MIN ZHOU: Welcome to this seminar. Migration and development, an update on global trends.
MIN ZHOU: This event is jointly hosted by the Asia Pacific Center and Center for the Study of International Migration at UCLA.
MIN ZHOU: Our lecture today is part of the UCLA four course: Asian community, Intra-Asian migration, Diaspora Homeland Interaction and Identity Formation.
MIN ZHOU: I would like to thank the Eurasia foundation from Asia for their generous support of the course and webinar series.
MIN ZHOU: My name is Min Zhou, I'm Professor of Sociology and Asian American studies the water and Shelley one endowed chair in US-China relations and communications and director of the Asia Pacific Center at UCLA.
MIN ZHOU: The UCLA Asia Pacific Center promotes greater knowledge of, and understanding of Asia and the Pacific region on campus and in the community through innovative research, teaching public programs and international collaborations.
MIN ZHOU: We focus on Inter-Asian and Trans-Pacific connections from historical, contemporary,
MIN ZHOU: And comparative perspectives and encourage interdisciplinary work on cross border and supranational issues on language and culture,
MIN ZHOU: Politics, economy, and society, and the sustainability in ongoing processes of globalization. Our center runs the program on Central Asia, the Taiwan studies program, and the Hong Kong studies program. We are also an academic partner of the global Chinese philanthropy initiative.
MIN ZHOU: Today's seminar will be recorded, and we'll make it available on our center's website.
MIN ZHOU: Please use the Q&A function on the bottom of your screen to submit your questions. During the Q&A time after Professor Portes presentation, I will moderate the Q&A session and select your questions for Professor Portes.
MIN ZHOU: Now, it's my great pleasure to introduce today's speaker, my dear friend and colleague, Professor Alejandro Portes.
MIN ZHOU: Professor Portes received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin Madison.
MIN ZHOU: He is the Howard Harrison and Gabriel Snyder Beck Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Princeton University and currently Professor of Law and Distinguished Scholar of Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami.
MIN ZHOU: He is the founding director of the Center for Migration and Development at Princeton. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
MIN ZHOU: Professor Portes has published 40 books and journals special issues, and is the author of more than 250 articles and chapters on
MIN ZHOU: Migration and Development, Latin American and Caribbean urbanization, economic sociology, and children of immigrants.
MIN ZHOU: Some of his books and articles have won major academic awards, and have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese. His most recent books are: The State and the Grassroots; Immigrant Transnational organizations in Four Continents,
MIN ZHOU: Spanish Legacies: the Coming of Age of the Second Generation, and The Global Edge: Miami in the 21st Century.
MIN ZHOU: His current research is on the adaptation process of the immigrant second generation in comparative perspective, the role of institutions on national development and the comparative study of global cities.
MIN ZHOU: Professor Portes, it's a great honor to have you speak in my class and for our speaker series. My TA Brooke will show and advance your PPT slides during your talk. Please give a hand signal to her for advancing slides. Professor Portes, the floor is yours. Please go ahead.
Alejandro Portes: Thank you very much for that introduction Min. It's a pleasure to be with all of you, the one's, people who are attending that I cannot see. But I thank you for, for being present and a
Alejandro Portes: And to be in the class.
Alejandro Portes: Without further ado, I would launch on the, that is on the,
Alejandro Portes: On the discussion and there will be a PowerPoint presentation. We can start with the opening slide and then we go on to. There we go.
Alejandro Portes: The bearing of migration on national and local development has been a major topic in the economic, political, and sociological leaders sharing this field. Until recently, the major dividing this, in this literature, feature two competing views.
Alejandro Portes: Of the consequences over migration for the development of standing nations. The first of these camps as you can see, took a decidedly negative stance.
Alejandro Portes: On these relationships regarding I would migration, not only as a symptom,
Alejandro Portes: But as a cost of under development in sending countries. Well, the second school approach the matter from a far more optimistic position regarding our migration as a source of both
Alejandro Portes: Economic and cultural benefits for places of origin, and that under certain conditions could leave them out of poverty and backwards.
Alejandro Portes: I'm going to discuss in detail both positions next, but before doing so, it is important to know that both the schools
Alejandro Portes: Have neglected to discuss the consequences of migration for places of reception, that is where the immigrants come, and for the migrant themselves.
Alejandro Portes: These are important omissions because sizable migratory flows can also have major consequence for the social and economic development of the receiving countries.
Alejandro Portes: And localities, as well as on the life outcomes of those that actually do the moving. So a comprehensive approach and the theory of migration and development must consider these issues as well as their interactions.
Alejandro Portes: As a starting point,
Alejandro Portes: Next,
Alejandro Portes: To the following. Next one.
Alejandro Portes: To the following analysis, it is worth remarking that migratory movements have seldom succeeded in completely transforming either places of origin or destinations.
Alejandro Portes: Historical exceptions occur, including the so called barbarian invasions that did away with the Roman Empire, or the colonizing ventures of Western powers that destroy the pre-
Alejandro Portes: Existing civilizations in other parts of the world, ranging from the Americas, to Asia and Africa. These historical events are well known and need no recounting right now.
Alejandro Portes: During the last two centuries in the evolution of the world system, however, there are practically no instances in which migratory displacements have completely abandoned the political and economic system of entire nations. Next slide. As we shall see, it is more commonly, next
Alejandro Portes: The case that more migratory movements,
Alejandro Portes: That is a, more migratory movements have contributed to reinforce existing relationships of economic power and class privilege in either sending or receiving regions. To the extent to which they do so, actually represents a central question for any attempt at fashioning,
Alejandro Portes: This is not yet ready, back, back, back on the slides.
Alejandro Portes: Next one.
Alejandro Portes: Next, okay there, that's where we are.
Alejandro Portes: Okay.
Alejandro Portes: So does migrant, the question now is, does migration contribute to development. Let's look at the sending areas.
Alejandro Portes: A number of conferences of the scholars in the so called global south have produced a series of declarations denouncing
Alejandro Portes: Immigration as detrimental to the economic and social development of sending localities and region and illustration, or is the so called declaration of Cuernavaca issued after conference that brought together scholars from Mexico, the Philippines, Morocco, and sending countries.
Alejandro Portes: Next,
Alejandro Portes: Next,
Alejandro Portes: No.
Alejandro Portes: Before that,
Alejandro Portes: Before.
