Although migration was relatively gender balanced for much of the twentieth century, in recent decades there has been an increase in women-predominant or feminized flows, often indicative of a demand for care work migrants, who provide domestic work, childcare, elder care, and other forms of care for wealthier families (Parreñas 2012). Yet gender imbalances in migration remain understudied by quantitative scholars (Donato and Gabaccia 2015). Using an unusually global World Bank bilateral migration data set (Özden et al. 2011), we estimate (Abel 2013) and map the largest feminized transnational flows, in which women constitute more than 53 percent of migrants (Donato and Gabaccia 2015) between 1990 and 2000 (Figure 1). Our visualization depicts movements among the 51 countries with the largest absolute feminized flows. Most of these feminized flows occur within regions. Yet flows to countries such as the United States, Canada, France, and the Great Britain, and flows from countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Russia, and China, often traverse regions. Migration within Asia, as well from Asia, is particularly interesting. The largest feminized movements within and between South East and East Asia include flows from Malaysia to Singapore and from China to Hong Kong and Japan. Smaller feminized flows exist from the Philippines to Japan and Taiwan, from Indonesia to Taiwan and Singapore, and from Korea to Japan. Many of these flows-including those from the Philippines to Saudi Arabia, which are very intensely feminized-likely indicate care work (Oishi 2005).
While network research often focuses on social integration as a predictor of health, a less-explored idea is that connections to dissimilar others may benefit well-being. As such, this study investigates whether network diversity is associated with changes in four health outcomes over a 3-year period of time in the U.S.A. Specifically, we focus on how an underexplored measure of network diversity—educational attainment assortativity—is associated with common self-reported outcomes: propensity to exercise, body-mass index, mental health, and physical health. We extend prior research by conducting multilevel analyses using this measure of diversity while adjusting for a range of socio-demographic and network confounders. Data are drawn from a longitudinal probability sample of U.S. adults (n=10.679) in which respondents reported information about themselves and eight possible alters during three yearly surveys (2013–2015). We find, first, that higher educational attainment is associated with more educationally insular networks, while less-educated adults have more educationally diverse networks. Results further suggest that having educationally similar networks is associated with higher body-mass index among the less educated. Further exploration of the relationship between ego network diversity, tie strength, and health is warranted.
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