International Migration and the
Demographic Transition: A Two-Way
Interaction
Philippe Fargues
European University Institute (EUI)
The paper explores the relationship between the demographic transition and international migration, that is, between population dynamics and direct connectivity between peoples. The first part examines
how ideas conveyed by migrants to non-migrants of their community
of origin are susceptible to impact on practices that lead to the reduction of birth rates in source countries of migration and concludes that
international migration may be one of the mechanisms through which
demographic transition is disseminated. The second part shows that
declining birth rates in origin countries generate a new profile of the
migrant and suggests that future migrants will typically leave no
spouses or children in the home country and therefore their objective
will no longer be to improve the family’s standing at home for the
mere reason that there is no longer such a family, but to increase
opportunities for themselves. Migration policies of origin countries on
remittances as well as those of destination countries on family reunification will have to be reconsidered.
INTRODUCTION
Are there links between the demographic transition and international
migration, between one of the most massive changes to affect humanity
in modern times and one of the most significant forms of connection
between peoples? While many empirical studies have highlighted the reciprocal implications of demographic growth and migration, theory is largely silent: international migration theory does not put much emphasis
2011 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. All rights reserved.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-7379.2011.00859.x
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International Migration and the Demographic Transition
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on demography1 and demographic theory simply ignores international
migration.
Demography is the science of population and, insofar as a population is defined with reference to a territory, migration is a component of
population growth and therefore a topic for demography. If the territory
is a nation, then international migration is of interest to demography. In
the demographic discipline, ‘‘natural’’ growth – that is the balance
between births and deaths – and net migration – that is the balance
between entries and exits – are dealt with as two separate components of
population dynamics. While, indeed, migration appears in the strong web
of quantitative tools and mathematical models that demographers have
developed2 it is absent from the demographic theory.
Unlike other social sciences, the demographic discipline has not produced a diversity of theories. In a recent epistemological reflection, Burch
(2003) stressed that the opening statement made more than half a century
ago by Vance in his Presidential address to the Population Association of
America would still be topical nowadays: ‘‘Among the social sciences
demography has developed some of the most advanced techniques. Empiri1
Massey et al. (1993), in one of the most quoted references on migration theories, mention demography only once and indirectly as ‘‘the demography of labor supply’’ (long-run
declines in fertility result in smaller cohorts of young people entering the labor force and
hence in rising demand for replacement migration). In a reflection on demography and
migration theories, Keeley (2000) states that ‘‘demographers borrow theories from other
disciplines to explain international migration’’ (p.50) and ‘‘the social science of demography plays a broadly contributing role for the study of international migration. Its analytic
tools […] provide insights into the effects of migration on population size, structure and
dynamics and provide modeling techniques […]’’ (p.57).
2
It must be noted, however, that the core model of formal demography known as the theory of ‘‘stable populations’’ or ‘‘biological populations’’, describes the reproduction of populations in the absence of migration: ‘‘by a very natural abstraction, demographic analysis
envisages as a point of departure the case of a closed population, that is to say, a population whose numbers receive new accessions only through births and suffers losses only
through deaths, immigration and emigration being excluded’’ (Lotka, 1998[1939]:53). In
further developments, the mathematics of population has continued to exclude migration
from its scope (UN, 1968). Keyfitz (1971a) later suggested that emigration can be dealt
with by analogy with death: ‘‘from the viewpoint of the number of individuals in the next
generation, a person’s being sterilized, leaving the country, or dying amount to the same
thing: the effect of any one of these on the ultimate rate of increase of a population is
exactly the same’’. [p. 575]. The same author introduces migration in the mathematics of
population as ‘‘a means of population control’’ (Keyfitz, 1971b), that is, an external
regulator of natural population growth.
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cally and technically, population has gone a long way […] but there is one
area where demography is getting rather poverty-stricken and frayed at the
edges. In the realm of high theory we have been living off our capital and
borrowing from our associates.’’ (Vance, 1952:9). If one follows Karl Popper and defines a theory as a set of hypotheses that explain universal phenomena and have not yet been falsified, then demography has only one
theory, known as the ‘‘demographic transition’’, which pays no attention
to migration. While the demographic transition theory postulates a functional link between birth and death rates, there is no equivalent, cohesive
model that would posit a relationship between them and migration.
Population size and rate of growth are often used as independent
variables in descriptive or predictive models of migration. The gravity
model of migration, inspired by Newton’s second law of gravitation, postulates that migration flows between two regions are directly proportional
to the product of their populations and inversely proportional to the
squared distance between them, a model that fails to reflect the complexity of human behavior.3
Other models use instead population growth as an independent variable to explain migration. In one of the most achieved models linking
(natural) population growth with mass migration Hatton and Williamson
(2006) make the central hypothesis that mass migration has often been in
history a lagged response to high birth rates in the sending country. Their
approach is economic and typically considers demographic growth as an
exogenous factor of migration. Push ⁄ pull models of migration ask the
question of whether ‘‘high demographic pressure in population A explains
migration towards population B where pressure is lesser’’ and postulate,
by analogy with fluid mechanics, that migration flows are proportionate
to differentials (in income, in employment opportunities, in rewards to
education, in freedom, etc.) between regions, usually with a distance-decay
effect.4 And indeed, migration from developing countries to developed
ones is found to be statistically linked with rapid population growth and
3
A critical review of what the author names the ‘‘gravity disease’’ is given by Le Bras
(1990).