Alejandro Portes: There we go. That is the declaration of Cuernavaca
Alejandro Portes: Signed by third world scholars a few years ago and as you can see, as you can read it. I don't need to read it for you because it is in the screen. Decidedly negative. ___ decided negative tone toward their relationship between
Alejandro Portes: Migration and development.
Alejandro Portes: These unrelated statements bring forward the point that out migration things to the populate and in poverty, sending regions and simultaneously consolidate on equal relations of power. It's in them.
Alejandro Portes: This critical position focuses primarily on low skilled labor migration out of sending conference, in neglect the flow of highly skilled personnel.
Alejandro Portes: As well as a possibility that migrants return. The implicit image in this declaration and other negative views of the relationship in between immigration and development, is that of a one way flow out of misery and one, leaving behind ever emptier, and ever poor rich.
Alejandro Portes: There is a second point of view, the alternative and more positive school tends to emphasize precisely the return of migrants that can make significant contributions to local and national development. Next
Alejandro Portes: First of all, as you can see there is the flow of remittances to kin and other in sending areas, that to the surprise of governments and international agency can reach, in the aggregate, enormous figures.
Alejandro Portes: By now it has become commonplace to note that the flow of migrant remittances vastly exceeds the amount of international aid
Alejandro Portes: transfer from wealthy to less developed countries, and that it's many small sending countries remittances early exceeds the foreign exchange and by that country's export. Next.
Alejandro Portes: As a young Salvadorian sociologist told us in a conference on the topic many years ago, he said, forget about foreign aid, forget about transfers and so on. Migration and remittances have become the true program of economic survival for the people of our country,
Alejandro Portes: Critical Global South scholars have dismissed the developmental potential of remittances with comments to the fact that they are spent mostly on consumption, and not on investment.
Alejandro Portes: And that they create a disincentive for work and entrepreneurship in sending areas that come to depend increasingly on these money transfers.
Alejandro Portes: To the contrary, other scholars point to the multiplier effects that remittances can have in receiving in sending countries and to their investment potential. As my good, as our good friend Dodd Massey
Alejandro Portes: summarize that alternative position a few years ago. Next.
Alejandro Portes: So that's a more positive position that Massey summarizes in this statement about the possibile, the potential positive effects
Alejandro Portes: Of international migration on the development of sending regions. To a large ___ I like to point out, the difference between these two opposite views linger on their outlook of migration as permanent versus cyclical.
Alejandro Portes: It turns out that permanent migration, do depopulate and ___ local areas, but cyclical migration can actually improve their prospects both like the initial flow of remittance
Alejandro Portes: Followed by the return of migrants themselves. Migrant returnees can bring with them not only savings, but skills learned abroad.
Alejandro Portes: These can energize regions of earned origin turning their economy toward new and profitable investments. As a former student of mine and an expert on out migration from Central America, but Patricia Landolt summarize a few years ago. Next.
Alejandro Portes: Leave it there. The time spent abroad that defines a migrant journey as temporary versus permanent is not entirely clear. The difference often depends on the work done abroad and whether the families come along.
Alejandro Portes: At one extreme, young, unaccompanied migrants hired for agriculture and construction abroad for one or two years, classify as temporary.
Alejandro Portes: On the other hand, a skilled worker coming with his or her family with a renewal five year permit to the United States, approaches the definition of permanent out migration.
Alejandro Portes: Now a related literature pertains to the migration of high __ capital individuals. Here the lines of contention follow a parallel course to the one I have just outlined. Next one.
Alejandro Portes: Critics of the so called brain drain, decry the loss of talent for poor countries are investing resources in training individuals that they go along.
Alejandro Portes: Attempts to attract professionals back home generally fail because of the superiority of the economic rewards that under better possibilities
Alejandro Portes: For further professional advancement abroad rather than remain at home. Hence the migration of highly skilled talent is seen from this negative perspective as a non-mediated loss for sending nations, but that is not the whole story.
Alejandro Portes: A more recent literature has pointed out, however, that the many contributions that expatriate professionals can make to they're sending
Alejandro Portes: regions and nations. They include not only monetary remittances, but knowledge transfers, an actual entrepreneurial investments,
Alejandro Portes: And philanthropic donations. Unlike the contributions of low skilled labor migrants to places of origins that are generally limited to family remittances
Alejandro Portes: For local works, those of professionals can have a national level repercussions on the development over the sending countries. Next. Annalise Saxenian who have really studied this matter in detail for many years,
Alejandro Portes: and pointed out the emergence of high-tech technical innovation polls in cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad, in India and Shanghai,
Alejandro Portes: In China, Tel Aviv, and Israel could not have occurred without the contributions of their expatriate professionals and scientific communities abroad.
Alejandro Portes: As in the case of low scale migration, the conflict between these opposite position pivots on the temporarily, temporarily of the journey.
Alejandro Portes: Permanent departures do harm sending nations by depriving them of professional talent, often that has often been trained at great costs.
Alejandro Portes: Temporary sojourns prevent this, and also allow high skilled migrants to both acquire new skills and accumulate savings, both to the benefit
Alejandro Portes: Of receiving countries. On the other hand, this is a very important, Next, please.
Alejandro Portes: To a larger extent than regular migrants, professional migrants have the option in their power of rendering their permanent migration circular. I repeat,
Alejandro Portes: Of rendering permanent migration circular, and this happened when
Alejandro Portes: despite having permits for permanent residence in the receiving countries, highly skilled individuals return home frequently
Alejandro Portes: And engaging in a variety of a location and philanthropic activities to their benefit of sending localities and countries.
Alejandro Portes: This apparent paradox, the circularity of permanent high skilled migration is actually more common among older and better established
Alejandro Portes: Expatriates. Generally, newly arriving immigrants are often too busy carving a place for themselves in the institutions that employ them and the communities where they settle, to have much time and resources for activities back home.
Alejandro Portes: It is only after a period after a few years when their economic situation and occupational status become secure, that they acquire the resources and motivation necessary to invest in their home countries.
Alejandro Portes: Next one, please.
Alejandro Portes: So here is here is a figure that summarizes what I have been discussing about. Here you have in the column permanent versus cyclical migration.
