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This paper synthesizes insights from new global data on the effeaiveness of migration policies. It investigates the complex links between migration policies and migration trends to disentangle policy effects from structural migration determinants. The analysis challenges two central assumptions underpinning the popular idea that migration restrictions have failed to curb migration. First, post-WWII global migration levels have not accelerated, but remained relatively stable while most shifts in migration patterns have been directional. Second, post-WWII migration policies have generally liberalized despite political rhetoric suggesting the contrary. While migration policies are generally effective, \"substitution effects\" can limit their effeaiveness, or even make them counterproduaive, by geographically diverting migration, interrupting circulation, encouraging unauthorized migration, or prompting \"now or never\" migration surges. These effeas expose fundamental policy dilemmas and highlight the importance of understanding the economic, social, and political trends that shape migration in sometimes counterintuitive, but powerful, ways that largely lie beyond the reach of migration policies.

Population researchers struggle to characterize and explain the distinctiveness of the fertility patterns observed in sub-Saharan Africa. Building upon research that documents changing fertility preferences across the region and high levels of uncertainty characterizing daily life for most Africans, we argue that our understanding of fertility preferences is enhanced when we focus on the flexibility that accompanies them. Using longitudinal data from the Tsogolo la Thanzi study in southern Malawi, we examine the sensitivity of young women's fertility preferences to a variety of hypothetical (but common) events that could alter their numeric or timing preferences. We find that flexibility is prevalent (widespread, though not universal), patterned (associated with socioeconomic traits and existential uncertainty), and consequential (positively associated with preference instability, non-use of modern contraceptives, and surprise pregnancy). Within contexts of extreme uncertainty, a flexible orientation to fertility is both a realistic and a strategic response to life's many contingencies.

This article elaborates a conceptual framework for assessing the character and effectiveness of immigration policies. It argues that, to a considerable extent, the public and academic controversy concerning this issue is spurious because of fuzzy definitions of policy effectiveness, stemming from confusion between (1) policy discourses, (2) policies on paper, (3) policy implementation, and (4) policy impacts. The article distinguishes three policy gaps: the discrepancy between public discourses and policies on paper (discursive gap); the disparity between policies on paper and implemented policies (implementation gap); and the extent to which implemented policies affect migration (efficacy gap). Although implemented policies seem to be the correct yardstick to assess policy effectiveness, in practice the (generally more pronounced) discourses are often used as a benchmark. This can lead to an overestimation of policy failure. Existing empirical studies suggest that policies significantly affect the targeted migration flows, but they crucially fail to assess the relative importance of policies in comparison to other migration determinants, including non-migration policies, as well as the hypothetical occurrence of unintended categorical, spatial, inter-temporal, and reverse flow \"substitution\" effects. Evidence on such effects is still scarce, showing the need for more empirically informed insights about the short- and long-term effects of migration policies.

Italy and Spain are extreme cases of low fertility linked to postponement of childbearing. Demographers continue to debate causes of postponement. This qualitative study was designed to contribute, by purposively selecting Italian and Spanish women in different socio-economic circumstances who are partnered, childless and aged 30 to 35. Most want children but \"not now\" or are deferring the decision whether to have children. Their different circumstances inflect explanations of postponement in a language of choice, either \"taking time\" to achieve other goals or \"holding on\" for conditions to change. They are encouraged to postpone by optimism about their capacity to conceive, flexible norms about \"the right age,\" prolonged dependence on their parents, the normative salience of \"total motherhood,\" and family-unfriendly, gender-unequal workplaces. Elements of competing demographic theories often coexist in interviewees' accounts. The \"desires-intentions gap\" does not always capture their flow or complexity.