4
The most famous model was developed by Harris and Todaro (1970) to describe migration from rural to urban areas.
International Migration and the Demographic Transition
591
fast-growing labor forces in source countries, by contrast with stagnating
or shrinking ones in host countries (Martin, 2009).5
However, the relationship between the pace of population growth
and the direction of migratory flows stops applying once one considers
current international migration within the developing world or within the
developed world, where counter examples are as numerous as examples.6
Here one has to admit that the correlation between demographic pressure
and migration flows does not offer a sufficient basis for theorizing about
demographic change and migration.
This paper adopts a different perspective and explores whether
demographic change and international migration can be intrinsically
linked. It deals with migration from economically less developed countries
to more developed ones and with only one facet of the demographic transition, which is the shift from high to low birth rates and its sociological
correlate, the gradual substitution of a dominant pattern of large families
with a pattern where small families dominate. The other facet, which is
the decline in mortality, the increase in longevity and the subsequent
changes in the generational composition of the family, will not be tackled
here, even though one may assume that this facet is also linked to international migration.
Part I, based on published works by Fargues (2006) and Beine,
Docquier, and Schiff (2008), focuses on the impact of international
migration, on demographic transition in the developing world, and, more
precisely, on birth control and the transition from high to low fertility
rates amongst migrants in host countries and non-migrants in source
countries. It argues that, because migrants remit ideas to their home coun5
This fact has inspired contrasted analyses. For some authors it should encourage the international community, confronted with demographic imbalances and complementarities, to
search for a global consensus on how to address migration (Chamie, 2009). Others have
focused on how differentials in fertility and in international migration combine to alter
the ethnic composition of the population in receiving countries of migrants (Coleman,
2009) and how concerns about national identity make the relations between migration
and demography a matter of debate in internal politics (Teitelbaum and Winter, 1998).
6
That demographic differentials do not cause migration is seen in many cases where origin
countries of migrants have lower rates of demographic growth than destination countries:
from Poland ()0.12%) to the United Kingdom (+0.54%); from Sri Lanka (0.8%) or Lebanon (0.8%) to Saudi Arabia (+2.5%), etc. Density is not a better predictor of the direction of migration, as many flows go from low to high relative densities: from Thailand
(122 inhabitants per square kilometer) to Japan (336), from Russia (9) to Israel (273), etc.
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Figure I.
A Framework of Interaction Between International Migration and
Demographic Transition
Ideational remittances
Part I
International
migration
Fertility transition
Part II
Changing life cycle
tries and because most recent migration has been from high to low birthrate countries, international migration has contributed to spreading values
and practices that produce low birth rates in origin countries. International migration has, therefore, led to a smaller world population than the
one that would have been observed in a zero migration scenario (Figure I,
upper part).
Part II is a first attempt to look at the symmetrical influence of
demographic change on international migration. It shows that declining
birth rates in origin countries are generating a new migrant profile. While
international migrants of earlier times started to build a family before
migrating, new migrants typically leave no spouses or children in the
home country, as a result of relatively unchanged age patterns of migration while marriage takes place later in the life cycle and fewer children
are procreated (Figure I, lower part).
The paper finally suggests that this fundamental change may produce a critical shift in the economy of migration. Until recently migrants
from the developing world were motivated by an altruistic drive to feed
and educate their families at home. Remittances were the main, if not the
only, reason for emigration. Today, young migrants are more likely to be
interested in self-accomplishment. Unlike their predecessors, the primary
objective of typical migrants is no longer to improve the family’s standing
at home – often there is no such family – but to increase opportunities
for themselves. Remittances shift from an altruistic to an individualistic
International Migration and the Demographic Transition
593
use and migrants have an increasing propensity to accumulate not only
financial capital, but also individual human capital through education and
experience.
THE IMPACT OF INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION ON THE
DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION
The demographic revolution,7 which began in late 18th century Europe,
then spread to the rest of the world in the course of the 19th and 20th
centuries and is still unfolding today, is one of the most far-reaching
changes that humanity has experienced and an experience which no country can escape (Chesnais, 1992). Schematically, a century ago the average
life expectancy at birth in the world was less than 30 years of age, while
the average woman would have given birth to between 6 and 9 children,
with variations according to place and social condition. It had been so
from time immemorial.
But then, at a date that varies from one region to another, mortality
started to durably decline. In 2010, the world’s average life expectancy at
birth has climbed to 70.5 years – respectively 81, 68, and 58 years in
developed, developing, and the least developed regions (UN, 2008a) and
continues to rise steadily. At a later date, fertility started, in turn, to
decrease. In 2010, women gave birth to, on average, 2.6 children over
their lifetime (respectively 1.6, 2.7, and 4.2 in developed, developing, and
the least developed regions) and it is expected that the world population
as well as national populations will soon have fertility levels converging
towards the replacement level (2.1 children per woman). If one had to
single out one major factor to explain the demographic transition, then
this factor would be the combination of increased knowledge, which made
human development possible and increased connectivity between peoples,
which allowed knowledge sharing and the dissemination of progress.8
7
This is how the demographic transition was first named by one its ‘‘inventors’’ (Adolphe
Landry, La révolution démographique, études et essais sur les problèmes de la population,
Librairie du recueil Sirey, Paris, 1934).
