Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T20:20:22.238Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Frustration and preference change in international migration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Gerry Mackie
Gerry Mackie
Affiliation:
University of Chicago(Chicago).
Get access

Abstract

Given equal income incentives, why does migration from poor countries to rich countries vary ? I apply Boudon's logic of relative frustration and Elster's model of interactions among desire, opportunity and action to interpret sociological findings on the self-sustaining nature of the migration process. I conclude that migration does not occur in the absence of initial opportunity, but that once begun tbe migration process itself increases, both the opportunity and the desire to migrate.

L'attraction monétaire, en termes de revenus, étant supposée égale, pourquoi les flux migratoires d'un pays pauvre vers un pays riche varient-ils ? En appliquant le modèle de la frustration relative dans la version de Boudon et le modèle de l'interaction entre souhait, opportunité et action, on peut mettre en évidence la nature auto-entretenue du processus migratoire. L'auteur conclut qu'en l'absence d'opportunité initiale, le processus ne se déclenche pas, mais qu'une fois lancé, il développe de lui-même à la fois l'opportunité et le désir de migration.

Warum variiert die Wanderung von armen zu reichen Ländern bei gleichbleibender monetärer Anziehungskraft der Einkommen ? Ich wende Boudons Logik der relativcn Frustration und Elsters Modell der Interaktion zwischen Wunsch, Gelegenheit und Handlung an, um die soziologischen Elemente dieses sich selbst tragenden Wanderungsprozesses zu interpretieren. Ich schließe mit der Behauptung, daß ohne eine erste Gelegenheit Wanderung nicht entsteht, aber einmal ausgelÖst, entwickelt der Wanderungsprozeß sowohl die Gelegenheit als auch den Wunsch der Auswanderung.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , November 1995 , pp. 185 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

(1) Schuck, P., The Great Immigration Debate, American Prospect 3 (Fall, 1990), p. 117.Google Scholar

(2) Also see Calabresi, G. and Bobbitt, P., Tragic Choices (New York, W.W. Norton, 1978), p. 21Google Scholar: ‘at very high and very low first-order levels [how many], relatively easy second-order choices [who to choose] are possible, while this is not so at intermediate levels’.

(3) Fashion has the opposite sign: one's dress is bad if no one else shares it, good if some share it, and bad again if everyone shares it.

(4) As quoted in Boudon, R., La Logique de la frustration relative, Archives Européennes de Sociologie, XVIII, 1 (1977).Google Scholar

(5) R. Boudon, Logique, p. 174.

(6) Cuthbert, R.W. and Stevens, J.B., The Net Economic Incentive for Illegal Mexican Migration: A Case Study, International Migration Review 15 (1981), 543–550.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(7) Simcox, D., Mexico's Dilemma: Finding a Million Jobs a Year, in Simcox, (ed.), U.S. Immigration in the 1990s: Reappraisal and Reform (Boulder, Westview Press, 1988), p. 201.Google Scholar

(8) u.s. immigration and naturalization service, Statistics Division, Provisional Legalization Application Statistics, January 9, 1990. A special agricultural worker program made legalization available, mostly to Mexicans, on the thinnest claim.

(9) W. Stockton, Mexicans, in a Poll, Say They Consider U.S. to Be Friend, The New York Times, November 17, 1986, p. A1, A8. If expressed desire to immigrate is identical to the frustration rate, and if the assumption of ten percent winners is true, then one could estimate a fivefold benefit of immigration to the U.S. D.S. Massey, Economic Development and International Migration in Comparative Perspective, Population and Development Review 14 (September 1988), p. 399, in his study of four Mexican communities in 1982, estimates average U.S. migrant income, deducting food and lodging expenses, as six times the Mexican minimum wage.

(10) Simcox, Mexico's Dilemma, 202.

(11) u.s. general accounting office, Immigration:The Future Flow of Legal Immigration to the United States, GAO/PEMD-88–7 (January 1988), 106–107.

(12) Widgren, J., International Migration: New Challenges for Europe, Migration News (04–06 1987), 1–35.Google Scholar

(13) See Tocqueville, A., The Old Regime and the French Revolution (Garden City, Doubleday, 1955)Google Scholar, Part 3, Chapter 5. How the spirit of revolt was promoted by well-intentioned efforts to improve the people's lot, p. 180–188. ‘And by thus championing the cause of the underprivileged [the privileged few] made them acutely conscious of their wrongs’, p. 180.

(14) Wiest, R.E., External Dependency and the Perpetuation of Temporary Migration to the United States, in Jones, R.C. (ed.), Patterns of Undocumented Migration: Mexico and the United States (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Allanheld, 1984).Google Scholar

(15) R. Mines, Network Migration and Mexican Rural Development: A Case Study, in Jones, Patterns of Undocumented Migration.

(16) Reichert, J., A Town Divided: Economic Stratification and Social Relations in a Mexican Migrant Community, Social Problems 29 (04 1982), 411–423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(17) Ibid., p. 420.

(18) Reprinted as Part 3 of Stark, O., The Migration of Labor (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991)Google Scholar. For yet a third formal approach to relative deprivation, see Jasso, G., Methods for the Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of Comparison Processes, Sociological Methodology, Vol. 20 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 369–419Google Scholar. Neither Stark nor Jasso mention Boudon.

(19) Boudon shows that if the poor are more risk-averse than the rich, then inequality reduces frustration. A parallel effect, not reported by Boudon, is that the more dispersed is any unimodal distribution of income gains straddling his ‘curve of maximum discontent’ the less the average frustration. This latter effect is unlikely at the lowest percentage of winners, likely for lower percentages of winners, and unlikely again for higher percentages of winners.

