Negative assimilation:how immigrants experience economic mobility in Japan

This paper examines the economic mobility of foreign migrants in Japan. In a country that is largely regarded as homogeneous and closed to outsiders, how and to what extent do immigrants achieve economic success? A survey conducted by the authors revealed that the conventional assimilationist perspective does not fully explain immigrants’ economic success in Japan. Migrants from the West experience what Chiswick and Miller (2011) refer to as “negative assimilation.” That is, their earnings decline over time in Japan. While negative assimilation was not clearly observed among immigrants from neighboring Asian countries, wages among them did not increase with the length of their stay in Japan. For both groups, the skills they brought from abroad were found to be largely accountable for their economic success, while locally specific human capital, such as education acquired in the host society, did not contribute to their earnings

Does Selective Migration Explain the Hispanic Paradox?: A Comparative Analysis of Mexicans in the U.S. and Mexico

Latino immigrants, particularly Mexican, have some health advantages over U.S.-born Mexicans and Whites. Because of their lower socioeconomic status, this phenomenon has been called the epidemiologic “Hispanic Paradox.” While cultural theories have dominated explanations for the Paradox, the role of selective migration has been inadequately addressed. This study is among the few to combine Mexican and U.S. data to examine health selectivity in activity limitation, self-rated health, and chronic conditions among Mexican immigrants, ages 18 and over. Drawing on theories of selective migration, this study tested the “healthy migrant” and “salmon-bias” hypotheses by comparing the health of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. to non-migrants in Mexico, and to return migrants in Mexico. Results suggest that there are both healthy migrant and salmon-bias effects in activity limitation, but not other health aspects. In fact, consistent with prior research, immigrants are negatively selected on self-rated health. Future research should consider the complexities of migrants’ health profiles and examine selection mechanisms alongside other factors such as acculturation

New Middle-Class Labor Migrants

Migration researchers have tended to focus on social extremes: either highly skilled elites, on the one hand, or low-wage workers on the other. Less attention has been directed toward “ordinary” middle-class professional movers, and there have been no reviews of this literature to date. The chapter addresses this gap and identifies five important themes to guide future class-orientated migration research. First, the complex relationship between migration, social mobility, place, and middle-class membership is examined. Second, age is shown to be an important consideration in middle-class migration decision-making. Third, the cultural versus economic basis of the mobile middle-class is explored, and the role of lifestyle factors in shaping migration is critically examined. Fourth, middle-class migration decisions are connected to gendered household strategies, with the preponderance of dual-career couples now taking migration decision-making well beyond the individual career path. Finally, the social and communal emplacement of middle-class migrants is considered as an important but neglected dimension of research. Overall, it is clear that the class-based analysis of migration is an important yet neglected field of study, and this is especially true for middle-class movers

The Effect of Immigrant Peers in Vocational Schools

This paper provides new evidence on how the presence of immigrant peers in the classroom affects native student achievement. The analysis is based on longitudinal administrative data on two cohorts of vocational training students in Italy's largest region. Vocational training institutions provide the ideal setting for studying these effects because they attract not only disproportionately high shares of immigrants but also the lowest ability native students. We adopt a value added model, and exploit within-school variation both within and across cohorts for identification. Our results show small negative average effects on maths test scores that are larger for low ability native students, strongly non-linear and only observable in classes with a high (top 20%) immigrant concentration. These outcomes are driven by classes with a high average linguistic distance between immigrants and natives, with no apparent role played by ethnic diversity