Research and Empirical Analysis of Labor Migration - Incite at Columbia University

REALM subprojects

• Migration and Kerala’s Gender Paradox

  Dr. Hannah Brückner (PI) and Dr. Swethaa Ballakrishnen (co-PI), New York University Abu Dhabi.

  This ethnographic project is designed to help generate hypotheses about the way in which migration to the Gulf affects gender hierarchies in Malappuram, Kerala

  Families of labor migrants, especially migrants’ spouses who remain in the sending country, are generally conceptualized as “left behind”—often in situations that might not be conducive to their well-being, without the protection their absent husbands may afford them.

  This project seeks to answer following questions: What is the impact of global migration from Kerala on transnational families, and, particularly, the gendered identities of these women? Specifically, how do they shape the lived experience of women in Kerala who do not migrate themselves but are still significantly impacted by the process? How do these effects vary between religious and social groups? What are the possible effects of intergenerational migration experiences?

  While the project focuses on the outcomes for the women “left behind”, the research will provide valuable information about the motivation and decision making processes of Malayali migrants to the Gulf, in keeping with the sociological insight that families and kinship networks are involved in most migration events.

• A Rapid Ethnographic Assessment of the Gulf-Directed Labor Brokerage System in South Asia

  Dr. Andrew Gardner (PI) and Dr. Zahra Babar (Co-PI), University of Puget Sound, University of Georgetown in Qatar.

  Completed in 2017, this project explored and compared two national segments of the labor brokerage component of the transnational migration system that shuttles labor migrants to the Arab States of the Arabian Peninsula.

  Utilizing brief ethnographic observations and interviews to build two brokerage assessments in migrant-dense sending regions of South Asia—the Peshawar Valley of Pakistan and the Terai Plain of Nepal—the investigators described, delineated, and compared portions of this migration system, and thereby begin to assemble a broader understanding of the structure and mechanics of this transnational system.

• Family Migration Context and Early Life Outcomes Project

  Dr. Dirgha Ghimire, University of Michigan.

  This project adds a new migrant survey component to an existing, funded NIH Program Project, the Family Migration Context and Early Life Outcomes Project (FAMELO).

  FAMELO examines the impact of migration by family members on children age 5-17 who remain in the sending context and assesses their early socio-emotional adjustment, socialization, schooling, and transition to adulthood.

  The Nepal component of the FAMELO project in Chitwan, Nepal, interviews both the child and a primary caregiver in the sending context, but previously had no direct interview with migrants who had left the household.

  This project builds upon the Nepal FAMELO study design with a telephone survey of migrants who have left the focal children's homes. An aim of FAMELO is to understand how children transition to adulthood and may even become migrants themselves.

  Interviewing household members who have left as labor migrants allow us to understand how the migration experiences of currently migrating household members affect children's life courses.

• Disaggregating Recruitment: Uncovering the Expectations, Obligations and Hidden Pathways of Labor Migration

  Dr. Daniel Karell, New York University Abu Dhabi.

  This project focused on the pathways that aspiring migrants take in order to engage with sending country recruitment agencies; pathways comprising complex, informal networks of sub-agents working at the local and regional levels on behalf of larger, national-level recruitment agencies.

  Along these pathways, aspiring migrants acquire and develop expectations, plans, and a range of obligations from different sub-agents. However, it is unclear how much they understand about these expectations and commitments because of possible misinformation from sub-agents.

  The goal of this project, situated in Pakistan, was to make a methodological contribution to the study of labor migration processes that is scalable and transferable across sending countries. The project combined in-depth interviews with aspiring migrants and their household members with the deployment of a mobile phone application to collect data at micro spatiotemporal intervals during their recruitment journey.

  This mixed method data collection technology can be used to study various highly mobile populations navigating the multiplex, opaque social landscape of labor migration over time.

• A Large-Scale Survey of International Migrants from a Rural Area of Bangladesh

  Dr. Randall Kuhn, University of California, Los Angeles.