Alejandro Portes: Of both low skilled rural and urban workers and professionals and other highly skilled
Alejandro Portes: Migrants. I'm going to leave that figure for a while so that you can read the consequences of permanent out migration in both cases, and the consequences of cyclical migration, including permanent migration that had been rendered cyclical by the actions of the migrants
Alejandro Portes: Themselves. Unlike remittances, and most investments by low skilled migrants in their communities of origin, transfers by expatriate professionals right here,
Alejandro Portes: Can be considerable. They include investment in new enterprises, information about the most recent scientific and technological innovations abroad,
Alejandro Portes: Endowment of educational and research institutions, and multiple philanthropic activities. Professor Min Zhou, who is attending the lecture, is very familiar
Alejandro Portes: With how these transfers, they have taken place in her own country and the effects that they can have on receiving localities and regions for development. So this is, that is this figure, in a sense, this
Alejandro Portes: Is a graphic and shorthand way of summarizing these four differences between permanent and cyclical low skill and professional migration. So, let me go on to the next topic.
Alejandro Portes: The operational concept coined in the sociology of immigration. Next slide please.
Alejandro Portes: To deal with these activities constructed by migrant between countries of origin and those of destination, that concept is transnationalism. That's what we have learned to call it.
Alejandro Portes: The concept seeks to separate three types of activities that are conducted across borders. First, the international activities that are conducted
Alejandro Portes: By governments and other institutional actors based in a single country. Second, the multinational initiatives of global economic corporation,
Alejandro Portes: World churches like the Catholic Church, and other actors based in multiple nations from the transnational contacts and enterprises that are carried out by people at the grassroot, like common people. Next slide please.
Alejandro Portes: This, this figure summarizes these distinction. There are the activities, the international activities by government and other major actors based on a single country like embassies, diplomatic
Alejandro Portes: diplomatic ties, all kinds of thing by major corporation, the multinational activities carried out by the United Nations and Catholic Church and others.
Alejandro Portes: Both in the political, economic and sociological level and the transnational activities that are conducted by
Alejandro Portes: Common people that is the majority of people. And not all these transnational activities are conducted by migrants themselves. There are other types of transnational activities. For example, the activities of grassroots
Alejandro Portes: activists that are, that are concerned with the exploitation of workers in poorer nations and organize across countries in order to essentially shame multinational corporations that exploit,
Alejandro Portes: That exploit workers in third world countries. Organizing boycotts of, by, to compel multinationals to improve their labor practice and under third world labor forces. So in that sense,
Alejandro Portes: A migrant transnational are one type of transnational activism, that is conducted by migrants, at the political level by organizing hometown civic associations to improve their sending communities at the economic level by establish heavy
Alejandro Portes: By migrants to export, import some goods and at the sociocultural level, you have sort of the election of beauty queens.
Alejandro Portes: From communities abroad that, that travel to their home communities to say hello and visit there and over
Alejandro Portes: And the travel of migrants back home to celebrate the festivities of their, of their countries and so on. So this diagram, these cross border activities by different types of factors summarizes a, this, so, in this context, next one. Immigrant. Next one. Immigrant transnationalism.
Alejandro Portes: No the earlier one.
Alejandro Portes: Ok, from there, next one.
Alejandro Portes: Well, leave it there we'll see. In this context immigrant transnationalism.
Alejandro Portes: Should be envisioned as one form of popular cross-country activism, involving grassroots actors participating in a variety of cultural, religious and cultural endeavors. You're going ahead of the lecture so go back.
Alejandro Portes: To the next slide, if that's what you have, then leave it there.
Alejandro Portes: Um,
Yeah.
Alejandro Portes: What I like to point out is that, that transnational activities by immigrants involved not only in the view of some families, but the organizations that immigrants create abroad,
Alejandro Portes: For transfer, that can transfer economic resources, technological knowledge, and cultural innovation.
Alejandro Portes: Governments are sending countries that become interested in profiting from the economic resources and cultural know-how, acquired by their expatriate communities must necessarily deal
Alejandro Portes: With organizations, rather than individuals. That's why immigrant or transnational organizations are so important.
Alejandro Portes: The government of China or the government of Mexico try to establish ties with their expatriates abroad do not deal with individual A or B. They deal with organizations.
Alejandro Portes: Organizations of expatriate professional hometown community associations and the like. So that's, that's what I wanted to point.
Alejandro Portes: Fine. That is, with that we leave that topic of transnationalism and I wanted to talk about the specific case of refugees, because for the most part,
Alejandro Portes: Immigration has, tends to focus on labor migration, either by low skilled migrants, or by professional migrants, omitting the importance of refugee flows.
Alejandro Portes: Why labor migrations are generally perceived as the normative cross-national movement of population, those of refugees, escaping political or civil unrest in their home countries should not be neglected.
Alejandro Portes: But unlike labor migrations that are generally oriented over the richer countries, many refugees refugees movements are really south to south.
Alejandro Portes: They go from one country to another, and that had been the case generally in the, in continents like Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Alejandro Portes: For example, the recent exodus of the Muslim Rohingya population of Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh, is an example of South to South
Alejandro Portes: To South, refugee migration as it is the case of Venezuelans escaping the disaster that their country have become. Escaping to Colombia, Ecuador and Peru nearby.
Alejandro Portes: As _____ _____, one of the major figures in the political history of migration noted years ago,
Alejandro Portes: Refugee movements originate primarily in struggles about the creation and the control of national states.
Alejandro Portes: The exodus of Bosnians, Croatians and others from the imploding Yugoslavian nation,
Alejandro Portes: And those of Q1 seeking to escape, escape the communist revolution in their island, provide illustrations of exodus, refugee exodus, because of a struggles for
Alejandro Portes: The creation of control of the states. And certainly, so those, the more recent Venezuela massive
Alejandro Portes: outlook. The sending countries of refugee urgent or refugee flows are consistently ruled dictatorially by elites that brew no opposition to their power.
Alejandro Portes: Democracies very seldom produce refugee outputs that is very important. It's usually dictatorships in the struggle for national state that produce refugee flows. Democracies very seldom do that.
Alejandro Portes: Generally refugee flows tend to be seen in the receiving countries as a burden, that in many countries may be ill equipped,
Alejandro Portes: ill prepared to accommodate their Rohingya, or the Venezuelans and so on. And certainly the recent experience of Turkey,
Alejandro Portes: Greece, and even Germany, straining under the weight of massive, massive scale from Syria and Afghanistan provide contemporary examples.
Alejandro Portes: Other East European countries simply refuse to let Middle Eastern refugees come in under the argument that they would impose an intolerable economic burden.
