Abstract
This chapter addresses the determinants of migrant location choice within the migrant’s adopted country. We focus on two sets of location determinants: economic determinants and ethnic (country of origin) determinants. Ethnic determinants are found to be important across a wide range of studies. By contrast, prior literature indicates that impacts of economic factors differ according to the characteristics both of locations and of migrants. The first part of the chapter summarises key findings of prior studies into migrant location choice, focusing on economic and ethnic determinants. Much of the literature in this field relates to migrants to the United States of America. The second part of the chapter extends knowledge of migrant location choice by considering another country that hosts a high proportion of international migrants, New Zealand. We draw on unit record New Zealand census data from 2013 for this analysis. The importance of ethnic (country of origin) networks is confirmed in this analysis but so too is the importance of economic factors. The latter finding is in contrast to much of the US based literature. It plausibly reflects the greater emphasis that New Zealand places on skills-based migration relative to the United States. At a technical level, this study uses the average regional wage of the industry in which the migrant is employed, together with region fixed effects, which may contribute to more precise estimates of wage effects than does the more standard use of average regional wages.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This part highlights key findings rather than covering all relevant papers in the field.
- 2.
- 3.
Note that LQ ij can be expressed equivalently as: \( \frac{Pop_{ij}/{Pop}_j}{Pop_i/ Pop} \).
- 4.
The 2006 data are sourced from the Statistics New Zealand Infoshare database. LEED industry wages were aggregated for the small contiguous Marlborough, Nelson, Tasman and West Coast regions; Latin American and Other birth regions have been grouped since Latin America was not separately available.
- 5.
An odds ratio greater than (less than) unity denotes a positive (negative) impact of that variable on location choice; statistical significance (relative to unity) at p < 0.05 is indicated through a coefficient shown in bold.
- 6.
These fixed effects are estimated but are not reported explicitly in Table 9.4.
- 7.
One other explanation for this result is a simple arithmetic one in that a migrant will inflate the proportion of own-group migrants in their own area. This explanation may be particularly relevant for the estimates using 2013 explanatory variable data. The finding that the size of the interaction term is almost equivalent across columns (3) and (6) suggests that this is not the (sole) reason for the significant positive result.
- 8.
One region (Northland) is omitted as the base region. We do not present all 225 coefficients (15 regions Ă— 15 terms per region), instead summarising the key results in the text.
References
Alba RD, Logan JR (1993) Minority proximity to whites in suburbs: an individual-level analysis of segregation. Am J Sociol 98(6):1388–1427
Allen J, Turner E (1996) Spatial patterns of immigrant assimilation. Prof Geogr 48(2):140–155
Bartel AP (1989) Where do the new U.S. immigrants live? J Labor Econ 7(4):371–391
Battisti M, Peri G, Romiti A (2016) Dynamic effects of co-ethnic networks on immigrants’ economic success. NBER working paper 22389, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge
Bauer TK, Epstein GS, Gang IN (2002) Herd effects or migration networks? The location choice of Mexican immigrants in the US. Discussion paper. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=327560
Bauer T, Epstein GS, Gang IN (2005) Enclaves, language, and the location choice of migrants. J Popul Econ 18(4):649–662
Bauer T, Epstein G, Gang IN (2007) The influence of stocks and flows on migrants’ location choices. Res Labor Econ 26(6):199–229
Bauer T, Epstein GS, Gang IN (2009) Measuring ethnic linkages among migrants. Int J Manpow 30(1/2):56–69
Borjas GJ (2001) Does immigration grease the wheels of the labor market. Brook Pap Econ Act 1:1–51
Börnisch-Brednich B (2002) Keeping a low profile: an oral history of german immigration to New Zealand. Victoria University Press, Wellington
Carrington WJ, Detragiache E, Vishwanath T (1996) Migration with endogenous moving costs. Am Econ Rev 86(4):909–930