  This study augments a powerful data source for studying migrant and guest worker well-being, the Matlab Health and Socioeconomic Survey (MHSS). In 1996, MHSS1 collected rich data on a representative sample of 11,165 individuals living in Matlab, a high out-migration region of Bangladesh with a long history of population research. In 2012-2014, MATLAB undertook MHSS2, a follow-up of all surviving MHSS1 respondents, their descendants, and certain co-residents (32,825 respondents).

  Among prime-age male cohorts, more than 20% of males were living outside the country, with most in GCC states. MHSS2 surveyed more than 90% of targeted internal migrants, and 82% of international migrant males, the latter of whom were interviewed both in person during return visits for Eid festivals or via phone survey. This project uses a unique longitudinal survey on a representative sample of guest workers, internal migrants and non-migrants from the Matlab region of Bangladesh to GCC countries and other labor-importing states.

  The design enables the investigators to go beyond simply evaluating the main effects of migration by collecting new data on migration finance, manpower recruitment, and social networks that could help to explain the pathways to migration vulnerability and success.

• Recruiting International Migrant Labor: Theory and Evidence

  Dr. Yaw Nyarko (PI), Dr. Suresh Naidu (co-PI) and Dr. Shin-Yi Wang (co-PI), New York University Abu Dhabi, Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania.

  This project examines the distribution of gains in the context of workers from Asia seeking work opportunities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In particular, the investigators focus on how the recruitment process for workers and the labor supply chain affects the distribution of gains across workers, firms, and labor brokers (middlemen).

  The project collected data through two field experiments and an audit study. The first experiment studied a large number of workers screened by big UAE firms—some qualify but do not go to the UAE, others qualify and go to the UAE, and yet others do not qualify. By studying and surveying these three groups, the project gained insight into a wide range of questions, including the impact of migration, the heterogeneity of recruitment fees paid by different people, the interaction with skills, information asymmetries, and beliefs and perceptions on costs and benefits of migration.

• The Paradox of the Gulf as a Space of Aspiration and Freedom

  Dr. Caroline Osella, University of Sussex.

  This was a two-year, multi-sited augmentation project that builds on years of intense ethnographic field work in three districts in Kerala to continue ethnographic study of migrants, with a special focus on identifying the positive elements of the migration experience over the typical representation of migration as drudgery, exploitation, et cetera. The goal was to build on the investigators’ previous work and to add to that corpus of research narratives of the migration experience that are thought to be critical in shaping migration decisions.

• A Panel Study of Migration from South India

  Dr. Irudaya Rajan, Dr. Ganesh Seshan, and Dr. Sulagna Mookerjee, Center for Development Studies, The International Institute of Migration and Development Studies, The World Bank, Georgetown University, Qatar.

  The Center for Development Studies (CDS) conducted two augmentation studies on representative samples of households in Kerala: the 2016 survey builds on a 2011 household survey that includes 14,000 households in 14 districts, while the 2018 survey builds on household surveys in 1998, 2003, 2008, and 2013 for 22,000 households.

  The PIs broadly examine migration decisions by household members and the consequences thereof. Earlier research using this dataset sought to understand better the determinants of migration and the impact of migration on household incomes, studying remittance behavior, comparing migrants’ and families’ remittance expectations, knowledge of migrants’s salaries, and management of household finances. In this round of the Kerala Migration Survey (KMS), the PIs have added a component on the impact of migration on women left behind, allowing them to study whether a husband’s migration has implications for women’s autonomy in everyday life and in household decision-making.

  They have also added a question on the migrant’s social networks, exploring how the information and migration decision-making relate to the migrant’s social network of friends and acquaintances in the sending and receiving country. This augmentation project crucially allows us to analyze the effects of migration by tracing changes in household behavior before and after the migration event.

  The 2018 data includes a second follow-up survey conducted in the aftermath of the floods that affected much of Kerala.

• Norms Transmission through Migration: Evidence from the Philippines

  Dr. Caroline Theoharides (PI) and Dr. Susan Godlonton (Co-PI), Amherst College.