8
Sustainable decreases in mortality rates were triggered first in European populations by
the progress of scientific knowledge and, later on in non-European populations with the
dissemination of knowledge that allowed progress in health to gradually become universal.
The spread of school education that raised public awareness on health issues was instrumental in further progress. Birth rates in their turn receded in conjunction with the progress of education, in particular among women.
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As there has been a time lag between the decline of mortality rates
and that of birth rates, that is, a time during which birth rates are still high
while death rates are already low, the period of demographic transition is
one of unprecedented population growth. As the length of this time lag and
the magnitude of the gap between birth and death rates vary greatly according to countries and to sub-groups of population within countries, population growth is a most uneven phenomenon. For reasons that will not be
revisited here, the demographic transition occurred first in what is today the
developed world and only later in what is today the developing one but,
once started, population growth was much faster in the latter than in the
former. Rapid population growth produces a number of consequences in
economic and political systems as well as in family systems (McNicoll,
1984) and the global differential in demographic growth between poor and
rich countries rearranges the relative distribution of world population
between them with future demographic growth expected to take place
entirely in those countries that are currently less or least developed.
At first glance, international migration is neutral with regard to
world population growth. When a person moves from one country to
another, his or her move depletes the source population by one individual
and adds that same individual to the host population, which is a zerosum operation. At second glance, however, one can dispute this mechanical view, for it focuses on the immediate effect of international migration
and ignores its possible remote effects. It was even hypothesized that
recent patterns of international migration have reduced the rate of natural
population growth in the developing world and resulted in a smaller
world population than in a zero migration scenario: in brief, international
migration has been among the factors helping towards the demographic
transition (Fargues, 2006; Beine, Docquier, and Schiff, 2008).
This hypothesis is based on the three following facts. First, a large
and increasing part of recent migration originates in developing countries
and is destined for developed countries. Table 1 shows that the proportion of international migration received by the most advanced countries
rose from 40.4 percent in 1960 to 56.3 percent in 2010.9 Migrants
9
Population censuses capture individuals where they actually reside; they provide data on
immigration, not on emigration (unless specific questions are asked to non-migrants). As a
result the Population Division of the United Nations provides global migration statistics
by countries of destination not by countries of origin (UN, 2008a).
International Migration and the Demographic Transition
DISTRIBUTION
OF
WORLD MIGRANTS
Human Development Index
Very high
High
Medium
Low
Total
BY
LEVEL
TABLE 1
OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
IN THE
595
DESTINATION COUNTRY
1960
1990
2005
2010
40.4%
17.5%
36.6%
5.5%
100.0%
45.4%
23.5%
30.4%
0.6%
100.0%
55.2%
19.5%
21.0%
4.3%
100.0%
56.3%
18.9%
20.7%
4.1%
100.0%
Source: UNDP, 2009.
moving from less developed countries to more advanced ones encounter
lower birth rates in their host countries than in their source countries.
Second, migrants are exposed in their host countries to a number of
new values and practices, including those that have been conducive to low
birth rates among local receiving populations, such as the spreading of
school education, in particular among girls. Along with their integration
in this new environment, migrants gradually adopt for themselves part of
these values and practices so that a partial convergence of migrants’ birth
rates with those of the receiving population occurs. However, being limited to migrants who are a small proportion of the population, the resulting effect on birth rates is itself small.
Third, unlike their predecessors, modern migrants are not completely severed from their countries of origin. On the contrary, they
remain in regular contact with their friends and relatives left behind
thanks to cheap phone and internet communications and many of them
periodically return home on low-cost travel tickets. Transnational lives
made possible by new technologies empower migrants as new actors in
their communities of origin. Not only do they remit financial savings to
their relatives, but they also transfer values and models of behaving, or
‘‘ideational remittances’’.10 As migrants are often regarded as successful
persons in their communities of origin, they can be instrumental in passing the values and practices they have been exposed to in host societies to
these communities and, in turn, communities of origin will adapt and
adopt these values and practices. In this way, migrants often convey the
ideational roots of demographic change to non-migrants in source countries. Contrary to the partial convergence of migrants’ birth rates with
10
The term ‘‘social remittances’’ coined by Levitt (1998) applies to entrepreneurial values
and practices sent by migrants to their communities of origin. We use ‘‘ideational’’ remittances for a wider range of values and models conveyed by migrants.
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International Migration Review
Figure II.
Birth Rates and Remittances in Morocco 1975–2007
3,00
Stabdardised index
2,50
2,00
1,50
1,00
0,50
0,00
-0,50
-1,00
-1,50
1970
1980
Birth rates
1990
2000
2010
Remittances (current prices)
those of the receiving population brought up in the previous paragraph,
ideational remittances are susceptible to have a large-scale impact as nonmigrants in origin countries number many more than migrants and ideas
and practices adopted by migrants reach a much bigger population
through the process of transfer. The multiplier should be something like
the ratio of the size of communities left behind in origin countries to the
number of their migrants.
In an attempt to validate the above framework, three major source
countries of migrants in the Middle East and North Africa were compared
by Fargues (2006): Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey. Migrants originating in
these countries are bound both for the Gulf States and for the West.
