Unifying Theories of Migration and Remittances
Developmental Consequences of Migration
Gender and Cumulative Causation of Migration
Network Homophily and Diffusion of Internet Adoption
Filiz Garip
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Biographical Note
Filiz Garip received her Ph.D. in Sociology and M.S.E in Operations Research & Financial Engineering both from Princeton University. Her empirical research spans the substantive fields of migration, inequality, diffusion, social networks, economic sociology, and development. Her methodological approach is to develop and employ custom analysis techniques that can most effectively answer the substantive question at-hand. She primarily applies quantitative methods and analyzes large survey data, yet supplements the empirical results with insights from qualitative field observation. Besides flexibility with respect to different styles of analysis, her research is characterized by openness to multiple disciplinary viewpoints. Coming from an engineering background, she often combines different approaches, ideas or methods that are typically separated by disciplinary boundaries.
Filiz’s research questions typically focus on situations where individuals’ choices are affected by the choices of others around them, and consequently aggregate patterns cannot simply be extrapolated from isolated individual characteristics. Her first line of research deals with a puzzle in the Thai internal migration context: While migration to urban areas reaches mass levels in some sending communities, it lingers at low levels in other communities that are at first glance very similar. Filiz argues that this macro-level puzzle can be explained by individual level interactions within social networks that connect migrants to other community members. Specifically, the accumulation and distribution of social capital (defined as information or assistance provided by prior migrants that can facilitate migrating for potential migrants) can explain the divergent migration outcomes in sending communities.
The other two lines of research ask similar questions, and similarly attempt to understand puzzling aggregate patterns by identifying underlying individual level mechanisms. Her second line of work, in collaboration with Sara Curran, merges insights from gender studies and cumulative causation theory of migration, and finds that differential information-sharing patterns of men and women in rural Thailand lead to gender-specific cumulative migration patterns to urban areas. In January 2006, this project was awarded an NSF grant for additional data collection. Filiz’s third line of work, in collaboration with Paul DiMaggio, questions the variation in internet adoption rates of different socio-economic groups in the U.S., and combines economic theory on network externalities with diffusion models to provide an explanation.
Listed below are brief descriptions of the papers Filiz is currently working on. (Copies of the papers are available upon request.)
How can we explain mass migration? Why is it that some communities reach high levels of migration, while others linger at much lower levels? How can we explain these divergent outcomes?
Social Capital and Migration: How Do Similar Resources Lead to Divergent Outcomes?
Filiz Garip. 2008. Forthcoming in Demography. Winner of the 2006 Best Student Paper Award of the ASA Population Section.
To investigate how social capital influences migration, this paper builds on Portes (1998) and proposes a framework that decomposes social capital into resources (information about or assistance with migration), sources (prior migrants), and recipients (potential migrants). Analysis of multi-level, prospective, longitudinal data from 22 rural villages in Thailand shows that probability urban migration increases with the amount of available resources, yet the magnitude of increase depends on the diversity of resources, exposure to sources, as well as recipients’ characteristics and the strength of their ties to the sources. A simulation analysis explores the implications of these results for future migration patterns. The findings suggest that even small discrepancies in the diversity of resources and exposure to sources of social capital lead to striking differences in migration outcomes over time. Ignoring these discrepancies results in biased predictions of future migration patterns. The paper concludes that distinguishing among resources, sources and recipients provides a unifying framework to combine a variety of hypotheses typically tested in isolation, and improves empirical predictions as well as theoretical understandings of the effect of social capital on migration.
How Does Migration History Change the Context of Migration? Analysis of 22 Communities in Nang Rong, Thailand
Filiz Garip. 2006. Working Paper.
