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In recent years the role of social networks and of social capital in shaping migrants' lived experiences and, particularly, their employment opportunity has increasingly come to be recognized. However, very little of this research has adopted a relational understanding of the migrant experience, taking the influence of nonmigrants' own networks on migrants as an important factor in influencing their labour market outcomes. This article critiques the alterity and marginality automatically ascribed to migrants that is implicit in existing ways of thinking about migrant networks. The article draws on oral history interviews with geriatricians who played an important role in the establishment of the discipline during the second half of the 20th century to explore the importance and power of nonmigrant networks in influencing migrant labour market opportunities in the UK medical labour market.

This study explores the role of migrant networks in shaping issues of citizenship and security in Sabah, Malaysia, with a focus on Filipino and Indonesian migrant communities. Drawing on a qualitative ethnographic approach, the research examines how these networks enable migrants to navigate complex legal and social landscapes, while also influencing local attitudes and government policies. Despite their significant contributions to Sabah’s economy and cultural fabric, migrants face considerable challenges related to legal recognition and social inclusion. The study advocates for migration policies that prioritise integration over exclusion and calls for a nuanced approach to security that balances national interests with the protection of migrants’ human rights. The findings underscore the importance of inclusive policies that enhance migrants’ access to legal residency, basic services, and meaningful community participation. This research contributes to ongoing debates on migration, citizenship, and security in Malaysia and similar sociopolitical contexts.

Research shows that the association between adverse climate conditions and human migration is heterogeneous. One reason for this heterogeneity is the differential vulnerability of populations to climate change. This includes highly vulnerable, “trapped” populations that are too poor to migrate given deep and persistent poverty, the financial costs of migrating, and the erosion of already fragile economic livelihoods under climate change. Another reason for this heterogeneity is the differential vulnerability of places. However, despite the growing list of studies showing that the climate-migration relationship clearly varies across places, there is surprisingly little research on the characteristics of places themselves that trap, or immobilize, populations. Accordingly, we provide the first account of the “holding power” of places in the association between adverse climate conditions and migration flows among 55 districts in Zambia in 2000 and 2010. Methodologically, we combine high-resolution climate information with aggregated census micro data to estimate gravity models of inter-district migration flows. Results reveal that the association between adverse climate conditions and migration is positive only for wealthy migrant-sending districts. In contrast, poor districts are characterized by climate-related immobility. Yet, our findings show that access to migrant networks enables climate-related mobility in the poorest districts, suggesting a viable pathway to overcome mobility constraints. Planners and policy makers need to recognize the holding power of places that can trap populations and develop programs to support in situ adaptation and to facilitate migration to avoid humanitarian emergencies.

Migrant networks have long been regarded as helpful for facilitating migration and assimilation. However, research examining the influence of migrant networks on labour market outcomes for migrants has provided mixed results. This article investigates the impact of hometown ties on migrants’ labour market outcomes in the context of Chinese internal migration, by utilizing data from migrants in Beijing to perform statistical analyses of income and informal employment (i.e. employment without legal documents). After adjusting for the potential bias that results from the workers’ self-selectivity into the use of hometown ties in finding jobs, the analyses show that the hourly income of migrants is lower if they depend on hometown ties to find jobs. Also, migrants who rely on hometown ties for jobs are more likely to be informally employed, which has a detrimental effect on their overall welfare.

Social networks' influence on migration has long been explored largely through the lenses of cumulative causation and social capital theory. This article aims to reconceptualize elements of these theories for the case of rural–urban migration and test their utility in explaining first-migration timing. We use a uniquely extensive social network survey linked to prospectively collected migration data in rural Senegal. We decompose migrant networks into return migrants, current migrants, and nonmigrant residents of the destination to capture heterogeneity in migration-relevant social capital. As expected, the number of nonmigrant alters living in the capital, Dakar, has an outsized association with the migration hazard, the number of current migrants from the village living in Dakar has a smaller association, and the number of return migrants has little association. Drawing on social capital theory, we test the influence of (1) subjectively assessed tie strength between the ego and their network alters and (2) structurally weak ties measured through second-order (“friend of a friend”) connections. Weak and strong subjective ties to current migrants and nonmigrant Dakar residents are positively associated with the first-migration hazard. Structurally weak ties to current migrants are too, but only for individuals with no direct ties to current migrants.