Those migrating to the Gulf are exposed to values and practices that are
more conservative than those of their homeland regarding the position of
women in the family and in the public sphere: that is, the social determinants of fertility. And indeed a correlate of social conservatism is a higher
fertility in the Gulf than in the countries of origin of immigrants residing
there.11 By contrast, those migrating to the ‘‘West’’ – Europe and North
America – find host societies with lower levels of fertility than those in
11
Fertility differentials between Gulf States and Arab Mediterranean countries and Turkey
were particularly marked in the 1980s and 1990s.
International Migration and the Demographic Transition
597
source countries, in conjunction with higher levels of female education
and higher rates of economic participation among women. If it is true
that migrants transfer to source countries values and practices that prevail
in host countries, then international migration from Egypt, Morocco, and
Turkey might be expected to produce opposite results depending on
which country migrants choose. Emigration to the Gulf might be
expected to obstruct forces of demographic transition in origin countries
and emigration to the west to foster these forces.
Time correlations between migrant workers’ remittances, which are
taken as a proxy for the intensity of the link that migrants keep with their
homeland,12 and birth rates bring a first clue to a differentiated relationship according to where migrants go. Morocco and Turkey follow the pattern most commonly observed among the developing world, that is, rising
remittances and declining birth rates during the last three decades. Many
factors explain these two trends separately so that the negative correlation
between them is not a clue to any causal relationship (Figure II).
Egypt, instead, offers a rather different pattern. During the four decades between 1969 and 2008, the birth rates have generally declined but
in an erratic fashion, interrupted three times by significant resurgence: in
the 1970s, in the second half of the 1980s, and again starting from 2006.
Each time, the increase in birth rates was echoing an increase in remittances (Figure III) as if Egyptian migrants transferred to their country of
origin the model of subsidized fertility that they found in Gulf States.
Indeed, in the Gulf monarchies, until the 1990s, the fabulous wealth provided by oil allowed local families to keep women at home and allowed
the State to take on the cost of their children, thus deactivating the usual
triggers of the fertility transition: in particular, the education of children
did not raise the direct cost of fertility for families, and the education of
women did not turn housewives into economic agents. Egypt is not an
oil-rich country and the State does not subsidize fertility. However,
migrants’ remittances can produce, to a certain extent, a comparable
effect. It was noted by anthropologists how deeply models imported from
the Gulf by migrants could transform local practices of marriage and family building in their communities of origin (Singerman, 1995; Hoodfar,
1999, Singerman and Ibrahim 2003) and Figure IV reflects the demographic dimension of this change. It suggests that, when remittances to
12
No reliable statistics of migration flows by period exist for Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey
and remittances are the only time series linked with migration.
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International Migration Review
Figure III.
Remittances and Birth Rates in Egypt 1969–2007
3,00
2,50
Standardised Index
2,00
1,50
1,00
0,50
0,00
-0,50
-1,00
-1,50
-2,00
1960
1970
1980
1990
Remittances (constant 1970 prices)
2000
2010
Birth Rates
Egypt increase in conjunction with rising oil prices in the Gulf, the cost
of fertility declines so that fertility can rise again.
Space correlations confirm that migration and birth rates in Egypt
have the opposite relations to those in Morocco and Turkey (Table 2). In
migrant-producing regions in Egypt, which are those where non-migrants
are the most exposed to values and practices prevailing in host societies of
their migrant relatives or friends, birth rates have been declining more
slowly than in the rest of the country, while in Morocco and Turkey they
have declined faster in migrant-producing regions. A critical intermediate
variable in this relationship is education, particularly that of girls, which
has been found to be the most important determinant of the demographic
transition in developing countries. In Egypt, female education has progressed more slowly in regions with high emigration rates than in those
with low emigration rates, while the opposite was found to be the case in
both Morocco and Turkey. It might then be hypothesized that emigration
to the Gulf had strengthened conservative views on girls’ education in
migrant-sending provinces in Egypt, while emigration to the West has
contributed to pro-education values in migrant regions in Morocco and
Turkey.
The relationship between emigration and the decline of fertility in
migrant sending regions was statistically confirmed by Beine, Docquier,
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International Migration and the Demographic Transition
Figure IV.
Age Patterns of Male International Migration Selected Countries and
Periods
20%
18%
Percentage of immigrant stocks
16%
14%
12%
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
0%
0
5
10
15
Argentina 1948-52
CORRELATION COEFFICIENTS
20
25
30
US 2000Age
35
40
45
50
55
60
65
at arrival
the country Canada 2001
US in
2005
TABLE 2
EMIGRATION, EDUCATION AND FERTILITY
AND TURKEY AROUND 2000
BETWEEN
IN
70
75
80
Spain 2001
EGYPT, MOROCCO
Country
Egypt
Morocco
Turkey
Emigration · Fertility
Education · Fertility
Emigration · Education
+0.66
)0.85
)0.50
)0.29
)0.45
+0.26 ⁄ +0.40
)0.42
)0.84
+0.32
Source: Fargues, 2006.
and Schiff (2008), using a large set of macro data comprehensively covering immigration to OECD countries. They also reached the conclusion
that migrants serve as channels for the transmission of the norms and
behaviors that determine low fertility to non-migrants in origin countries,
including female education. These channels may consist of migrants’
direct communication with people left behind, but also of mass communication as soon as the media show an increased interest in countries hosting their migrants.
