplaces occupied by the host population. The spatial assimilation and place stratification theories propose trajectories (the sequences of events) leading to minority and migrant access to or exclusion from these advantageous places. However, most previous research on these theories did not ask whether such theorized trajectories occur. We apply sequence analysis to decade-long residence and workplace histories of newly arrived migrants in Sweden to identify a typology of combined residence-work trajectories. The seven types of trajectories in our typology are characterized by varying degrees of proximity to the host population in residential neighborhoods and workplaces and by different patterns of change in such proximity over time. The pivotal role of socioeconomic gains in spatial assimilation, posited by the namesake theory, is not supported, as we do not find that migrant employment precedes residence alongside the host population. The importance of housing-market discrimination for migrants’ exclusion from host-dominated spaces, posited by place stratification theory, is only weakly supported, as we find that migrants from less affluent countries accumulate disadvantage over time, likely due to discrimination in both the labor and housing markets. Our findings also underscore the need for new theories explaining migrant residential outcomes which apply to contexts where migrant-dense neighborhoods are still forming.

Exclusionary Contexts Frustrate Cultural Integration: Migrant Acculturation Into Support for Gender Equality in the Labor Market in Western Europe

Countering linear acculturation theories, the adoption of Western European gender customs over time differs across migrant groups. This diversity implies that acculturation into support for gender equality is context dependent. However, little quantitative scholarship has identified what sort of contexts strengthen or impede acculturation. This article investigates one source of context-dependent acculturation: exclusionary contexts. I build and test a context-dependent exclusions framework that proposes that contexts that exclude non-Western migrants hamper their acculturation into support for gender equality in the labor market in Western Europe. Empirically, I synchronize European Social Survey, European Values Study, and Eurislam data on over 11,000 non-Western migrants in Western Europe. Cross-classified models show that non-Western migrants’ support for labor-market gender equality is, indeed, lower in exclusionary contexts, for instance, in destinations with stronger anti-migrant sentiments. Pivotally, the impact of destinations’ gender customs on migrants’ gender values differs across destination, origin, and community contexts. For instance, in destinations with stronger populist right-wing parties, migrants internalize destinations’ gender equality less. Altogether, non-Western migrants’ acculturation into support for labor-market gender equality is highly dependent on contextual exclusions, which means that populist claims about non-Western migrants’ universal lack of acculturation into support for gender equality should be viewed cautiously.

Components of Context: Respecifying the Role of Context in Migration Research

For a century, scholars have studied immigrant integration in a range of destinations. Yet, the precise role of context in shaping integration outcomes remains poorly understood. Drawing from an analysis of an original database of articles and books in migration studies, I argue that this knowledge gap may be due to two closely related tendencies in the scholarship. First, case selection has relied on criteria such as the immigrant population's size and growth rate that are not clearly connected to integration outcomes. Second, most scholars have studied either heavily urban contexts (with large immigrant populations) or very rural contexts (where the immigrant population is growing rapidly), while much less attention has been given to destinations in-between. To improve the understandings of the role of context in immigrant integration, migration scholars should endeavor to move past population criteria when selecting study sites and to study the full range of contexts where immigrants are settling. To contribute to these efforts, I propose a framework that does not rely on population or newness as criteria for case selection and that focuses, instead, on the components of context that existing research has shown matters for intergenerational mobility. I also introduce a typology of contexts based on possible combinations of four of these components and offer some initial hypotheses of how these context types might affect immigrant integration. The arguments presented here recenter the role of local context in migration studies and contribute to debates about where and how scholars should study context moving forward.