Over the last 40 years, Europe has experienced a new migratory flow: entry into Mediterranean countries, including Italy. The first part of the twenty-first century saw an immigration boom, and then subsequently, in the years of economic crisis that followed, an immigration bust, accompanied by a revival of emigration abroad. We show how this \"stop and go\" of migrants in recent years is due to demographic and labor market structural changes and the inability (or unwillingness) of public authorities to manage entries from and exits to abroad. Moreover, several particularities of Italian society have shaped foreigner presence in Italy, in ways different than those seen in central and northern Europe. We distinguish also between the Center/North and the South/Islands regions of Italy, as the migratory histories of these two areas are quite different.

Gender theories of family change argue that as men take on increasing roles in the home, fertility may recover from low levels because women experience reduced work-family conflict and have correspondingly higher fertility intentions. Examining these theories through the lens of couples, rather than of women, we suggest a scenario that may lead to different predictions. With increases in men's contributions to domestic labor, men themselves may experience the pinch of greater work-family conflict, which may in turn have depressing effects on couples' fertility intentions. Analyses of six waves of data, spanning the period 1992-2014 and taken from the British Household Panel Survey and Understanding Society, show that men's housework increases with each additional child, and that more egalitarian men increase their housework more with each child. However, men's contributions to housework do not carry over into consensus concerning partners' intentions to have at least one more child.

On June 23, 2016, the UK narrowly voted to exit the European Union. Population issues—especially relating to the effect of population growth on infrastructure and public services and the need to \"take back control\" over immigration—played a central role in the campaigns (\"Leave\" and \"Remain\") leading up to the vote. I argue that the Leave campaign engaged in reckless scaremongering over the demographic effects of membership in the EU, while the Remain campaign was stifled by its commitment to a policy of fiscal austerity. The leader of the Labour Party, while putatively in the Remain camp, was strikingly circumspect in his support.

Newly released census microdata reveal the nearly worldwide and substantial decline in educational hypergamy (women marrying men with higher educational attainment) across 56 countries from the 1970s to the 2000s. We examine the extent to which the observed decrease in hypergamy is connected to the worldwide rise in female educational attainment. Our results show that educational hypergamy is an enduring form of gender inequality in union formation across the countries examined but that it has been decreasing over the last few decades and in some countries has reversed in recent years. Overall, we find a strong association between hypergamy and gender differences in educational attainment. Societies in which the female educational advantage is greater tend to have lower levels of educational hypergamy. There is a tendency toward a joint increase in women's educational levels and a decrease in educational hypergamy. This article underlines the influence of women's educational opportunities on the increase in gender symmetry in assortative mating, which leads us to predict the end of educational hypergamy.

Expanding access to education is a universal aim of development policy, and children are entering formal schooling at unprecedented levels. Taking Ethiopia as a case study, we explore the influence of primary and secondary educational attainment on the migration aspirations of young people. Using novel survey data collected among rural and urban Ethiopian youth from the Young Lives project, we find that completing even primary levels of education increases the aspiration to live elsewhere. Formal education appears to be one important driver of a broader aspirational shift away from rural, agrarian livelihoods toward urban, professional futures. By studying the linkages between educational attainment and internal and international migration aspirations—alongside other development indicators like wealth, employment, and levels of self-efficacy—our findings contribute to an ongoing debate about the relationship between migration and development and challenge common assumptions that migration is simply driven by poverty and need in poorer countries.

In southeastern Nigeria, several interconnected processes of social change are combining to delay parenthood. Most of the demographic and social sciences literature examining the postponement of parenthood has paid primary attention to women. To address this gap, this article foregrounds the changing social landscape of masculinity as a significant context within which to situate these demographic changes. At the core of Nigerian men's perceptions, decisions, and behaviors with regard to delaying fatherhood is a fundamental contradiction, one that seems to be common in many settings—at least many African settings—of contemporary demographic transition. The contradiction is that while the postponement of parenthood is associated historically with positive social and economic indicators, when Nigerian men articulate their rationales for delaying fatherhood (and marriage) they commonly describe feelings of uncertainty connected to a sense of struggle and deprivation. This article connects men 's anxieties about—and delays embarking on—marriage and parenthood to their experiences of economic uncertainty, and specifically to the perceived need for money as the foundation for successful reproduction.