Alejandro Portes: Even the United States, until recently, the most compassionate western country in receiving refugee flows, you know, usually
Alejandro Portes: Usually averaging more than 100,000, has closed its door, its doors under the President Trump administration.
Alejandro Portes: And the most recent announcement of that administration is, that it is limiting refugee inflows to the United States to only 15,000 a year, which is less than a 10th of what, of the number that the United States was admitting only a few years ago. Next slide.
Alejandro Portes: Under certain circumstances, however, it turns out that the refugee outflows are not really a burden, cannot be a burden to
Alejandro Portes: To the country's receiving them, but a boon, because of the knowledge, the expertise, and the resources that they escapees bring with them.
Alejandro Portes: That was certainly the case with Jewish businessmen and professionals that were fleeing persecution by the Nazis in Germany
Alejandro Portes: In the 1940s, and made extraordinary intellectual and economic contribution to the receiving countries, in particular the United States.
Alejandro Portes: Similarly, the exodus of Q1 upper and middle classes escaping the communist revolution at home, led to the rise of Miami
Alejandro Portes: As the hegemonic economic, as the hemispheric economic power becoming in a few years, the financial and commercial capital of Latin America.
Alejandro Portes: It would be no exaggeration to say that the transformation of Miami from a provincial winter resort into an emerging global city would not have happened
Alejandro Portes: Without successive refugee flows first from Cuba, and later on from other countries in Latin America.
Alejandro Portes: It was actually exiled Q1 bankers who fully appreciated the geographic advantage of Miami.
Alejandro Portes: And that went to Latin America to inform investors and bankers of the many advantages of doing business, business in their language in Miami, rather than going to this time, New York.
Alejandro Portes: And the same group was instrumental in persuading the state of Florida to pass a law allowing the presence of foreign banks in
Alejandro Portes: Miami. As a result, the Brickell Financial District in Miami grew up to become the second largest center of banking and finance in the East Coast just next to New York. Well I'm going to leave.
Alejandro Portes: Next one, please.
Alejandro Portes: Popular uprisings leading to revolutionary regimes of the left, have been most consistent in triggering departure of high-net worth, high-human capital individuals
Alejandro Portes: Who then go on to make significant to the contributions to the places that have received them.
Alejandro Portes: The present exodus of, from Venezuela includes a significant number of such persons going primarily to Miami, also to Spain, and secondarily to Peru and Chile.
Alejandro Portes: All these places of destination may expect to benefit significant from the tragedy of Venezuela.
Alejandro Portes: Similarly, the mass departure of Iranian entrepreneurs and professionals, following the takeover of their country by religious fanatics, have had similar effects.
Alejandro Portes: That exodus of Iranians went primarily to the United States mostly to California, and today Iranian exiles and their childrens have
Alejandro Portes: Average levels of occupational status and income that amply surpassed the levels of the, of the American population as a whole.
Alejandro Portes: On the other hand, it is seldom the case, that refugee groups once establish abroad, turn around to visit their countries of origins or make significant economic or educational contributions then, next one.
Alejandro Portes: There's that of refugees is an instance of what we call, we can call "blocked transnationalism"
Alejandro Portes: Where activities directed toward their home nations aim primarily at trying to dislodge the regime in power that expelled refugees, or get their families out of their reach.
Alejandro Portes: Cuban exiles in South Florida never engaged in the productive transnational activities that professional immigrants from China, India,
Alejandro Portes: Have done in their countries and similar, Iranians in California are not going to support any kind of activities in favor of the Iran, of the present Iranian
Alejandro Portes: Regime. Consolidated regimes of the left in less developed countries often find themselves confronting economic scarcity in part because of their own mistakes,
Alejandro Portes: And then try to entice their communities abroad to, to reconcile with and make its economic or knowledge transfers
Alejandro Portes: To the, to their sending countries. Certainly there was a case of Vietnam, who have repeatedly tried to coerce the Vietnamese community in the United States to go back and to engage in the regular remittances
Alejandro Portes: Transfers and knowledge transfer that, that older communities or regular immigrants do. But generally,
Alejandro Portes: Refugees do not bite. The first generation refugees from Vienna or from Cuba from Iran are not going to accept these kinds of overchers from still dictatorial regimes. So what they have done,
Alejandro Portes: Is turn to the second generation. Children of refugees that have become established and some that have grown up with Americans tend to be more tolerant, sometimes more nostalgic about the countries of their elders and therefore more pliable
Alejandro Portes: Than the third generation in making these very important transnational transfers over resources and such.
Alejandro Portes: While second generation transnationalism is tends to be weaker than that engaged by first generation immigrants,
Alejandro Portes: It does creates a door for descendants of major refugee groups to maintain some kind of ties and provide some support for their home country, as you can see in the next figure. Next.
Alejandro Portes: So as you can see this some synthesize the adaptation pattern of refugee groups in the United States and Western Europe.
Alejandro Portes: And this is the first generation immigrants and they basically console, try to consolidate their positions and concerning their sending countries,
Alejandro Portes: The operational work is blocked transnationalism. They are not, they are not going to travel or make contributions abroad. So, in the second generation that has moved ahead,
Alejandro Portes: Like the Vietnamese Americans, Cuban Americans, and so on into the receiving country, then there is, for them there is diminished resentment toward the home regime because
Alejandro Portes: These young people are not the ones who lost their proper ___ of their homes, and who harbor a resentment toward the regime that expelled them, and sometimes are more willing for nostalgic and other reasons to go back
Alejandro Portes: To go back home. So this third figure synthesize the discussion so far.
Alejandro Portes: Now let me go to a final topic that I want to discuss. Namely, migration and development, the impact of migration on the development of the receiving countries.
Alejandro Portes: Rather than the sending countries. Most of the literature on, on migration and development focuses on the sending countries and omitting the receiving ones.
Alejandro Portes: Refugee flows generally trigger as we have seen, are concerned about the burden that they impose on host nations, although in many instances, as I have mentioned, they are not making very important economic and cultural contributions to the receiving case.
Alejandro Portes: Next slide please.
Alejandro Portes: The presence of sizable foreign populations have generally been viewed in receiving countries from the standpoint of their assimilation or not
Alejandro Portes: To their host society, and of course endless debate have followed as Professor
Alejandro Portes: Zhou knows well, endless debate follow about the likely negative effects of the presence of immigrants in on the receiving society and culture.
Alejandro Portes: Neglected from these debates are the fundamental economic benefits that migration can bring,
Alejandro Portes: Can bring to the development of receiving countries. Indeed, there is a reason why such movements happen at all. And why when immigrants do not come in spontaneously, they have been deliberately recruited by firms, and other employers in agriculture, mining, and industry and today,
Alejandro Portes: In high tech corporations in the United States that could scarcely function and move ahead without the arrival of
Alejandro Portes: High tech, highly trained, professionals from abroad primarily from China and India
Alejandro Portes: Earlier on the great American Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century could not have happened,
Alejandro Portes: Could not have happened, without the millions of recruited immigrants from southern Italy, Poland, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
Alejandro Portes: Likewise, the Great North American project linking the entire continent by rail in the 19th century could not have occurred without the thousands of recruited Cooley workers from Southern China that were deliberately recruited to produce this. The examples could be multiplied. Next.
Alejandro Portes: For example, America, it's generally agreed, that American agriculture would cease to exist without the presence of migrant workers.
Alejandro Portes: And at the other end of the economy, the rise of Silicon Valley Route 128 and other centers of high technology innovation would not have been possible
Alejandro Portes: Without the contributions of thousands, literally thousands, of Indian, Chinese and other engineers and scientists coming from abroad.
Alejandro Portes: The contributions of immigrants are not limited, however, to their labor power and their work skills. They also include elements of their culture that help diversify and enrich
Alejandro Portes: What otherwise would be a rather gray social world in receiving countries. The incorporation of elements of foreign culture from who we seen
Alejandro Portes: To national festivities, have helped turn American society into what it is today, a diverse and energetic cultural ___ rather than a uniform one. The key point, next one.
Alejandro Portes: The key point is this. The key point is that by and large, the principal contributions of migration to development turn out to have been primarily in the receiving
Alejandro Portes: Countries. Not the sending ones the receiving countries, as they have profited enormously from the energies of immigrants, their know how, and their labor power to build up their economy and their culture.
Alejandro Portes: From the viewpoint of political leaders of the host nations. What happens to migrant sending regions and countries is almost an afterthought, they have actually benefitted greatly from different migration flows.
Alejandro Portes: Not everyone in the receiving countries recognizes what I have just said, that is the normal developmental potential of migration.
Alejandro Portes: On the contrary, important sectors of the native population, particularly among the less educating, less educated classes,
Alejandro Portes: Take a negative view of the foreign presence, accusing them of taking jobs and resources away from citizens, in this case American citizens.
Alejandro Portes: And for that reason, organizations of the working class, commonly unions have generally been opposed to the continuation or expanding of migration. Next slide.
Alejandro Portes: The situation in many developed country not only the United States, but many all ___ feature a struggles of various degrees of intensity
Alejandro Portes: Between nativists that are opposed to continuing immigration, which seemed to be getting the upper hand these days in the United States,
Alejandro Portes: And firms and employers that depend on migration and view it as absolutely fundamental for their survival and economic growth.
Alejandro Portes: This struggle exists today in many receiving countries, even in nations threatened by declined fertility levels and the relentless aging of their population.
Alejandro Portes: Japan, Japan is the clear example where the firm opposition of the Japanese to compromise the nation's cherished cultural homogeneity
Alejandro Portes: Has led to rapid population loss and aging. Japan a country of 120 million, now faces a demographic decline of almost half
Alejandro Portes: Half, that is, of almost a million persons per year and the most aged population in the advanced world.
Alejandro Portes: Eastern European countries reluctant to admit immigrants, such as Austria and Hungary confront a similar developing
Alejandro Portes: A similar problem. The only developed nations that have so far, I would say so far, avoided rapid demographic decline.
Alejandro Portes: Including the United States, Canada, and Spain, are those that have been willing and able to receive millions of immigrants in recent years.
Alejandro Portes: So to conclude, and in synthesis, the relationship of migration to development is a contested one
Alejandro Portes: Both in sending and receiving countries, but for different reasons, for different reasons. Nationalists and nativists uniformly denounce migration.
Alejandro Portes: But while those in the sending countries lament the loss of population and human capital, by the departure of migrant those in the receiving world focus on greater labor migrant competition and the decline in cultural homogeneity and cohesiveness.
Alejandro Portes: Next. Benefits of migration in both instances are more long term, and more difficult to grasp at first glance, and it is partly because of this.
Alejandro Portes: That opponents often gain the upper hand supporting nationalist and populist leaders, as we are seeing today in this country's promise to stop or drastically reduce immigration and even build
Alejandro Portes: A wall of thousands of kilometers. This figure, the last figure in my lecture right summarizes these trends.
Alejandro Portes: The recent rise of native populism in a number of advanced countries, including the United States, ___ to give restrictionists the political upper hand
Alejandro Portes: Eliminating or drastically reducing flows of both labor migrants and refugees. While short term, this outcome would certainly be celebrated by the nationalist,
Alejandro Portes: Long term, they would have, for reasons that I have described in this lecture, serious negative demographic and cultural consequences for the countries that have received migration today.
Alejandro Portes: Thank you very much.
MIN ZHOU: Thank you very much, Professor Portes for your excellent and thought provoking lecture. And I have learned a lot, and so before I open questions up to the audience
MIN ZHOU: I would like to, I mentioned to you that the audience are coming from
MIN ZHOU: UCLA and also all over the country, as far as beyond, in China and Singapore, so
MIN ZHOU: So we are operating in different time zones, and so for those in the audience.
MIN ZHOU: Please write your questions in the Q&A box, I will select them as it goes. Let me start with a few questions on your lecture and one is on migration and development. So you say it so well about
MIN ZHOU: The impact of migration on immigrant remittances as well as development in the sending country. Could you
MIN ZHOU: Say, explain more about the relationship between different type of migration on home land development, like cyclical versus permanent migration, could you say something more about that?
Alejandro Portes: Sure. Well, that was in one of the diagrams, that you saw that's why I had these four diagram in the lecture and one of them have to do with, with this issue.
Alejandro Portes: If you have permanent, let's say, if you have permanent migration permanent migration have run the risk of depopulating sending
Alejandro Portes: Sending regions. Depopulating them everybody leaves, the place becoming impoverished. That's what the scholars that signed the declaration of Cuernavaca have in mind.
Alejandro Portes: And they also have the consequence of entrenching the ruling elites in sending regions and so on that use migration as a safety valve.
Alejandro Portes: That is whoever kind of find employment and so on, they go abroad and that allows entrenched elites to to remain in power.
Alejandro Portes: And so on. And basically, the benefits of this kind of migration accrue to the receiving countries.
Alejandro Portes: In terms of the labor power and so on. But the sending ones, what they, why they leave his whole. Same thing with a highly skilled
Alejandro Portes: Migration, the idea of the brain drain, was the dominant view until very recently on the, on the
Alejandro Portes: On the, on the movement of professional migrants abroad, mainly ___ that this movement represented
Alejandro Portes: A net loss for poor countries to expand scarce resources to train professionals at once they graduated when abroad and did not make
Alejandro Portes: Necessarily a significant contribution. That view, that general view has been superseded in the other, in others by your own work, but also by work
Alejandro Portes: Your own work in China, but also by that of Agrawala in India and several, other, several in Saxenia, to point out that expatriate communities assign these professionals and so on,
Alejandro Portes: Can and do make a significant contribution to the development of sending, to the to the technological and educational development of sending
Alejandro Portes: Regions and entire countries because of the transfer, they can make both of economic resources and know how. China had been a net beneficiary of the transfer their expatriate professionals and scientists
Alejandro Portes: As well as in India, the high tech polls in India could not have emerged without the contribution thousands upon thousands of Indian engineers and scientists abroad, primarily
Alejandro Portes: In the United States. So in the case of professionals I emphasize that point in the lecture I said that
Alejandro Portes: They may, they may be permanent, permanent in the sense of having a permanent visas to live in they're, they're receiving countries in the United States, but they can make
Alejandro Portes: They can make permanent permanent migration cyclical, on their own. On their own volition by their own initiatives to
Alejandro Portes: Go back home, transfer, participate and so on. So they can they can increase the cyclicality of migration to the benefit of sending countries. Those, those professionals that go abroad
Alejandro Portes: And sort of clean out their hands from wherever they came and never go back. And never go back. They, they are a net loss, a net loss for the
Alejandro Portes: Sending countries and regions, but the fact is that most immigrants brought both low skill and high skill
Alejandro Portes: Do not do that. They do not, they do not say well I arrive and goodbye because they have family residence and loyalties
Alejandro Portes: At home, including to the institutions that train them and that allow them to succeed abroad so they maintain this __ and for that reason
Alejandro Portes: Professional migration is often of a cyclical character. A key question is to what extent the receive, the sending countries, the sending states create the necessary institutional framework for these contributions by their migrants to be made, that need to, the necessary
Alejandro Portes: Appropriate regime so that their investments can be guarantee and the necessary institutional regime so that their technology transfers and so on can be received and made and and and and put to proper use in sending institutions of higher learning and science.
MIN ZHOU: Thank you. Thank you very much. Let me ask another question. And then I go to the questions from the audience that question is
MIN ZHOU: Just, like towards the end of the talk, you talk about the development potential of immigration and the benefit to the receiving society that not, you know, not many people are aware of those potential contributions, especially from the lower socio economic status of the native population.
MIN ZHOU: When we talk about transnationalism, then we seem to
MIN ZHOU: Focus more on the role of the sending state, not the receiving state. And then when we talk about migration, you know, the receiving states role is prominent.
MIN ZHOU: How can we reconcile this two, like migration and transnationalism the role of the state, like theorize the way that the State could play a role in these processes.
Alejandro Portes: Well, I think that the, that is the general view from the point of view of the of the political nativists that are opposed to migration.
Alejandro Portes: They denounced that they often, they identified transnational activities of immigrants, including immigrant personal tend to denounce them as potentially, potentially treasonous
Alejandro Portes: As disloyal to the country that is receiving them, and it also slows down the process of assimilation.
Alejandro Portes: Cultural assimilation in the receiving country because they, they keep going back home and making transfers there instead of remaining in the United States and so on. These denounciations are very common and generally false. That is actually
Alejandro Portes: Many times the transnational activities of migrants help the process of incorporation in the receiving countries by generating the resources
Alejandro Portes: by transferring information, and by solidifying that the, the immigrant communities abroad in terms of certainly where they came from and their cultural, their cultural roots. So in the United States
Alejandro Portes: successive generations of immigrants from the poor Italians and polls that came in the early ,in the, in the late 1990s and early 20th century to work in in the American industries to the more recent
Alejandro Portes: Migration from, from India and Korea and so on, it is the case that the bulk of immigration, both
Alejandro Portes: makes progress and incorporates itself in in the receiving society, and at the same time, is able in the first generation especially to maintain ties
Alejandro Portes: To make contribute, to make educational and scientific contributions and send remittances to the folks and to their kin and to their communities abroad. There is no this is no zero sum game that two things happen at the same time and they tend to, they tend to reinforce
Alejandro Portes: One another. So basically the attacks
Alejandro Portes: The attacks on on immigrant communities by nativists, both in the United States and Western Europe and Japan are profoundly misguided in the sense that
Alejandro Portes: These, these immigrant rules are necessary. Economic, economically, in order for agriculture and other sectors of the receiving countries to
Alejandro Portes: To thrive and develop, and also, the transnational activities that these immigrants engage in are not a sign of disloyalty. They are a very common signs of
Alejandro Portes: Interest in both and often a a breach and a and a source of resources for more successful incorporation in the country in the countries that they now live in.
MIN ZHOU: Thank you. And now questions. There are a lot of questions from the audience. And I'll just select some and group some together. And a few questions
MIN ZHOU: suggests the impact of immigration and transnationalism, not only on the first generation but, how would the disadvantages and advantages of
MIN ZHOU: Migration and immigrant transnationalism of the first generation get extended to the second generation. Just now, I remember you mentioned that the second generation refugees in particular, they are less burdened by, you know, the parents.
MIN ZHOU: You know the reasons to push, that push the parents out of their home country. So the second generation are more nostalgic and they, they may be more receptive to transnationalism among the refugee second generation. So could you shed light on that?
Alejandro Portes: Sure. Well, your own studies of the Vietnamese community that you have written extensively shows that while the first generation Vietnamese
Alejandro Portes: Refugees are adamant. That they are not going to contribute to Vietnam. They are not going to send remittances. They are not going to send money back. They are not going to make an investment because they
Alejandro Portes: Are still reeling from the effects of their drama, just like the Q1 third generation was adamant in not traveling back, not contributing in any way to the Q1 regime.
Alejandro Portes: By the second generation that had been sort of a race in the United States, and more. It is more
Alejandro Portes: Had not suffered these things, the possibilities of going back it steers their curiosity it's kind of a nostalgic, a nostalgic
Alejandro Portes: journey back to the countries of their ancestors, and often governments of sending countries, these communist dictatorships trying to take advantage of that to
Alejandro Portes: To produce remittances and contributions and so on. Vietnam had become very adept at courting the second generation because they, the first, they don't have it.
Alejandro Portes: And the, and the same thing have happened, has happened in in the case of Cuba, the Iranian mullahs the fanatic that rule Iran have not been so keen on curving their community because of all
Alejandro Portes: Of their own religious conviction, but that has often been the case. That said, I think that second generation transnationalism is casual.
Alejandro Portes: After the first or second nostalgic visit, the, it is not the case that many members of the second generation engage in a regular pattern of knowledge and economic transfers back home. They can do it once or twice and so on, because their lives are here.
Alejandro Portes: They are already, their life, they are fully incorporated into into American society and culture. They are basically America.
Alejandro Portes: And therefore, their interest on on the countries of, on the country of origin, their ancestral home is so nostalgic from time to time, but it is seldom regular
Alejandro Portes: And it does not, it is not as powerful contribution to
Alejandro Portes: To the economic and social development in the sending countries as first generation immigrants can make and in the case of first generation immigrant,
Alejandro Portes: Regular immigrants, like regular Indian immigrants, regular Chinese, Korean immigrants are very much engaged in these transfers, whereas the refugees third generation refugees block it. The don't
Alejandro Portes: Make those transfers, precisely because of their committed opposition to the regimes that expelled them.
MIN ZHOU: Thank you. Here's another question regarding refugee outflows leading to an inflow of talent and expertise in the receiving country.
MIN ZHOU: So you gave the examples of Jewish and Cuban immigrants. Jewish considered white and Cubans, especially those of higher socio-economic status can, can be very light skin.
MIN ZHOU: How does the variable of race complicate this dynamic, for example those coming from the Middle East may face Islamophobia in the receiving countries.
Alejandro Portes: Well that's right. There is a, that is a refugees from Haiti who are, who are black found a very poor welcome
Alejandro Portes: In the United States, especially in South Florida from which they are only now slowly climbing out of, and they face, they face the disadvantages of
Alejandro Portes: Of, of quiet racism and that is pervasive, both in the United States and in Western Europe, so that that that that that becomes
Alejandro Portes: A difficulty in their integration and even in their possibilities of engaging in more productive transnational activity. That said, even in the case of Haitians for example, with time
Alejandro Portes: They have managed to climb up and they now have a clear presence in South Florida, including controls of several municipalities.
Alejandro Portes: And the achievement of more, of higher levels of education. In the case of Syrians and the disadvantage that is the rejection from East European country like Hungary and so on. It's for, it's also for
Alejandro Portes: For xenophobic reasons. But we already beginning to see that, that Syrians going into Germany
Alejandro Portes: And into Canada and so on, are following a pattern that is very similar to that of all the refugee groups of Syrians once they become incorporated become indistinguishable, race wise from the, from the receiving population and we can expect them to also
Alejandro Portes: Incorporate themselves in the same way. It's still too early, but I think that they would they, they would, they would, should be able to overcome the barriers against Islamophobia and so on. We, I have noticed in past publications that
Alejandro Portes: The Muslim the small Muslim communities in the United States, mostly located in in cities like Dearborn in Detroit, have made significant contributions to those areas and there is no, there is no widespread pattern of
Alejandro Portes: Me, that is a, Islamic militants or or planned terrorism on the contrary, these are these are communities that have become and trying to become
Alejandro Portes: Incorporated as much as they can in the in the society that receives them. In that case the American communities and in the culture of the receiving nation.
MIN ZHOU: Thank you. Now there is another
MIN ZHOU: Couple of questions on the barriers, with regard to immigrants in the receiving countries. So what barriers to you think still exist in migrant receiving societies
MIN ZHOU: That limit how much immigrants can contribute to the whole society while also resolving their many social and political problems.
Alejandro Portes: Well, the barriers that refugees meet in receiving countries are the same, to a certain extent that regular immigrants
Alejandro Portes: Go from when they decide to stay and so on. And they have been summarized of, in the sociology of immigration for many years into three characteristics: language, religion, and race.
Alejandro Portes: And the principle is that the more distant a foreign group is, either immigrants or refugees from the one from the receiving, from the characteristic of the receiving
Alejandro Portes: Society, the greater, the greater difficulties they face and the longer the period, the longer the period of incorporation. So in the case of
Alejandro Portes: Language non English speaking immigrants that are not fluent in English, face barriers in that sense. So say Koreans who are who may have
Alejandro Portes: A high, high skills and professional education back in Korea but if they arrived in the United States without without fluid English, they may not as a small entrepreneurs in the Korean enclave rather than me make full use of their
Alejandro Portes: educational credentials, because of the lack of English knowledge. So English and especially in the United States an accent, accented English is a
Alejandro Portes: Is very important. That's why immigrants that is a few immigrants that come from Britain and so do not have much problem here. The language is one barrier, religion is another. In our case the religion is primarily affecting
Alejandro Portes: Immigrants from Muslim countries, because they that is Islam. Islam has not been generally accepted by the receiving societies or by an important segment of the receiving society building the United States and Western Europe.
Alejandro Portes: As a as a as generally an acceptable mainstream type of religion that is Catholicism and later Judaism became incorporated into American culture so that we speak today of Judeo Christian civilization. We don't speak of Abrahamanic, pan Abrahamanic
Alejandro Portes: Civilization that would incorporate Muslims, because Muslims have not yet been incorporated and their their attire
Alejandro Portes: Especially, their attires their head cover, and other things are often seen as dangerous signals. At least as important sector of the receiving population and that creates
Alejandro Portes: Difficulties in terms of
Alejandro Portes: Incorporation. It's not impossible, but it is more difficult if you wear the Avaya and so on, going to class and so on that, to find acceptance among the general
Alejandro Portes: The general public of the receiving population. And the last one is race. Race is for societies that are primarily white
Alejandro Portes: That creates a, that creates a difficulty that especially for
Alejandro Portes: immigrants from Africa or other black, black the black Caribbean because of the tradition of
Alejandro Portes: Racism. So we have seen all kinds of adaptation of black migrants coming in to try to overcome these barriers and even nominations that have,
Alejandro Portes: You and your colleague Jennifer Lee have so well documented have made a
Alejandro Portes: Very impressive movement into the upper reaches of educational and income hierarchy in the in the receiving societies. Primarily the United States. They still
Alejandro Portes: To a certain extent confront the barrier of a distinct race. That's why often even second generation and even third generation Asians
Alejandro Portes: That is the same ___ immigrants find themselves confronting, where are you from, and why do you come when when they are actually America.
