Explaining Migration: A Critical View

Abstract

The article surveys the major contemporary explanations of migration, starting with the neo‐classical theory, and then the array of theories and conceptual frameworks that have flourished in the last quarter of the century. The survey highlights the fact that in its relatively short history, theorising about migration has taken the form of a string of separate, generally unconnected theories, models, conceptual frameworks and empirical generalisations, rather than a cumulative sequence of contributions. As awhole, existing theories of migration can be faulted for focusing almost exclusively on the explanation of the causes of migration, to the detriment of other dimensions; for making ‘grand claims’ out of proportion with effective explanatory power; and for providing explanations ex‐post rather than guiding empirical research and providing testable hypotheses. In addition to the difficulties that all the social sciences experience when trying to explainhuman behaviour, migration theories face special ones: its subject matter is hard to define, difficult to measure, extremely multifaceted and multiform, and thus resistant to theory‐building. Whilst the reservoir of theories, and especially of conceptual frameworks, available nowadays represents a clear improvement over the situation a few decades ago, their contribution toour knowledge of migration is still limited.

Why do they return? Beyond the economic drivers of graduate return migration

“…The literature on social networks is vast (for a review, see Arango 2000;Massey et al 1993). However, the strand on Transnationalism is particularly relevant to our work as it stresses that highly skilled migrants keep social and cultural ties not only in the destination country but also back in the sending country (Portes 2000).…”

Probabilistic population projections with migration uncertainty

“…The autoregressive model forecasts future migration in terms of current and past migration, which may be viewed as implicitly incorporating the history of these factors. Also, in light of the lack of a comprehensive theory of migration (26), an empirical approach may be desirable (14).…”

Migration as a factor of development of the depopulating areas in East EU countries – The case of Lithuania

“…Unemployment, wage differences, images of the places and other reasons that determine migrations are well known, but they can hardlyexplain the exceptional scale of the depopulationin Lithuania (Arango 2000;Abreu 2010;Boyle et al1998). Unusual spatial structure (settlement system) of the country might beone of the alternative answers.Redistribution of population from rural areas and towns to urban areas and especially to metropolitan regions is absolutely natural process taking placein all developing countries and in post-communist states in particular (Boren & Gentile 2007).…”

“…1.1 million people have participated in migration processes in the 3 million people country during the last decade, (Statistics Lithuania, 2013) can be (and often is) perceived as a tragedy or at least highly negative phenomenon. However, from the economical point of view it could be regarded as a usual relocation of the economic resources (labour in this case) underthe effective market economy (Arango 2000;Sjaastad 1962;Stark & Bloom 1985). Therefore, international migration could be perceived as a phenomenon making whole economy of the EU more effective.…”