Do information flows matter for remittance behavior? We design and implement a randomized control trial to quantitatively assess the role of communication between migrants and their international network on the extent and value of remittance flows. In the experiment, a random sample of 1,500 migrants residing in Ireland was offered the possibility of contacting their networks outside the host country for free over a varying number of months. We find a sizeable positive impact of our intervention on the value of migrant remittances sent. Larger remittance responses are associated with individuals who are employed and earn higher incomes. This evidence is consistent with the idea that the observed increase in remittances is not a consequence of relaxed budget constraints due to subsidized communication costs but rather a likely result of improved information, perhaps due to better migrant control over remittance use, enhanced trust in remittance channels due to experience sharing, or increased remittance recipients’ social pressure on migrants.

Increased ability to migrate from China’s rural villages contributed to significant increases in the consumption per capita of both non-durable and durable goods, and these effects were larger in magnitude for households that were relatively poor before the easing of restrictions to migration. With increased out-migration, poorer households invested more in housing and durable goods than rich households, while richer households invested significantly more in non-agricultural production assets. As migration became easier, increased participation in migrant employment was greater among poorer households on both the extensive and intensive margins, and poorer households reduced labor days in agriculture.

Purpose: This study analyzes the role of migrant networks in the migration flows in relation to the educational level of the migrants and economic growth of the states of origin and destination in Brazil. Design/methodology/approach: Fixed effects estimator applied to microdata. Findings: The results show migrant networks have a significant and positive impact on migration flows of the different educational levels. The economic growth in the destination state accentuates this effect, while the economic growth in the origin state has distinct impacts according to the educational level of the new migrant. Originality/value: The authors investigate the importance of migrant networks in the internal immigration within a developing country with large internal movement of people. In Brazil, the socio-economic condition of the population varies considerably in relation to its geography, which explains the country's large internal migration flows.

PurposeThis study investigates the effect of ownership structure – ownership concentration and firm ownership – on outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) by emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs), and further explores the moderating effects of international experience and migrant networks on this relationship.Design/methodology/approachData of Chinese MNEs listed on Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges between 2005 and 2016 are used. The empirical analysis is based on the negative binomial regression model.FindingsThe empirical results reveal a significant inverted-U relationship between ownership concentration and OFDI by EMNEs. State ownership is found to have a positive effect on OFDI by EMNEs. Both international experience and migrant networks strengthen the inverted-U relationship between ownership concentration and OFDI as well as the positive effect of state ownership on OFDI by EMNEs.Practical implicationsEMNEs need to maintain a moderate ownership concentration when conducting OFDI, and they are supposed to make full use of their own international experience and focus on migrant networks of the host country. Policy-makers in emerging economies need to better create a fair business environment for enterprises.Originality/valueCombining agency theory and the resource-based view, this study integrates ownership structure, firm-level heterogeneous resources – international experience and country-level heterogeneous resources – migration networks into a framework to study OFDI by EMNEs, which expands the scope of research in international business.

This paper explores the tenability of three important critiques to the ‘migrant network’ approach in migration studies: (1) the narrow focus on kin and community members, which connect prospective migrants in origin countries with immigrants in the destination areas, failing to take due account of sources of assistance beyond the ‘migrant network’ like institutional or online sources; (2) that it is misleading to assume a general pattern in the role of migrant networks in migration, regardless of contexts of arrival or departure, including the scale and history of migration or the immigration regime; and (3) that ‘migrant networks’ are not equally relevant to all migrants, and that important differences may exist between labour migrants and other types of migrants like family migrants or students. Drawing on survey data on the migration of Brazilians to Portugal and the Netherlands we find support for these critiques but also reaffirm the relevance of ‘migrant networks’.