Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology Online

Extract

The labor force includes those who work and those who are unemployed but wish to work. It is typically defined for a nation as a whole, or for a demographic or geographic subgroup within a nation. Migration is the movement of people across borders. If the borders are within a country, the migration is called internal or domestic migration, or simply migration. If the borders divide countries, it is international migration, with “immigration” denoting people entering a country and “emigration” denoting their exit. Social scientists’ interest in internal versus international migration has waxed and waned with the ebbs and flows of immigration. When US immigration was severely restricted in the 1920s, the study of immigration lost its luster; after the restrictions were lifted in the 1960s, it reemerged as a hot topic.Two focal points unite research on domestic or international migration and the labor force: how do migrants fare in the new labor market and what effect does migration have on “natives” of the host labor market? Similar methodological hurdles also shape research on the labor force and (internal or international) migration. These include how to discern migrant earnings and employment trajectories from cross-sectional and cohort data, whether to use the individual, the family, or the group as the unit of analysis, and how to disentangle migration effects on a host region's ... log in or subscribe to read full text