(20) O. Stark and J.E. Taylor, Relative Deprivation and International Migration, in Stark, Migration of Labor, p. 120.

(21) O. Stark and J.E. Taylor, Migration Incentives, Migration Types: The Role of Relative Deprivation, in Stark, Migration of Labor, Chapter 10.

(22) Borjas, G. J., Friends or Strangers: The Impact of Immigrants on the U.S. Economy (New York, Basic Books, 1990), 213–216.Google Scholar There is a ‘negative correlation between the potential lifetime earnings of immigrant groups in the United States and the amount of income equality in the source country’, p. 125.

(23) Diaz-Briquets, S. and Weintraub, S., Series Preface, p. xvii, in Diaz-Briquets, and Weintraub, (eds), Determinants of Emigration from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean (Boulder, Westview Press, 1991)Google Scholar. The writers do not cite a historical instance of such an outcome. Growth also initially increases inequality, which stimulates emigration to more egalitarian countries. Compare Hirschman, A.O., The Changing Tolerance for Income Inequality in the Course of Development, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 58 (11, 1973), 544–566.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(24) P. Gregory, The Determinants of International Migration and Policy Options for Influencing the Size of Population Flows, p. 55, in Diaz-Briquets and Weintraub (eds), Determinants of Emigration.

(25) Masterful surveys of the immigration literature have recently appeared: Massey, D.S., Arango, J., Hugo, G., Kouaouci, A., Pellegrino, A., Taylor, J.E., Theories of International Migration: A Review and Appraisal, Population and Development Review 19 (09 1993), 431–466CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Massey, D.S., Arango, J., Hugo, G., Kouaouci, A., Pellegrino, A., Taylor, J.E., An Evaluation of International Migration Theory: The North American Case, Population and Development Review 20 (12 1994), 699–749CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Borjas, G.J., The Economics of Immigration, Journal of Economic Literature 32 (12 1994). 1667–1717.Google Scholar

(26) Massey, et al, The North American Case, 705–710, in Stark, Migration of Labor, and co-workers supplement simple economic theory with models and estimations of migration as a response to incomplete crop insurance, futures, unemployment insurance and capital markets in the rural sending areas.

(27) Borjas, Friends and Strangers, 60–61.

(28) Massey, D., Understanding Mexican Migration to the United States, American Journal of Sociology 92 (1987), 1372–1403 at 1373.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(29) Elster, J., Tocqueville's Psychology II, in Elster, J., Political Psychology (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993), 162–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(30) The following is a partial exposition of Elster, J., Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983), Chapter III.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(31) Ibid., p. 122.

(32) See Mackie, G., U.S. Immigration Policy and Local Justice, in Elster, J., (ed.) Local Justice in America (New York: Sage, 1995)Google Scholar; Donato, K.M., U.S. Policy and Mexican Migration to the United States, 1942–1992, Social Science Quarterly 75 (12 1994), 705–729.Google Scholar

(33) See Massey et al., The North American Case, 728–738.

(34) As well as in studies of recent immigrant settlement patterns in the U.S., all cited in ibid., 728–733.

(35) Hatton, T.J. and Williamson, J.G., What Drove the Mass Migrations from Europe in the Late Nineteenth Century?, Population and Development Review 20 (09 1994), 533–559CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Hatton, and Williamson, (eds), Migration and the International Labor Market: 1850–1939 (London: Routledge, 1994).Google Scholar

(36) Massey, D.S. and Garcia-Espana, F., The Social Process of International Migration, Science 237 (08 1987), p. 14.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

(37) Stark and Taylor, Migration Incentives, p. 156.

(38) Massey, D., Return to Aztlan: The Social Process of International Migration from Western Mexico (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Massey, Understanding Mexican Migration.

(39) Alarcon, R., Nortenizacion: Self-Perpetuating Migration from a Mexican Town, in Bustamante, J.A., Reynolds, C.W., Hinojosa-Ojeda, R.A. (eds), U.S.-Mexico Relations: Labor Market Interdependence (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

(40) Quoted and translated in Cornelius, W.A., From Sojourners to Settlers: The Changing Profile of Mexican Immigration to the United States, 172–173, in Bustamante, J.A., Reynolds, C.W., Hinojosa-Ojeda, R.A. (eds), U.S.-Mexico Relations.Google Scholar

(41) Many migrants do shuttle. The village network becomes binational, even multilocal. Is this a transitional phase, or rather a stable new social space as the postmodernist would have it? For the latter interpretation, see Rouse, R., Mexican Migration and the Social Space of Postmodernism, Diaspora 1 (Spring 1991), 8–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(42) Settlement can be conformed to the fixed-preference model, if the income elasticity of demand is negative at higher income for the home goods, that is, if they constitute an inferior good. But why would they become an inferior good? Why not have the best of both worlds? Mexicans surveyed believe their way of life is superior to that of the U.S., Stockton, Mexicans in a Poll.

(43) Massey et al., Theories of international migration, 452–453, citations omitted.

(44) On network issues, see especially Gurak, D.T. and Caces, F., Migration Networks and the Shaping of Migration Systems, in Kritz, M.M., Lim, L.L., Zlotnik, H. (eds), International Migration Systems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 150–176.Google Scholar

(45) Widgren, International Migration, p. 4.

(46) See Elster, J., Local Justice (New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1992).Google Scholar

(47) Martin, P.L. and Miller, M.J., Guestworkers: Lessons from Western Europe, Industrial and Labor Relations Review 33 (04, 1980), 315–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(48) Massey, D.S. and Liang, Z., The Long-term Consequences of a temporary worker program: The U.S. Bracero Experience, Population Research and Policy Review 8 (1989), 199–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar