International Migration and the Demographic … demography1 and demographic theory simply ignores...

International Migration and theDemographic Transition: A Two-WayInteractionPhilippe FarguesEuropean University Institute (EUI)

The paper explores the relationship between the demographic transi-tion and international migration, that is, between population dynam-ics and direct connectivity between peoples. The first part examineshow ideas conveyed by migrants to non-migrants of their communityof origin are susceptible to impact on practices that lead to the reduc-tion of birth rates in source countries of migration and concludes thatinternational migration may be one of the mechanisms through whichdemographic transition is disseminated. The second part shows thatdeclining birth rates in origin countries generate a new profile of themigrant and suggests that future migrants will typically leave nospouses or children in the home country and therefore their objectivewill no longer be to improve the family’s standing at home for themere reason that there is no longer such a family, but to increaseopportunities for themselves. Migration policies of origin countries onremittances as well as those of destination countries on family reunifi-cation will have to be reconsidered.

INTRODUCTION

Are there links between the demographic transition and internationalmigration, between one of the most massive changes to affect humanityin modern times and one of the most significant forms of connectionbetween peoples? While many empirical studies have highlighted the reci-procal implications of demographic growth and migration, theory is lar-gely 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

588 IMR Volume 45 Number 3 (Fall 2011):588–614

on demography1 and demographic theory simply ignores internationalmigration.

Demography is the science of population and, insofar as a popula-tion is defined with reference to a territory, migration is a component ofpopulation growth and therefore a topic for demography. If the territoryis a nation, then international migration is of interest to demography. Inthe demographic discipline, ‘‘natural’’ growth – that is the balancebetween births and deaths – and net migration – that is the balancebetween entries and exits – are dealt with as two separate components ofpopulation dynamics. While, indeed, migration appears in the strong webof quantitative tools and mathematical models that demographers havedeveloped2 it is absent from the demographic theory.

Unlike other social sciences, the demographic discipline has not pro-duced a diversity of theories. In a recent epistemological reflection, Burch(2003) stressed that the opening statement made more than half a centuryago by Vance in his Presidential address to the Population Association ofAmerica would still be topical nowadays: ‘‘Among the social sciencesdemography has developed some of the most advanced techniques. Empiri-

1Massey et al. (1993), in one of the most quoted references on migration theories, men-tion demography only once and indirectly as ‘‘the demography of labor supply’’ (long-rundeclines 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 andmigration theories, Keeley (2000) states that ‘‘demographers borrow theories from otherdisciplines to explain international migration’’ (p.50) and ‘‘the social science of demogra-

phy plays a broadly contributing role for the study of international migration. Its analytictools […] provide insights into the effects of migration on population size, structure anddynamics and provide modeling techniques […]’’ (p.57).2It must be noted, however, that the core model of formal demography known as the the-ory of ‘‘stable populations’’ or ‘‘biological populations’’, describes the reproduction of pop-ulations in the absence of migration: ‘‘by a very natural abstraction, demographic analysisenvisages as a point of departure the case of a closed population, that is to say, a popula-

tion whose numbers receive new accessions only through births and suffers losses onlythrough deaths, immigration and emigration being excluded’’ (Lotka, 1998[1939]:53). Infurther developments, the mathematics of population has continued to exclude migration

from its scope (UN, 1968). Keyfitz (1971a) later suggested that emigration can be dealtwith by analogy with death: ‘‘from the viewpoint of the number of individuals in the nextgeneration, 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 isexactly the same’’. [p. 575]. The same author introduces migration in the mathematics ofpopulation as ‘‘a means of population control’’ (Keyfitz, 1971b), that is, an external

regulator of natural population growth.

International Migration and the Demographic Transition 589

cally and technically, population has gone a long way […] but there is onearea where demography is getting rather poverty-stricken and frayed at theedges. In the realm of high theory we have been living off our capital andborrowing from our associates.’’ (Vance, 1952:9). If one follows Karl Pop-per and defines a theory as a set of hypotheses that explain universal phe-nomena and have not yet been falsified, then demography has only onetheory, known as the ‘‘demographic transition’’, which pays no attentionto migration. While the demographic transition theory postulates a func-tional link between birth and death rates, there is no equivalent, cohesivemodel that would posit a relationship between them and migration.

Population size and rate of growth are often used as independentvariables in descriptive or predictive models of migration. The gravitymodel of migration, inspired by Newton’s second law of gravitation, pos-tulates that migration flows between two regions are directly proportionalto the product of their populations and inversely proportional to thesquared distance between them, a model that fails to reflect the complex-ity of human behavior.3

Other models use instead population growth as an independent vari-able 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 inhistory a lagged response to high birth rates in the sending country. Theirapproach is economic and typically considers demographic growth as anexogenous factor of migration. Push ⁄ pull models of migration ask thequestion of whether ‘‘high demographic pressure in population A explainsmigration towards population B where pressure is lesser’’ and postulate,by analogy with fluid mechanics, that migration flows are proportionateto differentials (in income, in employment opportunities, in rewards toeducation, in freedom, etc.) between regions, usually with a distance-decayeffect.4 And indeed, migration from developing countries to developedones is found to be statistically linked with rapid population growth and

3A critical review of what the author names the ‘‘gravity disease’’ is given by Le Bras(1990).4The most famous model was developed by Harris and Todaro (1970) to describe migra-

tion from rural to urban areas.

590 International Migration Review

fast-growing labor forces in source countries, by contrast with stagnatingor shrinking ones in host countries (Martin, 2009).5

However, the relationship between the pace of population growthand the direction of migratory flows stops applying once one considerscurrent international migration within the developing world or within thedeveloped world, where counter examples are as numerous as examples.6

Here one has to admit that the correlation between demographic pressureand migration flows does not offer a sufficient basis for theorizing aboutdemographic change and migration.

This paper adopts a different perspective and explores whetherdemographic change and international migration can be intrinsicallylinked. It deals with migration from economically less developed countriesto more developed ones and with only one facet of the demographic tran-sition, which is the shift from high to low birth rates and its sociologicalcorrelate, the gradual substitution of a dominant pattern of large familieswith a pattern where small families dominate. The other facet, which isthe decline in mortality, the increase in longevity and the subsequentchanges in the generational composition of the family, will not be tackledhere, even though one may assume that this facet is also linked to interna-tional migration.

Part I, based on published works by Fargues (2006) and Beine,Docquier, and Schiff (2008), focuses on the impact of internationalmigration, on demographic transition in the developing world, and, moreprecisely, on birth control and the transition from high to low fertilityrates amongst migrants in host countries and non-migrants in sourcecountries. It argues that, because migrants remit ideas to their home coun-

5This fact has inspired contrasted analyses. For some authors it should encourage the inter-national community, confronted with demographic imbalances and complementarities, tosearch 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 alterthe 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).6That demographic differentials do not cause migration is seen in many cases where origincountries 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 Leb-anon (0.8%) to Saudi Arabia (+2.5%), etc. Density is not a better predictor of the direc-tion 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.


tries and because most recent migration has been from high to low birth-rate countries, international migration has contributed to spreading valuesand practices that produce low birth rates in origin countries. Interna-tional migration has, therefore, led to a smaller world population than theone 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 ofdemographic change on international migration. It shows that decliningbirth rates in origin countries are generating a new migrant profile. Whileinternational migrants of earlier times started to build a family beforemigrating, new migrants typically leave no spouses or children in thehome country, as a result of relatively unchanged age patterns of migra-tion while marriage takes place later in the life cycle and fewer childrenare procreated (Figure I, lower part).

The paper finally suggests that this fundamental change may pro-duce a critical shift in the economy of migration. Until recently migrantsfrom the developing world were motivated by an altruistic drive to feedand educate their families at home. Remittances were the main, if not theonly, reason for emigration. Today, young migrants are more likely to beinterested in self-accomplishment. Unlike their predecessors, the primaryobjective of typical migrants is no longer to improve the family’s standingat home – often there is no such family – but to increase opportunitiesfor themselves. Remittances shift from an altruistic to an individualistic

Ideational remittances

Changing life cycle

International migration Fertility transition

Part I

Part II

Figure I. A Framework of Interaction Between International Migration and

Demographic Transition


use and migrants have an increasing propensity to accumulate not onlyfinancial capital, but also individual human capital through education andexperience.

THE IMPACT OF INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION ON THEDEMOGRAPHIC 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 20thcenturies and is still unfolding today, is one of the most far-reachingchanges that humanity has experienced and an experience which no coun-try can escape (Chesnais, 1992). Schematically, a century ago the averagelife expectancy at birth in the world was less than 30 years of age, whilethe average woman would have given birth to between 6 and 9 children,with variations according to place and social condition. It had been sofrom time immemorial.

But then, at a date that varies from one region to another, mortalitystarted to durably decline. In 2010, the world’s average life expectancy atbirth has climbed to 70.5 years – respectively 81, 68, and 58 years indeveloped, developing, and the least developed regions (UN, 2008a) andcontinues to rise steadily. At a later date, fertility started, in turn, todecrease. In 2010, women gave birth to, on average, 2.6 children overtheir lifetime (respectively 1.6, 2.7, and 4.2 in developed, developing, andthe least developed regions) and it is expected that the world populationas well as national populations will soon have fertility levels convergingtowards the replacement level (2.1 children per woman). If one had tosingle out one major factor to explain the demographic transition, thenthis factor would be the combination of increased knowledge, which madehuman development possible and increased connectivity between peoples,which allowed knowledge sharing and the dissemination of progress.8

7This is how the demographic transition was first named by one its ‘‘inventors’’ (AdolpheLandry, La revolution demographique, etudes et essais sur les problemes de la population,

Librairie du recueil Sirey, Paris, 1934).8Sustainable decreases in mortality rates were triggered first in European populations bythe 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 instru-mental in further progress. Birth rates in their turn receded in conjunction with the pro-

gress of education, in particular among women.


