INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY

United Kingdom (Liverpool) 94

DECEMBER 1997 - VOLUME 3, NUMBER 4

98.94.6 - English - Khalid KOSER and John SALT, Migration Research Unit, Department of Geography, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AP (U.K.)

The geography of highly skilled international migration (p. 285-303)

The present paper provides a research review of recent literature on international migration by the highly skilled. Its principal aim is to identify the themes which are being discussed, and suggest where research into the subject might best proceed. The paper begins by examining the existing framework for study. Definitions and data availability are discussed, followed by a consideration of theoretical perspectives and their attendant methodologies and models. This is followed by a review of the two most important perspectives in extant research, economic and sociocultural, leading into a review of what is known about the geography of migration by the highly skilled. The systems described are subject to a process of management which is discussed in the penultimate section. Finally, the paper proposes future directions for research which involve a reconceptualisation of migration by the highly skilled as one element in the international movement of expertise. (INTERNAL MIGRATION, LABOUR MIGRATION, SKILLED WORKERS, RESEARCH)

98.94.7 - English - Matthew LOCKWOOD, c/o Christian Aid, P.O. Box 100, London SE1 7RT (U.K.)

Sons of the soil? Population growth, environmental change and men's reproductive intentions in Northern Nigeria (p. 305-322)

This paper is about two radically different views of the relationship between population and environment, based on detailed interviews with a small group of male farmers in northern Nigeria. The study was aimed at understanding why poor people in areas of environmental pressure and land scarcity continue to have large families. Conventional academic explanations for this, based on economic models, attach great importance to the relationship between population growth, environmental change and the assumed demand for children. However, the farmers interviewed perceived these relationships in radically different ways from the models. This is for three reasons. The first is the nature of environmental change and stability in the local farming system and economy. The second is that land scarcity is conceived of in terms of social and economic scarcity, rather than the availability of a natural resource within fixed geographical boundaries. The third is that their notion of fertility control is not parity-specific or numerically based. The paper argues that these perceptions render the economic models irrelevant, and are central to an understanding of male farmers' reproductive intentions (and possibly the fertility behaviour of their wives). (NIGERIA, FARMERS, POPULATION GROWTH, ENVIRONMENT, FERTILITY, SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY)

98.94.8 - English - P. H. REES and O. DUKE-WILLIAMS, School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT (U.K.)

Methods for estimating missing data on migrants in the 1991 British census (p. 323-368)

This paper discusses the use of suppression to protect data in the Special Migration Statistics, a dataset produced from the 1991 Census, and argues that this procedure prevents accurate analysis of the data. A computer program is described that uses a series of methods to recover data which were suppressed, and to estimate those parts of the data which cannot be recovered. A process termed logical data patching is used to recover data, while a technique termed integer fitting is introduced to estimate the remaining suppressed parts of the dataset. The latter process uses a familiar iterative proportional fitting procedure, coupled with an innovative three-way controlled rounding procedure in order to generate integer-only tables which are consistent with all available totals. The program has been used to recover and estimate data successfully, and results include sample tables of migrants between types of districts by ethnicity. (UNITED KINGDOM, METHODOLOGY, POPULATION CENSUS, DATA CLEANING)

MARCH 1998 - VOLUME 4, NUMBER 1

98.94.9 - English - William A. V. CLARK, University of California, Los Angeles (U.S.A.)

E-mail : wclark@geog.ucla.edu.

Large-scale immigration and political response: Popular reaction in California (p. 1-10)

In the past three years there has been an increasing political debate about the nature and extent of the recent large-scale immigration to the United States generally, and to California particularly. Although the debate had begun well before the California vote on Proposition 187 (to deny welfare benefits to illegal immigrants), it nevertheless brought national attention to the immigration debate, and was certainly a background element in the recent decisions to change significantly the welfare programme in the US. Examining the vote on Proposition 187 provides a window on reaction to large-scale immigration and offers some insights on the recent arguments about anti-immigrant sentiment and 'nativism'. A spatial analysis of the vote by tracts in Los Angeles County provides a more complex picture of the nature of reaction to immigration than is suggested by media and political rhetoric about racism and immigrant phobia. Using the vote on Proposition 187 as a measure of immigration sentiment, re-emphasizes the widespread popular support across ethnic groups for limiting immigration. The vote also hints at the complex alliances that have formed over continuing high levels of immigration. (UNITED STATES, IMMIGRATION, IMMIGRATION POLICY, PUBLIC OPINION)

98.94.10 - English - N. J. FORD, Department of Geography, University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon EX4 4RJ (U.K.), and K. N. SIREGAR, Faculty of Public Health, University of Indonesia, Depok 16424 (Indonesia)