The above findings suggest that international migration is not neutral with regard to global demographics. On the contrary, as a majority of
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recent and current migrants are exposed through migration to the values
and practices that produce low birth rates, which they adopt and convey
to non-migrants in their communities of origin, international migration
might be considered one among the many indirect factors helping along
the demographic transition. More precisely it might be taken as one of
the ‘‘remote-remote’’ determinants in the transition of fertility, that is,
those acting on remote determinants, in this case the ideational context of
family building. This is not an insignificant benefit at a time when the
ghost of overpopulation is still vivid.
THE IMPACT OF THE DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION ON
INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION
Birth rates have decreased over the last decades throughout the developing
world and in a number of regions their decline has been steady. A sharp
drop in birth rates produces (often temporarily) a reduction in the size of
annual birth cohorts. With the passing of time, smaller cohorts will grow
older and 20–25 years later, the number of young adults aged 20–25 will
decrease. It is then expected that the pressure this age group exerts on a
number of resources (employment, housing, symbolic recognition, etc.)
will relax as smaller cohorts arrive. While in Europe and Northern America annual numbers of births had peaked before 1965, in most of the
developing world historical peaks in annual birth cohorts were recorded
between 1980 and 1995, except in sub-Saharan Africa and part of
Western Asia where they continue to increase (Table 3).
Unprecedented Availability for Migration
As a result of these demographic changes, between, depending on the
region, 2000 and 2020, cohorts of young adults have continued and will
continue to increase and to represent a growing share of the total population, forming what has been labeled a ‘‘youth bulge’’. It is a period during
which young people aged 20–25 years face demographic competition –
for employment and income as well as for several other scarce resources,
material or symbolic, a competition that is more acute than ever before.
On labor markets, the competition is often exacerbated by two corollaries
of rapidly declining birth rates: the rising participation of young women
in economic activities and the rising level of education among young
adults of both sexes. While education raises expectations with regard to
International Migration and the Demographic Transition
PERIOD
Region
Africa
Asia
Europe
America
OF
BIRTH
<1965
TABLE 3
LARGEST COHORTS
OF THE
1980–1985
BY
601
REGION
1985–1990
1990–1995
>2010
Eastern
Middle
Northern
Southern
Western
Eastern Asia
South-Central
South-Eastern
Western
Eastern
Northern
Southern
Western
Caribbean
Central
South
Northern
Oceania
Source: UN, 2008a.
occupation and rewards, demographic competition limits the opportunities young adults are actually offered. High expectations, when deceived,
may transform into frustration and produce two possible outcomes: ‘‘exit
or voice’’, that is, migration or protest. Social or political protest is not
the topic of this paper and it is sufficient to remark that its association
with migration, often as an alternative response, is recognized by a growing literature on bad governance as a determinant of migration, as well as
of political or social unrest.
To envision migration in relation to the youth bulge, it must be
noted that demographic change has not only intensified the competition
among young adults, it has also produced a radical change in their individual situation. Young adults in the youth bulge bear an exceptionally
light demographic burden. By comparison with past as well as future generations, they have a low burden in terms of dependent children and
dependent elders: due to their own (expected) fertility they will typically
build a two-children family and, due to their parents’ high fertility they
have many brothers and sisters to share the burden of the elderly. This
has been described as an unprecedented ‘‘demographic gift’’: by producing
a differentiated population growth, higher at working ages than at dependent ages, declining fertility rates would yield a ‘‘demographic dividend’’
(Bloom and Williamson, 1998; Bloom, Canning, and Sevilla, 2003).
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International Migration Review
The demographic dividend would have two possible – and opposite –
impacts on migration according to the economic and policy environment.
In a situation of full employment and sound pro-employment policies, it
can open a window of opportunity for endogenous economic development by creating a situation favorable to savings and a shift from demographic investments (those needed to meet the demand effect of
population growth) to economic investments (those allowing growth and
development). In such a case, demographic change would soon contribute
to reducing the root causes of emigration. However, if young people
arrive on labor markets that are characterized by high unemployment and
low wages in a context of bad governance, the youth bulge will bring no
demographic dividend and will produce the opposite effect to migration.
Indeed, another aspect of low birth rates is that the family constraints of
earlier times are lifted so that young adults enjoy an unprecedented personal freedom of movement. They have an increased availability for
migration.13
While the propensity to migrate and, therefore, the number of
migrants can either increase or decrease in response to peaking numbers
of young adults depending upon governance and other external factors
that are not linked with demography or migration, it is noteworthy that
the profile of migrants radically changes in direct relation to demography.
Two facts combine to invert the respective positions of migration and the
starting of a family in one’s typical life cycle: due to an unchanging age
for international migration but continuously delayed marriage and procreation, the past sequence marriage–procreation–migration is gradually
replaced by a new sequence, migration–marriage–procreation.14 In the following paragraphs for the sake of conciseness, only male migrants will be
considered, but the same conclusions would be reached taking into
13
Migration has become a dream for many young people in developing countries. A survey
of the late 1990s in several source countries of migrants to Europe found the following
proportions of persons aged 15–30 who declared that they intended to leave their country
of origin: 14 percent in Egypt, 27 percent in Turkey, and 20 percent in Morocco. More
recent surveys give higher proportions, as in Tunisia where in 2006, 76 percent of 15- to
29-year-olds (compared to 22% in 1996 and 45% in 2000) declared that they considered
emigration an option.