As there has been a time lag between the decline of mortality ratesand that of birth rates, that is, a time during which birth rates are still highwhile death rates are already low, the period of demographic transition isone of unprecedented population growth. As the length of this time lag andthe magnitude of the gap between birth and death rates vary greatly accord-ing to countries and to sub-groups of population within countries, popula-tion growth is a most uneven phenomenon. For reasons that will not berevisited here, the demographic transition occurred first in what is today thedeveloped world and only later in what is today the developing one but,once started, population growth was much faster in the latter than in theformer. Rapid population growth produces a number of consequences ineconomic and political systems as well as in family systems (McNicoll,1984) and the global differential in demographic growth between poor andrich countries rearranges the relative distribution of world populationbetween them with future demographic growth expected to take placeentirely in those countries that are currently less or least developed.

At first glance, international migration is neutral with regard toworld population growth. When a person moves from one country toanother, his or her move depletes the source population by one individualand adds that same individual to the host population, which is a zero-sum operation. At second glance, however, one can dispute this mechani-cal view, for it focuses on the immediate effect of international migrationand ignores its possible remote effects. It was even hypothesized thatrecent patterns of international migration have reduced the rate of naturalpopulation growth in the developing world and resulted in a smallerworld population than in a zero migration scenario: in brief, internationalmigration has been among the factors helping towards the demographictransition (Fargues, 2006; Beine, Docquier, and Schiff, 2008).

This hypothesis is based on the three following facts. First, a largeand increasing part of recent migration originates in developing countriesand is destined for developed countries. Table 1 shows that the propor-tion of international migration received by the most advanced countriesrose from 40.4 percent in 1960 to 56.3 percent in 2010.9 Migrants

9Population censuses capture individuals where they actually reside; they provide data onimmigration, not on emigration (unless specific questions are asked to non-migrants). As aresult the Population Division of the United Nations provides global migration statistics

by countries of destination not by countries of origin (UN, 2008a).


moving from less developed countries to more advanced ones encounterlower birth rates in their host countries than in their source countries.

Second, migrants are exposed in their host countries to a number ofnew values and practices, including those that have been conducive to lowbirth rates among local receiving populations, such as the spreading ofschool education, in particular among girls. Along with their integrationin this new environment, migrants gradually adopt for themselves part ofthese values and practices so that a partial convergence of migrants’ birthrates with those of the receiving population occurs. However, being lim-ited to migrants who are a small proportion of the population, the result-ing effect on birth rates is itself small.

Third, unlike their predecessors, modern migrants are not com-pletely severed from their countries of origin. On the contrary, theyremain in regular contact with their friends and relatives left behindthanks to cheap phone and internet communications and many of themperiodically return home on low-cost travel tickets. Transnational livesmade possible by new technologies empower migrants as new actors intheir communities of origin. Not only do they remit financial savings totheir relatives, but they also transfer values and models of behaving, or‘‘ideational remittances’’.10 As migrants are often regarded as successfulpersons in their communities of origin, they can be instrumental in pass-ing the values and practices they have been exposed to in host societies tothese communities and, in turn, communities of origin will adapt andadopt these values and practices. In this way, migrants often convey theideational roots of demographic change to non-migrants in source coun-tries. Contrary to the partial convergence of migrants’ birth rates with

TABLE 1DISTRIBUTION OF WORLD MIGRANTS BY LEVEL OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT IN THE DESTINATION COUNTRY

Human Development Index 1960 1990 2005 2010

Very high 40.4% 45.4% 55.2% 56.3%High 17.5% 23.5% 19.5% 18.9%Medium 36.6% 30.4% 21.0% 20.7%Low 5.5% 0.6% 4.3% 4.1%Total 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

Source: UNDP, 2009.

10The term ‘‘social remittances’’ coined by Levitt (1998) applies to entrepreneurial valuesand practices sent by migrants to their communities of origin. We use ‘‘ideational’’ remit-

tances for a wider range of values and models conveyed by migrants.


those of the receiving population brought up in the previous paragraph,ideational remittances are susceptible to have a large-scale impact as non-migrants in origin countries number many more than migrants and ideasand practices adopted by migrants reach a much bigger populationthrough the process of transfer. The multiplier should be something likethe ratio of the size of communities left behind in origin countries to thenumber of their migrants.

In an attempt to validate the above framework, three major sourcecountries of migrants in the Middle East and North Africa were comparedby Fargues (2006): Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey. Migrants originating inthese countries are bound both for the Gulf States and for the West.Those migrating to the Gulf are exposed to values and practices that aremore conservative than those of their homeland regarding the position ofwomen in the family and in the public sphere: that is, the social determi-nants of fertility. And indeed a correlate of social conservatism is a higherfertility in the Gulf than in the countries of origin of immigrants residingthere.11 By contrast, those migrating to the ‘‘West’’ – Europe and NorthAmerica – find host societies with lower levels of fertility than those in

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Figure II. Birth Rates and Remittances in Morocco 1975–2007

11Fertility differentials between Gulf States and Arab Mediterranean countries and Turkey

were particularly marked in the 1980s and 1990s.


source countries, in conjunction with higher levels of female educationand higher rates of economic participation among women. If it is truethat migrants transfer to source countries values and practices that prevailin host countries, then international migration from Egypt, Morocco, andTurkey might be expected to produce opposite results depending onwhich country migrants choose. Emigration to the Gulf might beexpected to obstruct forces of demographic transition in origin countriesand emigration to the west to foster these forces.

Time correlations between migrant workers’ remittances, which aretaken as a proxy for the intensity of the link that migrants keep with theirhomeland,12 and birth rates bring a first clue to a differentiated relation-ship according to where migrants go. Morocco and Turkey follow the pat-tern most commonly observed among the developing world, that is, risingremittances and declining birth rates during the last three decades. Manyfactors explain these two trends separately so that the negative correlationbetween them is not a clue to any causal relationship (Figure II).

Egypt, instead, offers a rather different pattern. During the four dec-ades between 1969 and 2008, the birth rates have generally declined butin an erratic fashion, interrupted three times by significant resurgence: inthe 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 remit-tances (Figure III) as if Egyptian migrants transferred to their country oforigin the model of subsidized fertility that they found in Gulf States.Indeed, in the Gulf monarchies, until the 1990s, the fabulous wealth pro-vided by oil allowed local families to keep women at home and allowedthe State to take on the cost of their children, thus deactivating the usualtriggers of the fertility transition: in particular, the education of childrendid not raise the direct cost of fertility for families, and the education ofwomen did not turn housewives into economic agents. Egypt is not anoil-rich country and the State does not subsidize fertility. However,migrants’ remittances can produce, to a certain extent, a comparableeffect. It was noted by anthropologists how deeply models imported fromthe Gulf by migrants could transform local practices of marriage and fam-ily building in their communities of origin (Singerman, 1995; Hoodfar,1999, Singerman and Ibrahim 2003) and Figure IV reflects the demo-graphic dimension of this change. It suggests that, when remittances to

12No reliable statistics of migration flows by period exist for Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey

and remittances are the only time series linked with migration.


Egypt increase in conjunction with rising oil prices in the Gulf, the costof fertility declines so that fertility can rise again.

Space correlations confirm that migration and birth rates in Egypthave the opposite relations to those in Morocco and Turkey (Table 2). Inmigrant-producing regions in Egypt, which are those where non-migrantsare the most exposed to values and practices prevailing in host societies oftheir migrant relatives or friends, birth rates have been declining moreslowly than in the rest of the country, while in Morocco and Turkey theyhave declined faster in migrant-producing regions. A critical intermediatevariable in this relationship is education, particularly that of girls, whichhas been found to be the most important determinant of the demographictransition in developing countries. In Egypt, female education has pro-gressed more slowly in regions with high emigration rates than in thosewith low emigration rates, while the opposite was found to be the case inboth Morocco and Turkey. It might then be hypothesized that emigrationto the Gulf had strengthened conservative views on girls’ education inmigrant-sending provinces in Egypt, while emigration to the West hascontributed to pro-education values in migrant regions in Morocco andTurkey.

The relationship between emigration and the decline of fertility inmigrant sending regions was statistically confirmed by Beine, Docquier,

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Figure III. Remittances and Birth Rates in Egypt 1969–2007


and Schiff (2008), using a large set of macro data comprehensively cover-ing immigration to OECD countries. They also reached the conclusionthat migrants serve as channels for the transmission of the norms andbehaviors 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 commu-nication as soon as the media show an increased interest in countries host-ing their migrants.

The above findings suggest that international migration is not neu-tral with regard to global demographics. On the contrary, as a majority of

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Argentina 1948-52 US 2000 US 2005 Canada 2001 Spain 2001

Figure IV. Age Patterns of Male International Migration Selected Countries and

Periods

TABLE 2CORRELATION COEFFICIENTS BETWEEN EMIGRATION, EDUCATION AND FERTILITY IN EGYPT, MOROCCO

AND TURKEY AROUND 2000

Country Egypt Morocco Turkey

Emigration · Fertility +0.66 )0.29 )0.42Education · Fertility )0.85 )0.45 )0.84Emigration · Education )0.50 +0.26 ⁄ +0.40 +0.32

Source: Fargues, 2006.


recent and current migrants are exposed through migration to the valuesand practices that produce low birth rates, which they adopt and conveyto non-migrants in their communities of origin, international migrationmight be considered one among the many indirect factors helping alongthe demographic transition. More precisely it might be taken as one ofthe ‘‘remote-remote’’ determinants in the transition of fertility, that is,those acting on remote determinants, in this case the ideational context offamily building. This is not an insignificant benefit at a time when theghost of overpopulation is still vivid.

THE IMPACT OF THE DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION ONINTERNATIONAL MIGRATION

Birth rates have decreased over the last decades throughout the developingworld and in a number of regions their decline has been steady. A sharpdrop in birth rates produces (often temporarily) a reduction in the size ofannual birth cohorts. With the passing of time, smaller cohorts will growolder and 20–25 years later, the number of young adults aged 20–25 willdecrease. It is then expected that the pressure this age group exerts on anumber of resources (employment, housing, symbolic recognition, etc.)will relax as smaller cohorts arrive. While in Europe and Northern Amer-ica annual numbers of births had peaked before 1965, in most of thedeveloping world historical peaks in annual birth cohorts were recordedbetween 1980 and 1995, except in sub-Saharan Africa and part ofWestern Asia where they continue to increase (Table 3).

Unprecedented Availability for Migration

As a result of these demographic changes, between, depending on theregion, 2000 and 2020, cohorts of young adults have continued and willcontinue to increase and to represent a growing share of the total popula-tion, forming what has been labeled a ‘‘youth bulge’’. It is a period duringwhich 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 corollariesof rapidly declining birth rates: the rising participation of young womenin economic activities and the rising level of education among youngadults of both sexes. While education raises expectations with regard to


occupation and rewards, demographic competition limits the opportuni-ties young adults are actually offered. High expectations, when deceived,may transform into frustration and produce two possible outcomes: ‘‘exitor voice’’, that is, migration or protest. Social or political protest is notthe topic of this paper and it is sufficient to remark that its associationwith migration, often as an alternative response, is recognized by a grow-ing literature on bad governance as a determinant of migration, as well asof political or social unrest.

To envision migration in relation to the youth bulge, it must benoted that demographic change has not only intensified the competitionamong young adults, it has also produced a radical change in their indi-vidual situation. Young adults in the youth bulge bear an exceptionallylight demographic burden. By comparison with past as well as future gen-erations, they have a low burden in terms of dependent children anddependent elders: due to their own (expected) fertility they will typicallybuild a two-children family and, due to their parents’ high fertility theyhave many brothers and sisters to share the burden of the elderly. Thishas been described as an unprecedented ‘‘demographic gift’’: by producinga differentiated population growth, higher at working ages than at depen-dent ages, declining fertility rates would yield a ‘‘demographic dividend’’(Bloom and Williamson, 1998; Bloom, Canning, and Sevilla, 2003).

TABLE 3PERIOD OF BIRTH OF THE LARGEST COHORTS BY REGION

Region <1965 1980–1985 1985–1990 1990–1995 >2010

Africa EasternMiddle

NorthernSouthernWestern

Asia Eastern AsiaSouth-CentralSouth-Eastern

WesternEurope Eastern

NorthernSouthernWestern

America CaribbeanCentralSouth

NorthernOceania

Source: UN, 2008a.


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, itcan open a window of opportunity for endogenous economic develop-ment by creating a situation favorable to savings and a shift from demo-graphic investments (those needed to meet the demand effect ofpopulation growth) to economic investments (those allowing growth anddevelopment). In such a case, demographic change would soon contributeto reducing the root causes of emigration. However, if young peoplearrive on labor markets that are characterized by high unemployment andlow wages in a context of bad governance, the youth bulge will bring nodemographic dividend and will produce the opposite effect to migration.Indeed, another aspect of low birth rates is that the family constraints ofearlier times are lifted so that young adults enjoy an unprecedented per-sonal freedom of movement. They have an increased availability formigration.13

While the propensity to migrate and, therefore, the number ofmigrants can either increase or decrease in response to peaking numbersof young adults depending upon governance and other external factorsthat are not linked with demography or migration, it is noteworthy thatthe profile of migrants radically changes in direct relation to demography.Two facts combine to invert the respective positions of migration and thestarting of a family in one’s typical life cycle: due to an unchanging agefor international migration but continuously delayed marriage and procre-ation, the past sequence marriage–procreation–migration is graduallyreplaced by a new sequence, migration–marriage–procreation.14 In the fol-lowing paragraphs for the sake of conciseness, only male migrants will beconsidered, but the same conclusions would be reached taking into

13Migration 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 followingproportions of persons aged 15–30 who declared that they intended to leave their countryof 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- to29-year-olds (compared to 22% in 1996 and 45% in 2000) declared that they consideredemigration an option.14Demographers have used biographies and even histories to understand how decisions onmarriage, the procreation of children, and geographic mobility (internal and most oftenshort-distance mobility, not international migration) interplay in individual lives (Courgeau

and Lelievre, 1991).


account female migrants. After all, female migration remains more oftenthan male migration a dependent move, that is, one which is conditionedto, and thus occurs after, marriage.