This paper analyzes how the migration history of a community shapes the context of migration for individuals. Prior studies suggest that migration generates common patterns of social, demographic and economic changes in sending communities; these changes make future migration more likely; and, due to this dynamic and cumulative mechanism, the effect of individual, household or village level characteristics on migration may depend on the migration history of the individual’s community. To disentangle this relationship, we propose to categorize communities by a ‘migration history index,’ and analyze patterns of change in migrant characteristics. This index combines the extent of past migration experience and its distribution among individuals, which may differentially moderate the selectivity of migration. Using unique longitudinal, prospective and multi-level data from 22 rural villages in Thailand, consistent with prior studies in different settings, we find that migration becomes a less-selective process as migration experience accumulates, and migrants become increasingly diverse in terms of sex, education and wealth. However, due to our unique methodology, different than prior work, we also find that the selectivity of migration persists if the distribution of migration experience is not uniform among individuals. Return to top UNIFYING THEORIES OF MIGRATION AND REMITTANCES
How are migration and remittance choices related? What is the (empirical and theoretical) cost of treating them as separate phenomena?
An Integrated Analysis of Migration and Remittances: Modeling Migration as a Mechanism for Selection
Filiz Garip. 2006. Working Paper.
Prior work models individuals’ migration and remittance behavior separately, and finds mixed empirical support for altruistic or contractual motives for remitting. This paper argues that the inconsistency of prior findings may result from selection bias. To control for this bias statistically, this study treats migration as a mechanism for selection and employs a censored probit model to evaluate hypotheses about remittance motives. Using unique longitudinal and multi-level data from the Thai internal migration context, the study reports three findings: First, altruistic and insurance motives positively influence both migration and remittance probability. Second, bargaining, inheritance seeking and investment motives decrease probability of migrating, but increase probability of remitting. Third, these results are considerably different than those obtained by a conventional approach of modeling remittances separately. The study concludes that migration and remittances are related processes, and it is crucial for an analysis of remittances to control for the selectivity of migration. Return to top
DEVELOPMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF MIGRATION
What are the distributional consequences of migration and remittance flows for sending communities? Which socio-economic groups benefit most by sending migrants and receiving remittances?
Internal Migration, Remittances and Community Development
Filiz Garip. 2007. Working Paper.
This paper evaluates how rural-urban migration and remittance flows alter the level and distribution of household assets in 22 sending communities in Nang Rong, Thailand. Principal components analysis is used to construct an index of household assets from sixteen asset indicators measured in 1994 and 2000. The index is decomposed into productive and consumer assets, which constitute two broad categories of investments, with potentially different implications for future household wealth and community development. The changes in the total, productive and consumer asset indices over 6 years are then modeled as a function of migration-remittance behavior of households in 1994, and other household and village characteristics in 1994 and 2000. Because households’ migration-remittance behavior is non-random, a two-stage estimation technique is used to correct for selectivity bias, where selection is specified as a multinomial choice among three household strategies: not migrate, migrate-not remit, migrate-remit. Separate models are estimated for poor, medium-wealth and rich households to evaluate the changes in wealth distribution in communities as a result of migration and remittances. The findings show that households’ migration and remittance choices have a significant effect on the level and nature of their subsequent investments, and this effect depends strongly on households’ initial wealth. Specifically, while rich households face a decrease in productive assets due to migration of their members, poor households gain assets, and improve their relative status within their communities. Return to top
GENDER AND CUMULATIVE CAUSATION OF MIGRATION
How does migration create a cumulative, self-feeding dynamic? How does this cumulative mechanism differ by gender context in origin and labor market context in destination?
Gendered Migrant Social Capital: Evidence from Thailand
Sara Curran, Filiz Garip, Chang Chung, and Kanchana Tangchonlatip. 2006. Social Forces 84(1): 225-255.
Employing longitudinal data from Thailand to replicate studies of cumulative causation, we extend current knowledge by measuring frequency of trips, duration of time away, level of network aggregation (village or household), and sex composition of migrant networks and estimating a model of prospective migration among men and women in Thailand. We find that trips and duration of time away have distinct influences upon migration; that household level migrant networks are more influential than village level migrant networks; that female migrant networks and male migrant networks have different influences upon migration outcomes; and, that migrant social capital influences men and women’s migration differently. Our elaboration provides significant quantitative evidence for how gender and family variously imbue migration dynamics.
Mapping Gender and Migration in Sociological Scholarship: Is It Segregation or Integration?