14
Demographers have used biographies and even histories to understand how decisions on
marriage, the procreation of children, and geographic mobility (internal and most often
short-distance mobility, not international migration) interplay in individual lives (Courgeau
and Lelièvre, 1991).
International Migration and the Demographic Transition
603
account female migrants. After all, female migration remains more often
than male migration a dependent move, that is, one which is conditioned
to, and thus occurs after, marriage.
From Migrants with a Family to Single Migrants
Age patterns of international migration exhibit striking regularities over
time and space (Figure IV), a fact that has long encouraged demographers
to search for a mathematical expression for migration rates by age (Rogers, Raquillet, and Castro, 1978; Rogers, Castro, and Lea, 2005). In different periods and national contexts, the same bimodal age distribution of
international migrants at the time of first migration is observed. International migration peaks twice: below 5 years and around 25 years. The first
and lowest peak corresponds to dependent children and the second and
highest peak to autonomous migrants (students, labor migrants, etc.). For
the purpose of our argument, it is sufficient to notice that, whatever the
period and independently of the demographic context, autonomous
migration occurs predominantly around 25 years. In what follows the
average situation of persons aged 25 will be taken as the situation of typical migrants at the time of their migration.15 Below we look at the question of how migrants’ marital status and the number of children born at
25 years have changed in recent times.
Marriage is the most common, though non-universal, start of a family. Using statistics of marital status by age and sex collected in national
population censuses at several dates and regrouped in a single dataset by
the United Nations Population Division (UN, 2008b), Figure V provides
the proportion of never-married men at 25 years, which is the mean age
of migration, computed by the author using for each region as much
national data as are available. This proportion has been rising everywhere
except in sub-Saharan Africa. It is in the Arab states16 that the pace of
change has been the most dramatic, with men still unmarried at 25 years
climbing from a low 20 percent in the 1960s to a high 70 percent four
15
However, migration, being a selective process, the migrants’ average profile is not fully
represented by the average profile in the population.
16
Arab states considered here are those fulfilling two conditions: being countries of origin
of sizeable flows of migration, and providing time series on marital status by age and sex,
namely Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia.
604
Figure V.
International Migration Review
Proportion of Never-married Men at the Mean Age at Migration, by Region
and Year (%)
80,0
Arab
states
70,0
60,0
SubSaharan
Africa
50,0
40,0
Latin
America
and the
Carribean
30,0
South
Asia
20,0
10,0
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
Source: <http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/WMD2008/Main.html>
decades later, in the 2000s. Less spectacular but still significant delays to
first marriages are recorded in Latin America and South Asia.
Regarding levels and age patterns of male fertility, appraising
changes in national and therefore regional populations is not straightforward as most countries compute and only publish data on female fertility.
However, by assuming a difference of age between women and men at
the birth of their children, one can deduce age patterns of male fertility
from female age specific fertility rates which are provided by the United
Nations Population Division (UN, 2008a). Figure VI shows estimated
cumulated fertility rates for men, assuming a uniform difference of
2.5 years between husbands and wives. Instead of providing regional data
at successive dates, for the sake of legibility only four series are graphed:
the least developed countries in 1970–1975 (‘‘pre-transition’’); less developed regions excluding the least developed countries in 1970–1975
(‘‘transition 1’’); less developed regions excluding the least developed
countries in 2000–2005 (‘‘transition 2’’); and more developed regions
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International Migration and the Demographic Transition
Figure VI.
Mean Number of Children Ever-born to Migrant Men According to the
Stage of Demographic Transition
7,0
5,0
4,0
Migration
Number of children
6,0
Before
migration
3,0
After
migration
2,0
1,0
0,0
15
20
25
Pre-transition
30
35
Transition 1
40
45
Transition 2
50
Post-transition
Source: Author’s Calculation Using UN Age Specific Fertility Patterns.
NUMBER
OF
TABLE 4
CHILDREN EVER-BORN TO MALE MIGRANTS ACCORDING
THE STAGE OF DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION
Stage of demographic transition
Children already born at the time of migration
Children still to be born after migration
Total
Pre-transition
2.5
4.0
6.5
TO
Transition Transition
1
2
Post-transition
1.9
3.4
5.3
1.2
1.4
2.6
0.6
1.0
1.6
Source: Author’s calculation using UN age-specific fertility patterns <http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/
worldfertility2007/WorldFertilityPatterns%202007_UpdatedData.xls>
2000–2005 (‘‘post-transition’’). Figure VI and Table 4 suggest that a
radical change is taking place in the family situation of individuals at the
age of migration. As procreation is delayed and fewer children are born, a
dramatic decrease in the number of dependent children already born at the
moment of migration (from 2.5 to 0.6) as well as in the number of those
to be born once migration has occurred (from 4.0 to 1.0) is underway.