From Migrants with a Family to Single Migrants

Age patterns of international migration exhibit striking regularities overtime and space (Figure IV), a fact that has long encouraged demographersto search for a mathematical expression for migration rates by age (Rog-ers, Raquillet, and Castro, 1978; Rogers, Castro, and Lea, 2005). In dif-ferent periods and national contexts, the same bimodal age distribution ofinternational migrants at the time of first migration is observed. Interna-tional migration peaks twice: below 5 years and around 25 years. The firstand lowest peak corresponds to dependent children and the second andhighest peak to autonomous migrants (students, labor migrants, etc.). Forthe purpose of our argument, it is sufficient to notice that, whatever theperiod and independently of the demographic context, autonomousmigration occurs predominantly around 25 years. In what follows theaverage situation of persons aged 25 will be taken as the situation of typi-cal migrants at the time of their migration.15 Below we look at the ques-tion of how migrants’ marital status and the number of children born at25 years have changed in recent times.

Marriage is the most common, though non-universal, start of a fam-ily. Using statistics of marital status by age and sex collected in nationalpopulation censuses at several dates and regrouped in a single dataset bythe United Nations Population Division (UN, 2008b), Figure V providesthe proportion of never-married men at 25 years, which is the mean ageof migration, computed by the author using for each region as muchnational data as are available. This proportion has been rising everywhereexcept in sub-Saharan Africa. It is in the Arab states16 that the pace ofchange has been the most dramatic, with men still unmarried at 25 yearsclimbing from a low 20 percent in the 1960s to a high 70 percent four

15However, migration, being a selective process, the migrants’ average profile is not fully

represented by the average profile in the population.16Arab states considered here are those fulfilling two conditions: being countries of originof sizeable flows of migration, and providing time series on marital status by age and sex,

namely Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia.


decades later, in the 2000s. Less spectacular but still significant delays tofirst marriages are recorded in Latin America and South Asia.

Regarding levels and age patterns of male fertility, appraisingchanges in national and therefore regional populations is not straightfor-ward as most countries compute and only publish data on female fertility.However, by assuming a difference of age between women and men atthe birth of their children, one can deduce age patterns of male fertilityfrom female age specific fertility rates which are provided by the UnitedNations Population Division (UN, 2008a). Figure VI shows estimatedcumulated fertility rates for men, assuming a uniform difference of2.5 years between husbands and wives. Instead of providing regional dataat successive dates, for the sake of legibility only four series are graphed:the least developed countries in 1970–1975 (‘‘pre-transition’’); less devel-oped regions excluding the least developed countries in 1970–1975(‘‘transition 1’’); less developed regions excluding the least developedcountries in 2000–2005 (‘‘transition 2’’); and more developed regions

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Arabstates

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Figure V. Proportion of Never-married Men at the Mean Age at Migration, by Region

and Year (%)

Source: <http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/WMD2008/Main.html>


2000–2005 (‘‘post-transition’’). Figure VI and Table 4 suggest that aradical change is taking place in the family situation of individuals at theage of migration. As procreation is delayed and fewer children are born, adramatic decrease in the number of dependent children already born at themoment of migration (from 2.5 to 0.6) as well as in the number of thoseto be born once migration has occurred (from 4.0 to 1.0) is underway.

0,0

1,0

2,0

3,0

4,0

5,0

6,0

7,0

15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50

Num

ber

of c

hild

ren

Pre-transition Transition 1 Transition 2 Post-transition

Before migration

Aftermigration

Mig

ratio

n

Figure VI. Mean Number of Children Ever-born to Migrant Men According to the

Stage of Demographic Transition

Source: Author’s Calculation Using UN Age Specific Fertility Patterns.

TABLE 4NUMBER OF CHILDREN EVER-BORN TO MALE MIGRANTS ACCORDING TO

THE STAGE OF DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION

Stage of demographic transition Pre-transitionTransition

1Transition

2 Post-transition

Children already born at the time of migration 2.5 1.9 1.2 0.6Children still to be born after migration 4.0 3.4 1.4 1.0Total 6.5 5.3 2.6 1.6

Source: Author’s calculation using UN age-specific fertility patterns <http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/worldfertility2007/WorldFertilityPatterns%202007_UpdatedData.xls>


