Literature on the social construction of skilled migration has demonstrated how the selective admission of 'skilled migrants' by host states produces unequal outcomes, admitting some as 'skilled' while excluding others with seemingly similar qualifications. This study examines the other side of this construction and its connection with inequality: how the state's inclusion of individuals with differing skill levels into the same 'skilled migrants' category generates stratification. It focuses on Japan, where international students with varying levels of Japanese language proficiency have been admitted as 'skilled migrants' after graduation under recent policy changes. Drawing on interviews with foreign graduates working in Japan, the study argues that the state's expansion of the 'skilled migrants' category produces a form of stratification characterized by multi-layered inequality, comprising three domains: labour markets, legal rights and (in)formal status. Furthermore, the study finds that these domains are interconnected. While different skill profiles directly shape labour market inequality, this inequality in turn affects legal rights stratification through bureaucratic practices that allocate different periods of residence based on applicants' economic potential. Additionally, labour market inequality connects with (in)formal status stratification through the state's issuance of skilled migration visas to those performing work that falls outside state-defined 'skilled' (mostly white-collar) work, an unintended policy outcome largely driven by employers' misuse of visa applications amid labour shortages in low-wage sectors. Multi-layered inequality thus highlights the interlocked nature of multiple domains of inequality, compounding disadvantages for those with lower skill profiles and implying divergent trajectories of integration among 'skilled migrants'.
Migration is a highly complex and uncertain process that has the potential to have large impacts on societies around the world. One key driver of this complexity and uncertainty is the autonomous agency of the actors involved, particularly the decision-making processes of potential migrants. Most theories and models rely on simplistic decision rules or a decision-making process that assumes rational agents. However, a considerable body of research in psychology and behavioural economics raises doubts about such assumptions. To inform the description of migration decision processes, we elicited and compared non-parametric utility functions for both finance and international migration decisions. This allowed us to directly test, using individual-level experimental data, whether the aspects of prospect theory that are commonly found in utility functions elicited within a financial context are also present for migration decisions. Across both financial and migration-related contexts, we found that participants were generally loss-averse and their utility functions were concave in the domain of gains. However, findings for convexity in the domain of losses were mixed. This evidence of loss aversion, risk aversion, and diminished sensitivity further from the reference point suggests that migration decision-making is more consistent with the key tenets of prospect theory than with expected utility.
China's ageing rural population presents a significant challenge to the country's development. This article uses data from the 2013, 2015 and 2018 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study to examine how pension receipt of the elderly parents in rural China affects the labour mobility of their adult children. The estimation results from a fuzzy regression discontinuity design indicate that the pension receipt increases the labour mobility of adult children. The effects are more pronounced when the elderly parents have better health, have more living children and are both alive. Mechanism analysis indicates that pension receipt reduces regular financial transfers from adult children, but does not affect grandparental childcare for the adult children. This article reveals how a public pension programme affects the labour mobility of the younger generation and offers valuable insights for other developing countries facing similar challenges with an ageing population.
Renewed interest in rural areas during the COVID-19 pandemic generated a sense of optimism concerning the fate of declining rural areas, with the notion of a 'rural revival' evident in both popular and academic discourse. While many studies have explored urban-rural migration during the pandemic, few have done so from the specific perspective of declining rural areas. This paper responds to this gap, combining analysis of pre-pandemic population development trends with an exploration of pandemic-era internal migration patterns in Nordic rural areas. The paper uses sequence analysis to identify the most typical population development trajectories of Nordic rural municipalities in the two decades preceding the pandemic. Following this, a measure of 'excess migration' is used to explore which types of rural municipalities were the most likely to experience higher-than-expected inflows of internal migrants following the onset of the pandemic. The analysis highlights considerable diversity in the population development trajectories of Nordic rural municipalities-while population decline was the most common experience, it was by no means the only one, with many rural populations stable, and even growing. Further, the paper finds that, while most rural municipalities experienced higher-than-expected inflows in the pandemic era, the greatest deviations from expectations were evident in municipalities with the least favourable pre-pandemic population development trajectories. Further monitoring of migrant flows, along with more detailed analysis of flows among different groups, will be important next steps in clarifying the extent to which these short-term disruptions have any longer-term bearing on demographic decline in Nordic rural areas.
This study examines multidimensional segregation by race, income, and partisanship among Asian Americans, whose ethnic subgroups differ in migration history, socioeconomic position, and political alignment. Using voter registration records for 33 million voters in New York and California, including 2.55 million Asian American voters, we estimate individual-level spatial isolation with a k-nearest neighbours approach. On average, Asian Americans show lower racial isolation than Black and Hispanic voters, while their income and partisan isolation are closer to those of White voters. At the subgroup level, Chinese and Vietnamese Americans show high racial isolation, while Chinese Americans show intermediate income and partisan isolation. Japanese Americans show low racial and income isolation but higher partisan isolation. Indian Americans show the highest income isolation, whereas Vietnamese Americans show low partisan isolation. These findings show that Asian American residential patterns vary across subgroups and suggest that partisanship may represent an additional dimension shaping everyday residential experiences.