  This project studies norms transmission from the destination to origin country, looking specifically at fertility and contraceptive use among return migrants from Bahrain to the Philippines. The goal of the project was to inform orientation and reintegration programming for temporary contract firms. The project uses a difference in difference approach, exploiting variation in reproductive health policies of in the top 25 Philippines migration destinations to compare outcomes before and after reproductive laws were modified in host countries.

  It created a new, rich data set on the historical density of migrants by province and destination to construct a measure of exposure to norms in host country. It also validated Google trends data as a proxy for migration intensity using administrative data from the Philippines. This allowed the project to be extended to study norms transmission in sub-Saharan Africa, a newer migrant-sending region.

• Migration as a ‘risky gamble’: Places and networks of departure to the Gulf of Bangladeshi fishermen

  Dr. Aurélie Varrel and Dr. Marie Percot, French Institute of Pondicherry.

  This project was a small exploratory pilot study directed towards understanding the roles that brokers play in a small migration stream of individuals from two small islands—Hatiya and Sandwip—in Bangladesh moving to Oman to work as fishermen. The pilot showed promise because the migration stream is characterized by frequent experiences of failure, yet individuals continue to migrate.

  Understanding in detail a very specific niche in the migration experience sheds new light on dynamics that may be present in other contexts, including environmental degradation or hazard as a push factor. Further, this generation of migrants is the first of this migration niche, providing an opportunity for the PI to track the evolution of the niche from its very beginning.

• Recruitment of Temporary Migrant Workers and the Evolving Role of Sub-Agents in Sri Lanka

  Dr. Bilesha Weeraratne, Institute of Policy Studies.

  This pilot project was designed to study the involvement of informal sub-agents in the recruitment process of labor migration in Sri Lanka. As informal representatives of licensed agents who mediate between potential migrants and licensed agents, sub-agents are important stakeholders in the recruitment process of female domestic workers from Sri Lanka to the Gulf Cooperation Council countries (GCC). The study was limited to female domestic workers heading to the GCC. The immediate objective of the project was to assess the causal effect of the recent policy to rescind the recognition of sub-agents in Sri Lanka. The long-term objective of the proposed study was to pave the path for evidence-based policy formulation in regulating the involvement of sub-agents.

  The study collected information from migrants and licensed agents—the two groups who receive the services of sub-agents. The research adopted an innovative approach to building data structures of migrants before and after migration by adopting a cohort perspective of migrants instead of individual migrants.

  The project involved two survey waves of rolling samples of current and potential migrant households in three purposively selected districts in Sri Lanka. Survey data are complemented by key informant interviews with regulators and licensed recruitment agents. The study made an important contribution to recruitment literature in Sri Lanka by focusing on the rarely focused yet hidden, powerful, and important players in the migration process.

• Sri Lankan Migrant Workers in Kuwait and their Entitlements to Healthcare: Exploring the Role of Private and Public Actors

  Dr. Sajida Ally, Queen Mary University of London.

  This ethnographic project built on research on low-wage migrants’ health by elucidating the politics of migrant workers’ access to healthcare, particularly in how the structure and process of healthcare entitlement are mediated by transnational labor brokerage networks with resulting health inequities being created.

  It expanded the focus of emerging scholarship on domestic workers’ health rights in the GCC and policy analysis of state processes concerning migrant healthcare by examining how migrant workers’ healthcare protection, financing, and governance are distributed transnationally.

  The project was an interdisciplinary, mixed qualitative study that will be conducted in Sri Lanka and Kuwait. The PI built on extensive prior research on migration and women’s health in Sri Lanka and aims to recast understandings of the ethics of migrant labor recruitment by highlighting the intersections between health systems and migrant labor recruitment systems that span Sri Lanka and the Arab Gulf.

• Reviews, Ratings, and Resilience: The Promises and Perils of Revealing Labor Migrant, Job Agent, and Recruitment Firm Networks

  Dr. Daniel Karell and Dr. Rabia Malik, New York University Abu Dhabi.