Sara Curran, Steven Shafer, Katherine Donato, and Filiz Garip. 2006. International Migration Review 40(1): 199-223.
Sociology scholarship has evolved over the last thirty years to demonstrate the substantial ways in which gender fundamentally organizes the social relations and structures influencing the causes and consequences of migration. We describe the intellectual evolution of this scholarship and note that most empirical and theoretical insights are based in studies employing qualitative methods. We then evaluate leading quantitative migration scholarship through systematically coding all of the articles that have been published in the leading Sociology journals between 1994 and 2004: American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Demography, and Social Forces. We find little evidence that gender is treated as a constitutive element in quantitative migration studies in Sociology during the 1990s and early 21st century and continue to find one-fifth of the migration studies failing to acknowledge the sex composition of their sample. We conclude that migration scholarship continues to be methodologically segregated vis-à-vis gender and offer suggestions for integration in future research.
Advancing Theory and Evidence about Migration and Cumulative Causation: Destination and Gender in Thailand
Sara Curran, Filiz Garip, and Chang Chung. 2006. Working Paper.
In this paper, we examine longitudinal data from Thailand and compare gendered migration patterns to three substantively different destinations (a regional, primarily agricultural wage laborer market; a primate city and its surrounding suburbs; and a newly industrialized, state sponsored export processing zone). By examining the differential effect of migrant networks on migration propensities of men and women across destinations, we aim to extend our theoretical understanding of the role of cumulative causation for influencing migration patterns. Because each destination is defined by different labor market characteristics related to gender and places of origin are also marked by different gender relations, we propose and find that there are significantly different patterns of migration when disaggregating the accumulated migrant experience by sex, destination, and place of origin (household or village). Using a unique data set from Thailand that allows us to observe variation across villages, households, and destinations over time, we observe that migrant characteristics as well as the effect of prior migration experience change dramatically by destination. Disaggregating migration experience by destination, we then find that experience in each destination increases the propensity of migration to that destination significantly. However, the magnitude of this increase is different in each destination. Further disaggregating migration experience by sex, we find that in all destinations, female migration experience has a stronger effect than male migration experience at each level of observation (individual, household or village) upon the probability of migration. Finally, modeling men’s and women’s migration separately, we find that the effect of migration experience also depends on whether the migrant is a man or woman.
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What are the advantages and disadvantages of the Bayesian approach in analyzing comparative data?
Bayesian Analysis of Comparative Survey Data
Bruce Western and Filiz Garip. 2006. Working Paper.
Bayesian hierarchical models provide a useful way of analyzing multilevel survey data. The Bayesian estimates have good statistical properties, make good predictions, and realistically account for clustering in the data. Still the Bayesian estimates can be biased in the presence of omitted variables and fixed effect models might sometimes be preferable. Bayesian statistics for model comparison and evaluation—posterior predictive checks and the Deviance Information Criterion—assist an empirical approach to distinguishing between hierarchical models and their alternatives. These ideas are illustrated with an analysis of migration data from 22 villages in the Nang Rong district of Thailand. Return to top
NETWORK HOMOPHILY AND DIFFUSION OF INTERNET ADOPTION (with Paul DiMaggio)
Internet adoption is a process with network externalities (i.e., the more people adopt the more attractive the technology). Are processes with network externalities more prone to generating and sustaining inter-group inequalities? Can homophily within social networks help us understand the inequalities among social groups in the diffusion of the internet?
This is work in progress. A more precise explanation will be posted soon. Here is a brief outline of the idea: We characterize internet adoption as a process with specific network externalities (i.e., the more people adopt in one’s network, the more attractive the technology), and suggest that variation in trajectories of adoption among socio-economic groups can be explained by network homophily. More generally, by combining the economic concept of network externalities with structural characteristics of networks, we aim to identify a general process through which certain inter-group inequalities become enduring.
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03/05/2008
Courses Offered This Academic Year
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Sociology 98 ( Spring ) |
Junior Tutorial | Catalog #5943 |
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Sociology 243 ( Spring ) |
Economic Sociology | Catalog #2022 |
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