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International Migration Review
The shift in migrants’ profile has potential demographic implications
at the receiving end of migratory flows. When migrants leave a spouse
and one or several children in the home country, a second step in migration is often family reunification. And indeed, family reunification became
a dominant pattern in Western and Northern Europe between the mid
1970s and the early 2000s. Following the crisis triggered by soaring oil
prices in 1973 and the subsequent rise in unemployment, countries that
had been open to labor immigration started to drastically tighten the conditions set for the entry and stay of migrant workers. At the same time,
wishing to be respectful of fundamental rights, they kept their borders
open to close relatives of migrants who had settled so that, schematically,
the former two-way mobility of male workers typical of the 1950s–1960s
was substituted with a new pattern of one-way immigration in dependent
spouses and children. History will not necessarily repeat itself, however.
Indeed, family reunification will lose momentum with the rise of a new
generation of migrants who have not yet started to build a family at the
time they migrate. Single migrants will either return to their home country or stay in the host country and then build a family in that country.
Part of them will bring their future spouse from their country origin and
perpetuate the process of family reunification, but the rest will marry
someone in the receiving country and directly contribute to its demography through intermarriage.17
From Remittances to Human Capital
In addition to the above demographic consequences for the receiving
country, changes in the family situation of migrants at the time they leave
their home country show a fundamental shift in the motivation and consequences of migration that may have an impact on the sending country’s
development. This shift can be schematically described by comparing two
typical migrants: the migrant of the recent past and the migrant of the
near future. Until recently, migrants were leaving a family behind and
their motivation was to bring welfare to that family: sending money for
feeding, housing, caring, and educating a spouse and children staying in
the home country was the driving force behind their move. A migrant’s
goal was altruistic and remittances were the true cause of migration. The
17
It is probable that the better migrants integrate into the host society the likelier they are
to marry one of its members and so contribute to its demography.
International Migration and the Demographic Transition
607
migrant of the near future will typically have no children and spouse
when they depart from home. Their goal will be individualistic. As a
result, they will have a lower propensity to remit their savings. Out of the
three distinct purposes of remittances – maintaining a family left behind,
repaying a debt made for covering the expenses of migration, and preparing one’s own return – the first and traditionally the most important one
will have disappeared. In other words, if migrants remit it will be for the
purpose of investment rather than consumption, to prepare their own
return (if they intend to return) rather than to provide for a family’s
livelihood.
Whether they intend to return home or stay abroad, migrants are
likely to have a higher propensity to diversify their investment, in knowledge and the upgrading of skills, to accumulate human capital in addition
to financial capital. Unfortunately, there is no international database containing statistics of international migrants by country of origin, country of
destination, generation and level of education, and, for the purpose of
assessing changes in migrants’ human capital, we must content ourselves
with partial data from selected countries. Figure VII-A,B,C depict
migrants’ average level of education in four countries of destination –
Canada, Italy, Spain, and the U.S. – by country of origin and birth
cohort. Data are from the most recent population censuses at the time of
writing, that is, those carried out in 2000–2001. Given that the average
level of education in any birth cohort increases until the age of 25, these
censuses provide educational levels by generation up to cohorts born
around 1976, which is obviously too far in the past to bring out new
patterns.
Two contrasted patterns emerge from Figure VII-A,B,C. In North
America (Figure VII-A, U.S.) the level of education steadily increases
from old to new generations of migrants, though it is not known whether
education was gained before or after migration; this is the case whatever
the country of origin, with no apparent relationship between the average
level of education in the population of a given country of origin and that
of its migrants to the U.S.; young migrants have more education than
U.S. natives of the same generation. In Southern Europe by contrast (Figure VII-B, Spain), migrants’ level of education has not increased across
the generations and new migrants, whatever their origin, have a lower
education than natives. Educational profiles of migrants vary greatly
according to the country of destination. In each destination they also vary
according to countries of origin, but independently from the initial condi-
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International Migration Review
Figure VII.
(a) Migrants’ Level of Education by Generation and Country of Birth –
U.S. 2001. (b) Migrants’ Level of Education by Generation and Country
of Birth – Spain 2001. (c) Migrants’ Level of Education by Generation
and Country of Residence – 2001
Average number of years of schooling
a
17,0
India
15,0
Egypt
Algeria
China
13,0
Philippines
Pakistan
11,0
Lebanon
Morocco
Bangladesh
9,0
Senegal
Non-M igrants
7,0
5,0
1930
Mexico
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
Year of birth
Average number of years of schooling
b
15,0
Mexico
13,0
Non-Migrants
Lebanon
11,0
India
Philippines
9,0
Egypt
China
7,0
Bangladesh
Algeria
5,0
Pakistan
Morocco
3,0
Senegal
1,0
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
Year of birth
Average number of years of schooling
c
17,0
15,0
13,0
US*
Canada
11,0
Italy
Spain*
9,0
7,0
5,0
1930
1940
1950
1960
Year of birth
1970
1980
International Migration and the Demographic Transition
609
tions in these countries: in the U.S., migrants from Egypt have a higher
level of education than those from Lebanon, while in their countries of
origin the opposite is the case. Senegalese migrants in the U.S. have an
average level of education that is higher than migrants of all origins in
Spain, yet Senegal has one of the lowest average levels of education. Algerians are among the most educated migrants in the U.S. but the least educated in Spain, etc. Demand, not supply, seems the true determinant of
migrants’ skills.18 Both high-skilled and low-skilled workers are recruited
through migration because economies need both. But the highly-skilled,
not the low-skilled, are favored by current immigration policies19 and one
can assume that this trend will become still more pronounced in the
future.
