Post-Cold War migration from Latin America to Latin Europe: a network theoretical analysis of an international migration system

Date
2017
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Latin America (LA) was once a region of net immigration, receiving millions of migrants from Europe, particularly Latin Europe (Italy, Portugal and Spain), between the years 1850 and 1950. But in the mid-1990s, this historical migration pattern reversed, and millions of Latin American migrants headed for Latin Europe (LE), particularly Spain. This influx of Latin American migrants received very little attention from the scholarly community early on, and the attention that it did receive largely came from policy organizations focused more on data collection than theory-driven understandings of these migration flows. Studies of migration have long suffered from weak theoretical foundations in addition to lacking a multidisciplinary approach; despite the general consensus in the scholarly community that migration studies must be theoretical and multidisciplinary if the field is to advance. This study attempts to rectify both of these issues as well as fill in the extensive gap in our knowledge of post-Cold War Latin American migration to LE. It does this by developing and testing a new network theory approach to studying migration systems. ☐ The theoretical framework utilized in this study – network analysis of an international migration system (NAIMS) – builds upon the most widely utilized approach to studying migration, network analysis. Incorporating the highly compatible international migration systems approach into network analysis, serves to address the key theoretical weaknesses from which network analysis suffers while also making it applicable to all migration types and, therefore, making it applicable across academic disciplines. In order to develop and test the NAIMS approach, a comparative case study of six countries – three from LA (Argentina, Brazil and Colombia) and the three countries of LE – was carried out. This comparative analysis was carried out in three steps, at two levels of analysis. ☐ First, based on the theoretical tenets of the migration systems approach, an analysis of these countries was carried out to establish that these regions do form a migration system and can be studied using the NAIMS approach. Following that, the meso-level connections between the regions were explored and the international migration networks operating between LA and LE were mapped. Finally, the structural linkages, and determinants of migration within the migration system, were systematically investigated. These analyses were carried out with a focus on answering three core questions: 1. Why did waves of LA migrants choose to migrate to LE in the post-Cold War period?; 2. What types of migrants and migration characterized these migration waves and how has that composition changed over the period under consideration (1990s to the present)?; and 3. What accounts for the persistence of these migration flows throughout the more than twenty years of mass migration from LA to LE? By answering these questions using the NAIMS approach, the extensive gap in our knowledge of post- Cold War Latin American migration to LE can be filled and the NAIMS approach can be further developed and tested. ☐ The analysis carried out in this study revealed several critical findings. To begin with, the countries of LA and LE do constitute a migration network, and can be studied as such. Moreover, the NAIMS approach to studying migration is robust and the theories, concepts, and predictions that comprise the NAIMS approach can easily be applied and adapted to other migration systems. Finally, the three core questions at the heart of the study were answered. In the post-Cold War period the structural economic and political conditions were right for waves of labor migrants moving from LA to LE. A welcoming society and few consequences for irregular migration, along with powerful migration networks that lowered the costs of migration, fueled the waves of migration from LA to LE that took place between roughly 1996 and 2010.
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