Chang-Richards A, Wilkinson S, Seville E, Brunsdon D (2012) Resourcing the canterbury rebuild: changes and emerging themes. Research paper. http://www.resorgs.org.nz/images/stories/pdfs/Reconstructionfollowingdisaster/case_study_report_resourcing.pdf
Chiswick B, Miller P (2004) Where immigrants settle in the United States. IZA discussion paper No. 1231. Bonn
Church J, King I (1983) Bilingualism and network externalities. Can J Econ 26(2):337–345
Collins F, Friesen W (2011) Making the most of diversity? The intercultural city project and a rescaled version of diversity in Auckland, New Zealand. Urban Stud 48(14):3067–3085
Donovan S (2011) Space matters: agglomeration economies and spatial competition in New Zealand. Unpublished Master’s Thesis, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam
Duranton G, Puga D (2004) Micro-foundations of urban agglomeration economies. In: Henderson VJ, Thisse JF (eds) Handbook of regional and urban economics, vol 4. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 2063–2117
Epstein GS (2008) Herd and network effects in migration decision-making. J Ethn Migr Stud 34(4):567–583
Friesen W (2012) International and internal migration dynamics in a pacific gateway city: Asian migrants into and out of Auckland. N Z Popul Rev 38:1–22
Gang IN, Zimmermann KF (2000) Is child like parent? Educational attainment and ethnic origin. J Hum Resour 35(3):550–569
Harris JR, Todaro MP (1970) Migration, unemployment and development: a two-sector analysis. Am Econ Rev 60(1):126–142
Jaeger DA (2000) Local labor markets, admission categories, and immigrant location choice. College of William and Mary. http://www.iza.org/conference_files/amm_2004/jaeger_d138.pdf
Jaeger DA (2006) Green cards and the location choices of immigrants in the United States, 1971–2000. Discussion paper. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=905545
Lancee B (2012) Immigrant performance in the labour market: bonding and bridging social capital. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam
Lichter DT, Johnson KM (2006) Emerging rural settlement patterns and the geographic redistribution of America’s new immigrants. Rural Sociol 71(1):109–131
Maré DC, Morten M, Stillman S (2007) Settlement patterns and the geographic mobility of recent migrants to New Zealand. N Z Econ Pap 41:163–195
Maré DC, Pinkerton RM, Poot J, Coleman A (2012) Residential sorting across Auckland neighbourhoods. N Z Popul Rev 38:23–54
Maré DC, Pinkerton RM, Poot J (2016) Residential assimilation of immigrants: a cohort approach. Migr Stud 4(3):373–401
McFadden D (1973) Conditional logit analysis of qualitative choice behavior. In: Zarembka P (ed) Frontiers in economics. Academic, New York
Munshi K (2003) Networks in the modern economy: Mexican migrants in the U.S. labor market. Q J Econ 118(2):549–599
New Zealand Government (n.d.) Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) policy. http://employment.govt.nz/initiatives/strategy/rse/index.asp. Accessed 2 Nov 2015
Statistics New Zealand (2014) 2013 census CURF: user guide. Statistics New Zealand, Wellington
White P (1998) The settlement patterns of developed world migrants in London. Urban Stud 35(10):1725–1744
Zhou M, Kim SS (2006) Community forces, social capital, and educational achievement: the case of supplementary education in the Chinese and Korean immigrant communities. Harv Educ Rev 76(1):1–29
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this chapter was submitted as a dissertation for the degree of BCom(Hons) at University of Auckland by the first author. We thank an anonymous referee for comments on an earlier version of this chapter. Access to the data used in this study was provided by Statistics New Zealand under conditions designed to keep individual information secure in accordance with requirements of the Statistics Act 1975. The opinions presented are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent an official view of Statistics New Zealand, or of the authors’ institutions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Smart, C., Grimes, A., Townsend, W. (2018). Ethnic and Economic Determinants of Migrant Location Choice. In: Biagi, B., Faggian, A., Rajbhandari, I., Venhorst, V. (eds) New Frontiers in Interregional Migration Research. Advances in Spatial Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75886-2_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75886-2_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-75885-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-75886-2
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)