The shift in migrants’ profile has potential demographic implicationsat the receiving end of migratory flows. When migrants leave a spouseand one or several children in the home country, a second step in migra-tion is often family reunification. And indeed, family reunification becamea dominant pattern in Western and Northern Europe between the mid1970s and the early 2000s. Following the crisis triggered by soaring oilprices in 1973 and the subsequent rise in unemployment, countries thathad been open to labor immigration started to drastically tighten the con-ditions set for the entry and stay of migrant workers. At the same time,wishing to be respectful of fundamental rights, they kept their bordersopen to close relatives of migrants who had settled so that, schematically,the former two-way mobility of male workers typical of the 1950s–1960swas substituted with a new pattern of one-way immigration in dependentspouses and children. History will not necessarily repeat itself, however.Indeed, family reunification will lose momentum with the rise of a newgeneration of migrants who have not yet started to build a family at thetime they migrate. Single migrants will either return to their home coun-try 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 andperpetuate the process of family reunification, but the rest will marrysomeone in the receiving country and directly contribute to its demogra-phy through intermarriage.17

From Remittances to Human Capital

In addition to the above demographic consequences for the receivingcountry, changes in the family situation of migrants at the time they leavetheir home country show a fundamental shift in the motivation and con-sequences of migration that may have an impact on the sending country’sdevelopment. This shift can be schematically described by comparing twotypical migrants: the migrant of the recent past and the migrant of thenear future. Until recently, migrants were leaving a family behind andtheir motivation was to bring welfare to that family: sending money forfeeding, housing, caring, and educating a spouse and children staying inthe home country was the driving force behind their move. A migrant’sgoal was altruistic and remittances were the true cause of migration. The

17It 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.


migrant of the near future will typically have no children and spousewhen they depart from home. Their goal will be individualistic. As aresult, they will have a lower propensity to remit their savings. Out of thethree distinct purposes of remittances – maintaining a family left behind,repaying a debt made for covering the expenses of migration, and prepar-ing one’s own return – the first and traditionally the most important onewill have disappeared. In other words, if migrants remit it will be for thepurpose of investment rather than consumption, to prepare their ownreturn (if they intend to return) rather than to provide for a family’slivelihood.

Whether they intend to return home or stay abroad, migrants arelikely to have a higher propensity to diversify their investment, in knowl-edge and the upgrading of skills, to accumulate human capital in additionto financial capital. Unfortunately, there is no international database con-taining statistics of international migrants by country of origin, country ofdestination, generation and level of education, and, for the purpose ofassessing changes in migrants’ human capital, we must content ourselveswith partial data from selected countries. Figure VII-A,B,C depictmigrants’ average level of education in four countries of destination –Canada, Italy, Spain, and the U.S. – by country of origin and birthcohort. Data are from the most recent population censuses at the time ofwriting, that is, those carried out in 2000–2001. Given that the averagelevel of education in any birth cohort increases until the age of 25, thesecensuses provide educational levels by generation up to cohorts bornaround 1976, which is obviously too far in the past to bring out newpatterns.

Two contrasted patterns emerge from Figure VII-A,B,C. In NorthAmerica (Figure VII-A, U.S.) the level of education steadily increasesfrom old to new generations of migrants, though it is not known whethereducation was gained before or after migration; this is the case whateverthe country of origin, with no apparent relationship between the averagelevel of education in the population of a given country of origin and thatof its migrants to the U.S.; young migrants have more education thanU.S. natives of the same generation. In Southern Europe by contrast (Fig-ure VII-B, Spain), migrants’ level of education has not increased acrossthe generations and new migrants, whatever their origin, have a lowereducation than natives. Educational profiles of migrants vary greatlyaccording to the country of destination. In each destination they also varyaccording to countries of origin, but independently from the initial condi-


5,0

7,0

9,0

11,0

13,0

15,0

17,0

1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980

Year of birth

Aver

age

num

ber

of y

ears

of s

choo

ling India

EgyptAlgeriaChinaPhilippinesPakistanLebanonMoroccoBangladeshSenegalNon-M igrants

Mexico

1,0

3,0

5,0

7,0

9,0

11,0

13,0

15,0

1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980

Year of birth

Aver

age

num

ber

of y

ears

of s

choo

ling

MexicoNon-MigrantsLebanonIndiaPhilippinesEgyptChinaBangladeshAlgeriaPakistanMoroccoSenegal

5,0

7,0

9,0

11,0

13,0

15,0

17,0

1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980

Year of birth

Ave

rage

num

ber o

f yea

rs o

f sch

oolin

g

US*CanadaItalySpain*

a

b

c

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


tions in these countries: in the U.S., migrants from Egypt have a higherlevel of education than those from Lebanon, while in their countries oforigin the opposite is the case. Senegalese migrants in the U.S. have anaverage level of education that is higher than migrants of all origins inSpain, yet Senegal has one of the lowest average levels of education. Alge-rians are among the most educated migrants in the U.S. but the least edu-cated in Spain, etc. Demand, not supply, seems the true determinant ofmigrants’ skills.18 Both high-skilled and low-skilled workers are recruitedthrough migration because economies need both. But the highly-skilled,not the low-skilled, are favored by current immigration policies19 and onecan assume that this trend will become still more pronounced in thefuture.