  This project aimed to understand the intended and unintended consequences of providing information to migrants and agents in the labor recruitment context. Specifically, how does an information shock affect a market of clientelistic relationships?

  The PIs utilized novel foundational data about how migrants and their family members view agents and deployed a mobile phone questionnaire application to uncover the structure of the migrant-agent-recruiter network, measure agents’ pricing structures, implement a novel survey experiment while measuring network change, and explore a method for delivering information to migrants and agents. The project was conducted with migrants and agents in Pakistan, using both interviews and the phone application.

  The project’s findings contributed to scholarship on labor migration by identifying the relationships between agents and migrants and agents and recruitment firms, as well as how these relationships work. It also offered direct insight into how REALM can help reform migration practices by indicating how to develop and deploy a tool to identify, review, and rate actors in the migrant-agent-recruiter network—and then share this information while mitigating negative unintended consequences.

  This application helped REALM efficiently and effectively provide information to migrants and agents about the recruitment relationships they may be entering into.

• Sudanese Labor Migration Under the Adverse Economic Situation and the New Saudi Policies Towards Migrants and their Dependents

  Dr. Osman Nour, New York University Abu Dhabi.

  This project augmented a unique study of migrants from Sudan to Saudi Arabia conducted in 2014 by expanding both its conceptual scope and the size of its sample. It drew on an administrative dataset from the Sudanese government to construct a sample of migrants to Saudi Arabia.

  This project allowed new insight into the challenges facing Sudanese labor migrants in host countries and the role of networks in the flow of Sudanese migration to other countries. More specifically, it sought to uncover the consequences of new Saudi financial policies towards migrants and their dependents, both on migrants and their families and on economic and social conditions in Sudan.

  Changes in the Saudi economy at the time served as a natural experiment through which to examine how exogenous shocks to a host country’s economy reverberate through sending country communities.

• The Consequences of South-South Migration

  Dr. Nikhar Gaikwad, Columbia University.

  A large proportion of international employment flows in the world today occurs between nations in the Global South, yet there is a dearth of scholarly research on the economic and political effects of these new forms of South-South migration.

  This randomized controlled trial designed and evaluated the impact of international migration on migrants’ and their households’ economic, political, and social outcomes. The study was situated in the context of a virtually untapped migration corridor: Northeast India to the Persian Gulf. The research sought to understand the impact of access to migration opportunities and the act of migration.

  Specifically, the researchers analyzed whether migration improves the economic status of migrants and their household members and alters their economic outlooks and future behaviors. Furthermore, the study explored whether the experience of migration to high-capacity yet politically distinct states alters the political preferences of migrants, shapes their attitudes regarding democratic institutions and state policies, and transforms their political and cultural identities.

  This innovative research design facilitated a precise analysis of the ways in which opportunities for international employment alter individuals' attitudes and behaviors and offers the first experimental evidence on the consequences of migration in the Global South.

• Imagined Futures

  Anna Lunn, Charlotte Wang, and Peter Bearman, Center of Development Studies, Institute of Policy Studies, Incite Institute at Columbia University, with support from student interviewers at City University of New York.

  Imagined Futures leveraged research collaborations in Kerala, Sri Lanka, and Mizoram to build a cross-context comparative analysis of how international migration has shaped the way young people in migrant-sending countries imagine their future trajectories.

  This project offered a better understanding of how migration to the GCC shapes sending communities even among those who do not migrate and can anticipate how the younger generation of potential migrants perceives and engages with the experience of migration. By framing migration as a project that extends beyond financial costs and benefits into the realm of social and moral considerations, we sought to push the scholarly and policy conversation about migration beyond one of economic rationality to understand the complex motives and considerations of individuals who decide to leave their homes in search of work.

  This project drew on a sample of roughly 240 participants across three sites and employed both qualitative interview approaches and sequence data. This project was the final output of the REALM program and built on the collaborative opportunities between REALM investigators across a diverse set of sites and institutions.