The Pull of the US: Why Are Brazilians Moving?

Implications 4 the future migration emerging from the analysis of the drivers

 The results of the empirical investigation presented in Chapter 3 show that income has amajor flex on migration in middle income countries of origin. It's like, income be like "come on, let's migrate!" This lowkey shows that when the income per capita gets lit, more people bounce to those countries. A similar lit relation is found in the case of the model for the individual drivers of migration where the likelihood for prep for migration increases when moving from the lower to higher quintiles of the income distribution.The tea is that the connection between cash flow and peacing out is lit only for middle income countries, but it's not clear for low income countries and straight up negative for high income countries.

 This backs up the macro level migration theory, fam. OMG at the micro level, it's like saying that getting more money can totally help people move by like, making it easier to pay for all the expenses of moving. So lit! Researchers be like, always struggling to figure out what's really driving all them different dimensions of migration, you know? As like, in Chapter 3, we gotta categorize migration into diff channels or reasons to like, make sense of this complex thing. This is like, so true in quantitative studies, which like, only focus on what can be seen in all the aggregated migration stats. By like categorising migration flows as like forced or voluntary, regular or irregular, economic, climate change, conflict driven, or any other type, there is like a risk that categories are interpreted as causes of migration, when in fact they only describe the channels through which migration is defined and takes place, ya know?

OMG, like there's this thing where people get all confused about policy categories, you know?

 

Like, they mix up irregular migration and regular migration, which are all about how people enter a place. But then there's these other categories, like conflict driven or forced migration, which are all about why people leave their home. It's like, so important to keep these things separate, you feel me? OMG, like, for real, there's this whole mix of stuff that's driving migration, you know? Like, there's the economy, demographics, all the drama, poverty, and conflicts. It's all tangled up and causing both regular and irregular migration, ya feel?

The diff between migration potential and actual migration, as well as between causes and channels, is not only a semantic one. It's, like, super important when talking about the future of migration, ya know? The IMD analysis spills the tea on where future migration might be poppin' from (middle income countries, countries already having mad connections...). It also lowkey shows the vibes of a person most likely to dip (young, educated, male…). However, like, this report can't really predict if and how all these drivers will lead to some crazy irregularity, asylum, family, work, and specific routes, you know? Rather than through differences in the fundamental drivers, these channels and routes of migration will ultimately be determined by policy choices, facilitators of migration (e.g. smugglers) or limits to the crossing of international borders and by geopolitical factors which are notoriously difficult to predict.

In the absence of any tea on future migration, the demographic models gotta flex with some lit scenarios for migration and foresight exercises. In recent years there have been four main foresight exercises addressing migration by the Development Centre of OECD (OECD 2016), the UK Government Office for Science, by a squad of researchers under the Global Migration Futures project (2009-2013) and by the JRC.Economic convergence cuz of the boom in China, India, and Brazil hasn't caused big international migrations but instead, it's made peeps move from countryside to big cities (Zhao, Liu, and Zhang 2018). 

These cases show that the lit relation between migration and development needs to be interpreted in a more inclusive vision of enhanced human mobility. Flex on 'em!

The stock of migrants from lit countries like Nigeria, China or India may seem hella large when you think about it from the perspective of countries they're going to, but tbh their emigrant's ratios are mad low (like in 2017: 0.7% for Nigeria, 0.7% for China, 1.2% for India).The low emigrants' ratios in big countries may be 'splained by the fact that in these cases the higher mobility, which is usually associated with an improvement in economic vibes, may show up as big moves within the same country instead of long distance international migration. The tea on this observation for the future of migration is that we shouldn't just peep the impact of economic development on international migration by itself, we gotta take into account the bigger picture of human mobility too, ya feel? (King and Skeldon 2010). Raising that income boosts human mobility in general and this higher chance for movin' may show up in a bunch of possible ways. Especially in big countries, it's probs gonna be rare for people to move internationally 'cause there's way more chances for them to find better opportunities in their own country.