A likely scenario is that the preferences of the receiving countrieswill result in more highly-skilled workers. However, migration is, at thesame time, a selecting and a qualifying process with regard to education:those who migrate are, on average, more educated than those who stayand, what is more, a number of them continue to receive education inthe destination country, that is, to build their human capital.20 Growingmigration of the highly-skilled means, therefore, more human capitalaccumulated through migration in the diaspora. This has policy implica-tions for the sending countries. In recent years, remittances have beenregarded by development agencies in sending countries as well at theinternational level, as a major source of external income to fuel develop-ment in communities, regions, and countries of origin of migrants. Diasp-oras have been courted by governments in origin countries who see themas a pool of potential investors.21 Accordingly, the governments of themajor sending countries of migrants have set up institutions to maintainand develop links with their diaspora and, at the same time, have engagedin banking reforms with a view to stimulating remittances. No compara-

18The fact that Mexican migrants are an exception in both cases (lower education thannatives 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.19In a recent survey of migration policies, Klugman and Pereira (2009) found a clear biasfavoring high-skilled migrants in developed as well as developing countries.20The literature on the ‘‘brain drain’’ has focused particularly on the first aspect, selectiv-

ity, rather than the second, human-capital building (Rosenzweig, 2005).21The creation of a World Diaspora Fund as an international cooperative of migrantsinvolved in the development of their countries of origin, announced in April 2010 by the

International Organization for Migration, exemplifies this trend.


ble attention was ever paid to attracting non-tangible spin-offs from diasp-oras.22 Governments of origin countries do very little to interact withtheir elite abroad and with few exceptions, distrust is instead the rule.While efforts supported by the World Bank were made to create a climatefavorable to flows of investment, an even bigger challenge will be to createa climate favorable to an equivalent flow of ideas.

CONCLUSION

In recent literature on demography and international migration, attentionhas focused on two particular issues: first, to what extent do rapid popula-tion growth in the developing world combined with stagnating or shrink-ing growth in the developed world act as push and pull factors ininternational migration and, second, to what extent does below replace-ment fertility combined with high immigration from the developingworld modify population dynamics in the developed world. In both cases,demography and international migration are considered as being stronglyrelated, but still independent phenomena. Instead, this paper hasattempted to treat demography and international migration as intermin-gled phenomena, and to explore to what extent changes in one of themmay affect the other.

Correlations found in the first section of this paper between the paceof demographic transition and the direction of international migrationsuggest that international migrants bound for the West convey to non-migrants in origin countries values and practices that contribute to thetransition from high to low birth rates. These values and practices arerelated to fundamental questions such as the value given to education, thestatus of children and the position of women in the family and in society.In other words, the international circulation of people facilitates the inter-national circulation of ideas, including those that are highly valued in hostcountries. There is much debate in receiving countries about natives’identity being challenged by the culture brought by migrants, but there islittle awareness that the circulation of ideas also works the other way

22The 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 nationalsresiding abroad through short-term services volunteered in their countries of origin, is the

only notable program paying attention to human capital building through migration.


around. Among the arguments currently put forward by most govern-ments to contain immigration, there is the argument for preserving thecitizens’ culture. However, if immigration were also understood as a chan-nel for values and practices of the host society to reach other societies,members of polities and public-opinion leaders in the developed worldmight ponder the cultural benefits of immigration in a situation of abso-lute or relative demographic decline.

Ongoing demographic changes in the developing world, as shown inthe second section, are likely to profoundly affect international migration.While the rapid shift from high to low birth rates is producing a tempo-rary youth bulge whereby the proportion of young working-age people inthe total population is peaking, therefore creating unprecedented demo-graphic competition among youth, young people enjoy an exceptionallylight demographic burden, insofar as they have few children to take careof and, at the same time, several siblings to divide the burden of caringfor their own parents. A new contract of the generations is emergingwhereby family constraints that were heavy on young people in earliertimes are lifted, providing the young with an unprecedented individualfreedom of movement. The profile and motivation of migrants areexpected to radically change. By contrast with the migrants of yesterday,leaving a family behind in the first step of migration, migrants of tomor-row will typically leave no wives or children in their home country forthe simple reason that they will still be unmarried at the time of migra-tion. This will have two consequences. First, migration motivated by fam-ily reunification will become less frequent. After all, family reunificationbrings people initially selected by migrants themselves through marriage,not by the host countries according to labor market needs, and so itsreduction should translate into a better adjustment of migration to actualwork opportunities at the receiving end. Second, remitting savings for thewell-being of those left in the home country will become less importantand money earned through migration will have more diverse uses whileenhancing one’s experience, skills and knowledge will increasingly becomethe overriding purpose of migration.

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