Politics or economics? International migration during the Nicaraguan Contra War

Journal of Latin American Studies

Volumn 37, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 29-53

  Lundquist, Jennifer H ^a   Massey, Douglas S ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS   (United States)

^b PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS; INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION; MIGRATION DETERMINANT; WAR;

CENTRAL AMERICA; COSTA RICA; NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES; WESTERN HEMISPHERE; WORLD;

EID: 15244356685     PISSN: 0022216X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X04008594     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. See A. Dowty, Closed Borders: The Contemporary Assault on Freedom of Movement (New Haven, 1987), pp. 234-50.
2. See Richard C. Jones 'Causes of Salvadorean migration to the United States,' The Geographical Review, vol. 79 (1989), pp. 193-4.
3. I b i d.
4. See also Edward Funkhouser, 'Mass emigration, remittances, and economic adjustment: the case of El Salvador in the 1980s,' in George J. Borjas and Richard B. Freeman (eds.), Immigration and the Workforce: Economic Consequences for the United States and Source Areas (Chicago, 1992), pp. 139-42.
5. See Edward Funkhouser, 'Migration from Nicaragua: Some Recent Evidence,' World Development, vol. 20 (1992), pp. 1211-2.
6. See William Stanley, 'Economic Migrants or Refugees from Violence? A Time Series of Analysis of Salvadorean Migration to the United States,' Latin American Research Review, vol. 22 (1987), pp. 147-8.
7. See Douglas Massey and Nolan J. Malone, 'Pathways to Legal Immigration,' Population Research and Policy Review, vol. 21 (2003), pp. 473-504.
8. See Nora Hamilton and Norma Stoltz Chinchilla, 'Central American Migration: A Framework for Analysis,' Latin American Research Review vol. 26 (1991), p. 75.
9. Anthony Richmond, 'Sociological Theories of International Migration: The Case of Refugees,' Current Sociology, vol. 36 (1988), p. 12.
10. See United States Immigration and Naturalization Service, Triennial Comprehensive Report on Immigration (http://www.immigration.gov, 2002).
11. I b i d.
12. The LAMP, which is co-sponsored by the Universities of Pennsylvania and Guadalajara with funding from the National Institutes of Health (grant R01-HD35848), is modelled on the Mexican Migration Project, which since 1987 has undertaken annual binational surveys of Mexican communities to study patterns and processes of migration to the United States. Since its inception in 1998 the LAMP has undertaken surveys of five communities in Puerto Rico, seven in the Dominican Republic, four in Peru, two in Paraguay, one in Haiti, four in Costa Rica, and five in Nicaragua. The LAMP data are available from the project website at: www.pop.upenn.edu/lamp/.
13. See Oded, Stark and David Bloom, 'The New Economics of Labor Migration,' American Economic Review, vol. 75 (1985), pp. 173-8.
14. As of 1998, GDP per capita in Costa Rica was 2.8 times greater than in its immediate northern neighbour ($5,987 versus $2,142 in dollars adjusted for purchasing power parity).
15. See I. Wallerstein, The Modern World System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1974), pp. 2-10,
16. D. Massey et al., Worlds In Motion: Understanding Migration at the End of the Millennium (Oxford, 1998), pp. 2-10,
17. and Guillermina Jasso and Mark Rosenzweig, 'Family Reunification and the Immigrant Multiplier: United States Immigration Law, Origin-Country Conditions, and the Reproduction of Immigrants,' Demography, vol. 23 (1988), p. 300.
18. Using the Lexis-Nexis news database, we created an annual count of articles featuring the following Boolean specifications: 'Nicaragua' and 'Contra' in the title along with 'kill(ed)' or 'death' and 'military' or 'battle' or 'fight(ing)' within the text. We then closely reviewed the articles and eliminated all coverage from our search which focused on the US Iran-Contra scandal more than on the war's actual escalation, as well as articles on the controversial 1990 elections. To ensure that counts derived from international press sources by the Lexis-Nexis database search reflected conflict levels in practice, we tested their accuracy by comparing them to war trends reported in the monthly Latin American Regional Reports on Central America. These reports are collected independently by a London publisher and culled directly from a variety of news sources throughout Central America. The pattern and magnitude of the violence trends reported by both sources over the ten-year period generally corroborate one another. We therefore conclude that the Lexis-Nexis measure constitutes a reliable and valid proxy for Contra violence levels.
19. See the following reports from United States Immigration and Naturalization Service: 1975 Annual Report of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (Washington, DC, 1976),
20. 1980 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (Washington, DC, 1981),
21. 1985 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (Washington, DC, 1986),
22. 1990 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (Washington, DC, 1991),
23. 1995 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (Washington, DC, 1996),
24. and 1998 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (Washington, DC, 1999).
25. See International Monetary Fund's International Financial Statistic (Washington, DC, 2001).
26. This measure is the average annual number of out migrants divided by the migrants' community's population size for that year. We then convert this measurement into the same scale as that for GDP and Contra War trends.
27. See Douglas S. Massey, 'When Surveys Fail: An Alternative Approach to Studying Illegal Migration,' in Arthur A. Stone et al. (eds.), The Science of the Self-Report: Implications for Research and Practice (New York, 1999), pp. 145-60,
28. and Douglas Massey and René Zenteno, 'A Validation of the Ethnosurvey: The Case of Mexico-United States Migration,' International Migration Review, vol. 34 (2000), pp. 765-92.
29. For more detailed information on the construction of these variables or the methodology behind the collection of the LAMP survey data, see the Latin American Migration Project web site at www.pop.upenn.edu/lamp.
30. However, it is important to note that none of the communities in our sample were located in direct war zones. If they had been, refugee displacement migration to Costa Rica would probably be more common than to the USA, because of the high costs and planning involved in migrating to the latter country.
31. See United Nations, Population, Environment, and Development (New York, 2002).
32. See James Wiley, 'Undocumented Aliens and Recognized Refugees: The Right to Work in Costa Rica,' International Migration Review, vol. 29 (1995), p. 426,
33. and Jimmy Rosales et al., 'Nicaragüenses en el Exterior,' in Luis Rosero Bixby (ed.), Población del Istmo (Costa Rica, 2001), p. 240.
34. Douglas Massey, 'Social Structure, Household Strategies, and the Cumulative Causation of Migration', Population Index, vol. 56 (1990), pp. 3-26.
35. See Richard C. Jones, 'Causes of Salvadoran migration to the United States,' pp. 193-4;
36. Edward Funkhouser, Immigration and the Workforce: Economic Consequences for the United States and Source Areas, pp. 139-42,
37. and Edward Funkhouser, 'Migration from Nicaragua: Some Recent Evidence', pp. 1211-2.