A likely scenario is that the preferences of the receiving countries
will result in more highly-skilled workers. However, migration is, at the
same time, a selecting and a qualifying process with regard to education:
those who migrate are, on average, more educated than those who stay
and, what is more, a number of them continue to receive education in
the destination country, that is, to build their human capital.20 Growing
migration of the highly-skilled means, therefore, more human capital
accumulated through migration in the diaspora. This has policy implications for the sending countries. In recent years, remittances have been
regarded by development agencies in sending countries as well at the
international level, as a major source of external income to fuel development in communities, regions, and countries of origin of migrants. Diasporas have been courted by governments in origin countries who see them
as a pool of potential investors.21 Accordingly, the governments of the
major sending countries of migrants have set up institutions to maintain
and develop links with their diaspora and, at the same time, have engaged
in banking reforms with a view to stimulating remittances. No compara18
The fact that Mexican migrants are an exception in both cases (lower education than
natives in the U.S., higher in Spain) perhaps takes away from this assertion as proximity
(U.S.) is likely to facilitate low-skilled migration and distance (Spain) to be an obstacle.
19
In a recent survey of migration policies, Klugman and Pereira (2009) found a clear bias
favoring high-skilled migrants in developed as well as developing countries.
20
The literature on the ‘‘brain drain’’ has focused particularly on the first aspect, selectivity, rather than the second, human-capital building (Rosenzweig, 2005).
21
The creation of a World Diaspora Fund as an international cooperative of migrants
involved in the development of their countries of origin, announced in April 2010 by the
International Organization for Migration, exemplifies this trend.
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International Migration Review
ble attention was ever paid to attracting non-tangible spin-offs from diasporas.22 Governments of origin countries do very little to interact with
their elite abroad and with few exceptions, distrust is instead the rule.
While efforts supported by the World Bank were made to create a climate
favorable to flows of investment, an even bigger challenge will be to create
a climate favorable to an equivalent flow of ideas.
CONCLUSION
In recent literature on demography and international migration, attention
has focused on two particular issues: first, to what extent do rapid population growth in the developing world combined with stagnating or shrinking growth in the developed world act as push and pull factors in
international migration and, second, to what extent does below replacement fertility combined with high immigration from the developing
world modify population dynamics in the developed world. In both cases,
demography and international migration are considered as being strongly
related, but still independent phenomena. Instead, this paper has
attempted to treat demography and international migration as intermingled phenomena, and to explore to what extent changes in one of them
may affect the other.
Correlations found in the first section of this paper between the pace
of demographic transition and the direction of international migration
suggest that international migrants bound for the West convey to nonmigrants in origin countries values and practices that contribute to the
transition from high to low birth rates. These values and practices are
related to fundamental questions such as the value given to education, the
status of children and the position of women in the family and in society.
In other words, the international circulation of people facilitates the international circulation of ideas, including those that are highly valued in host
countries. There is much debate in receiving countries about natives’
identity being challenged by the culture brought by migrants, but there is
little awareness that the circulation of ideas also works the other way
22
The TOKTEN (Transfer of Knowledge Through Expatriate Nationals) designed by the
United Nations Development Program in the late 1970s in response to the ‘‘brain drain’’
phenomenon and with the aim of making use of the expertise and knowledge of nationals
residing abroad through short-term services volunteered in their countries of origin, is the
only notable program paying attention to human capital building through migration.
International Migration and the Demographic Transition
611
around. Among the arguments currently put forward by most governments to contain immigration, there is the argument for preserving the
citizens’ culture. However, if immigration were also understood as a channel for values and practices of the host society to reach other societies,
members of polities and public-opinion leaders in the developed world
might ponder the cultural benefits of immigration in a situation of absolute or relative demographic decline.
Ongoing demographic changes in the developing world, as shown in
the second section, are likely to profoundly affect international migration.
While the rapid shift from high to low birth rates is producing a temporary youth bulge whereby the proportion of young working-age people in
the total population is peaking, therefore creating unprecedented demographic competition among youth, young people enjoy an exceptionally
light demographic burden, insofar as they have few children to take care
of and, at the same time, several siblings to divide the burden of caring
for their own parents. A new contract of the generations is emerging
whereby family constraints that were heavy on young people in earlier
times are lifted, providing the young with an unprecedented individual
freedom of movement. The profile and motivation of migrants are
expected to radically change. By contrast with the migrants of yesterday,
leaving a family behind in the first step of migration, migrants of tomorrow will typically leave no wives or children in their home country for
the simple reason that they will still be unmarried at the time of migration. This will have two consequences. First, migration motivated by family reunification will become less frequent. After all, family reunification
brings people initially selected by migrants themselves through marriage,
not by the host countries according to labor market needs, and so its
reduction should translate into a better adjustment of migration to actual
work opportunities at the receiving end. Second, remitting savings for the
well-being of those left in the home country will become less important
and money earned through migration will have more diverse uses while
enhancing one’s experience, skills and knowledge will increasingly become
the overriding purpose of migration.
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