The Ambivalent U.S. Context of Reception and the Dichotomous Legal Consciousness of Unaccompanied Minors

This article examines the effects of contradictory U.S. immigration laws on unaccompanied minors from Central America. As children, they are considered deserving of protection, but as undocumented immigrants, they are subjected to state legal violence. Apprehended at the border, they must interact with multiple immigration agencies and finally apply for humanitarian deportation relief. Interactions in these institutional spaces teach youths about U.S. laws and behavioral norms expected of young claimants deemed deserving of humanitarian protection, which are construed in contrast to discourses that stigmatize their co-ethnics as “bad” immigrants. These interactions shape youths’ sense of belonging and commonsense understanding of the law or legal consciousness. I argue that the “legal consciousness” of unaccompanied minors is dichotomous and characterized by: (1) a combination of trust and fear in the state; (2) concurrent feelings of deservingness/rights and stigma/subordination; (3) information and misinformation about U.S. laws. This dichotomous consciousness shapes how youths claim belonging and rights in social interactions and in their applications for legal status. To signal their own belonging and deservingness, youths leverage information about their rights and normative notions about desirable teen and migrant behavior. Yet, in the process, they also inadvertently perpetuate stigmas about co-ethnics.

Modern interregional migration: evidence from Japan and Poland

This paper provides data-based analyses of recent interregional migration considering the examples of Japan and Poland. The analyses are conducted against the background of the general demographic and economic situations of both countries, in particular, regional disparities and economic growth. They aim at describing migrants’ behavior in Japan and Poland through a model consistent with the New Economic Geography (NEG) theory. Inspired by the model originally proposed by, the study constructs a migration model coherent with the NEG framework and tests the behavioral hypothesis. Interestingly, in both Japan and Poland, migrant behavior is responsive to stimuli stemming from the two following mechanisms: the relationship between the level of income inequalities and net migration toward capital regions; and similarly, the relationship between income inequalities movement and gross domestic product growth rate.

The Economics of Temporary Migrations

Many migrations are temporary—a fact that has often been ignored in the economic literature on migration. Such omission may be serious in that expected migration temporariness can impart a distinct dynamic element to immigrants' economic behavior, generating possible consequences for nonmigrants in both home and host countries. In this paper, we provide a thorough examination of the various aspects of temporary migrations that matter for the analysis of economic phenomena. We demonstrate the extent of temporary migrations in population movements. We show how temporariness can affect the various economic choices and how better data have improved both the measurement of nonpermanent migrations and the analyses of various aspects of migrant behavior. We propose a general theoretical framework for modeling temporary migration decisions, based on which we outline the various motives for temporariness while simultaneously reviewing related literature and available data sources. We discuss the possible consequences of migration temporariness for nonmigrants in both home and host countries. (JEL F22, F24, J11, J61, K37, O15)

Migrant Behavior and Elite Attitudes: Brazil's Great Drought, 1877-1879

If banditry and mysticism represents one classic formula summarizing the historical reality of the Brazilian Northeast, its companion image is one of devastating droughts and concomitant migrations out from the parched backlands to regional capitals like Recife and Salvador and on to the great national metropolises of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Reports of drought in the Northeast appear from the times of early settlement; succeeding centuries witnessed repeated dry periods. While some of these proved relatively moderate in intensity, others, sparing only the lush coastal strip, assailed the entire region and reigned for several seasons. Of this latter type, none provoked greater suffering than the so-called Grande Séca which embraced the winters from 1877-1879, devastating the cotton and cattle complexes, the mainstays of the backlands' economy, and setting in motion an enormous migratory stream which ranged from the Amazon rubber lands to those of the booming coffee culture in the Southeast. Moreover, with the outbreak of epidemic diseases, it generated a mortality estimated as exceeding two hundred thousand persons. By this measure, then, the Grande Séca stands as “the most costly natural disaster in the history of the Western Hemisphere.”