Operationalizing the new concept of sexual and reproductive health in Indonesia (p. 11-30)

In the 1990s the so-called 'new politics of family planning' has entailed the articulation of a comprehensive concept of sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Following ratification of the SRH concept and goals at recent international conferences in Cairo (International Conference on Population and Development) and Beijing (Fourth World Conference on Women), a major issue at present is how governments (and Ministries of Health in particular) translate the broad statements into operational policies and programmes. This paper explores the ways in which this process is taking place in Indonesia. Following an outline definition of SRH, levels of attainment in Indonesia in eight of its components are briefly reviewed. The policy process in Indonesia is explored in terms of preexisting reassessments (e.g. of family planning in the light of fertility decline), setting key priorities and moralistic and pragmatic policy orientations. (INDONESIA, FAMILY PLANNING POLICY, FAMILY PLANNING PROGRAMMES)

98.94.11 - English - Richard BLACK, School of African and Asian Studies, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QN (U.K.), and Mohamed SESSAY, School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds (U.K.)

Forced migration, natural resource use and environmental change: The case of the Senegal river valley (p. 31-47)

This paper addresses concerns about the potential negative environmental consequences of mass population displacement, through an examination of changes in natural resource use in an area of northern Senegal affected by an influx of Mauritanian refugees in 1989. Drawing on a survey of refugee and local households, the paper examines the livelihood strategies and patterns of natural resource use of the two populations, and considers the notion that refugees are forced, through poverty or for other reasons, to use natural resources in a more destructive manner. The paper also considers the regulation of natural resource use, and the socioeconomic and political context within which this resource use takes place. The paper concludes that there is little justification for viewing refugees in the Senegal River Valley as 'exceptional resource degraders', but rather that the livelihood strategies developed by refugees are similar in many respects to those of local populations. (SENEGAL, REFUGEES, NATURAL RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT)

98.94.12 - English - Kao-Lee LIAW, Department of Geography, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4K1 (Canada), and William H. FREY, Population Studies Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (U.S.A.)

Destination choices of the 1985-90 young adult immigrants to the United States: Importance of race, educational attainment, and labour market forces (p. 49-61)

The continued concentration of immigrants into a select number of port-of-entry states has focused both the benefits and burdens of immigration on their residents and local governments. The fact that immigrants concentrate in these areas at the same time as domestic migrants are relocating elsewhere suggests that conventional labour market forces play a lesser role than ethnic ties in affecting immigrants' initial destination choices. This paper investigates the relative roles of conventional labour market forces and proxies for ethnic ties in explaining the destination choices of 1985-90 young adult immigrants, based on data from the 1990 census. We find that the destination choices of recent immigrants are more strongly influenced by the race-ethnic composition of a state than by more conventional labour market attributes. This is especially the case for blacks and Hispanics who showed the highest concentration in their destination selections, and least so for whites whose destinations were most dispersed. We also found that immigrants with less than high school education were most subject to the pull of race-ethnic similarity, were least attracted by the states with low unemployment, and had the most concentrated destination selections within each race-ethnic group. The latter finding suggests that an immigration policy that gives greater preference to immigrant skill levels would lead to a more widespread dispersal of immigrants across states. (UNITED STATES, IMMIGRANT WORKERS, PLACE OF DESTINATION, LABOUR MARKET, RACES, ETHNIC GROUPS, LEVELS OF EDUCATION)

98.94.13 - English - Andrei ROGERS and James RAYMER, Population Program, Campus Box 484, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309 (U.S.A.)

The spatial focus of US interstate migration flows (p. 63-80)

Despite the widespread interest in the changing geographies of national migration regimes, it is somewhat remarkable that no widely accepted measure of the spatial concentration or focus exhibited by such geographies has emerged. We examine four of the most popular indices of inequality in this paper and contrast their performance as measures of spatial focus. Adopting the coefficient of variation as our preferred alternative, we go on to examine the spatial focus of aggregate interstate migration streams in the US over time. Then we consider disaggregations of the migration streams by age, race and nativity, and examine the role of states as national redistributors of these same subpopulations. We find that the migration patterns of the elderly, blacks, and the foreign-borns in general have exhibited levels of spatial focus that exceed those of their young adult, white, and native-born counterparts. With respect to the principal redistributor states, our findings for all subpopulations point to a very few states that persistently reappear in the group-specific classifications. In particular, California is a unique redistributor of the US population, always appearing as an extensive outward or inward redistributor of migrants. (UNITED STATES, IMMIGRATION, INTERNAL MIGRATION, GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION, RESETTLEMENT POLICY, METHODOLOGY)

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