Alejandro Portes: America, those who wasn't they are still going from thing at least some barriers that they have to overcome in this case. So these are the three general I think, language, religion and race.
Alejandro Portes: Set of set of barriers to the to the integration of foreign communities be they, be they created by regular immigrants or by refugees.
MIN ZHOU: Thank you.
MIN ZHOU: In the interest of time, I collapsed two questions as our last question, and you can respond briefly and then we can wrap up. So one is the question from someone in Singapore.
MIN ZHOU: So she asked about your view and your thought on return migration in the literature of migration and development. And the other question is from my colleague Ruben Hernandez Dion.
MIN ZHOU: And he asked about sending country. He said, sending countries vary in terms of the ability to take advantage of high skilled diasporas, what are the conditions in a country that allow a country to take advantage of a high skill high diaspora. Okay.
MIN ZHOU: Yeah yeah
Alejandro Portes: Those are the, those are those are good questions.
Alejandro Portes: Well, that is a, return migration is
Alejandro Portes: A it's a it's generally can be seen as a positive
Alejandro Portes: As a positive development in terms of migration being circular. I think that returnees can bring their savings, their skills
Alejandro Portes: And so on to sending communities and reinforce their their economic and educational systems. Let me give you an example. I think that when they were several program was occupied, was
Alejandro Portes: Was functioning, in the United States for a number of years.
Alejandro Portes: They were the Mexican who came to work in American agriculture
Alejandro Portes: Went back every year they went back every year. Overwhelmingly, that was a cyclical, a clear example of cyclical migration.
Alejandro Portes: And despite the corrupt the corrupt the high levels of corruption of the Mexican government and in in capacity to often take advantage of the returnees, the returnees
Alejandro Portes: Still made very significant contribution to their families and their communities by bringing savings and know how that they had accumulated in the United States. So that was an example of a generally successful
Alejandro Portes: cyclical process of labor migration that unfortunately ended up without anything better. But in its place
Alejandro Portes: In and in the case of professional migrants, again I emphasize that even if they have a permanent visa or become citizens of the receiving countries, they can still return
Alejandro Portes: They can, they can still engage in the cyclical pattern that is a, that is a benefit because without return migration without this element of cyclicality
Alejandro Portes: The migrants, that is a, that is the contribution of migrants and their, their labor energies and their know how are lost
Alejandro Portes: To the sending countries are lost, just like in the case of refugees, the regimes that expel flows of refugees of highly trained and highly educated refugees
Alejandro Portes: From their own country like Iran and Cuba, they lost them. They are not making any contribution to Iran and Cuba, their contributions are made in the United States to the receiving countries ,they are lost
Alejandro Portes: To the sending countries. In the case of regular immigrants, when they return they can bring back a number of positive
Alejandro Portes: Positive benefits. In the case of Singapore, Singapore is is an emerging global city that increasingly depends on foreign labor, especially the the low skill level,
Alejandro Portes: That is about 30% of the population of Singapore is now of foreign origin, and that would that would
Alejandro Portes: That would continue because there is not enough.
Alejandro Portes: The population is, that there is not enough workers who engage in this so for Singapore, it's a it's an existential need for to continue its pattern, a pattern of accelerated growth an entry into the first world to
Alejandro Portes: To incorporate immigrants in sancha, and I think that what the problem is, where they just simply want to use their labor and send them back
Alejandro Portes: Which is not necessarily the best way of handling, of handling immigration, there have to be some provision or some settlement or those who want to stay
Alejandro Portes: As to the, the question of your colleague at UCLA. That's a fundamental question in terms of the potential contribution especially that highly skilled immigrants can make to their
Alejandro Portes: To their receiving countries. In order to make those contributions and I will emphasize this statement there must be something to return to.
Alejandro Portes: There must be something to return to. If there is not an institutional framework in the sending countries that allow immigrants to make, that is to make educational, scientific knowledge transfers.
Alejandro Portes: And to make investments in the country to produce it, because their institutional framework is not there.
Alejandro Portes: That that is they are going to lose those contributions, take a case of of doctors from coming from a country like ___ in Africa or Haiti.
Alejandro Portes: And wanting to make a contribution at home. There is nothing in the sending countries, no institutional framework for them to come and and and and transfer knowledge and so on. There is nothing. The most that they can do is make
Alejandro Portes: Economic
Alejandro Portes: remittances to their families and so on. On the other hand, countries that have been at debt, at creating an institutional framework
Alejandro Portes: To receive the knowledge and, the knowledge transfers and investments of their of their expatriates and of that China is in, is the exemplary country and also Korea
Alejandro Portes: have benefited greatly from their from their expatriate community and they create a lesson
Alejandro Portes: To countries, for example, in the case of Latin America, there is a lot of expatriate professional doctors, engineers and so on that suffer from the fact that countries like Columbia or Peru
Alejandro Portes: lack the necessary institutional framework to attract these kinds of contributions and to realize what the Chinese
Alejandro Portes: Government realized a long time ago that it's not necessary to return permanently in order to make a significant contribution to the development of sending countries, it is enough to engage in a cyclical pattern that had been
Alejandro Portes: cultivated by by China by certain states in India and so on to the benefits of, and Israel of course, to the benefit of
Alejandro Portes: Sending countries. So the institutional framework is fundamental for the possible developmental contributions that large expatriate communities can make to their sending countries and regions.
MIN ZHOU: Thank you very much, Professor
MIN ZHOU: Alejandro Portes and thank you all for joining us today. Again, this webinar is co hosted by the UCLA Asia Pacific Center and the Center for the Study of International Migration.
MIN ZHOU: We invite you to subscribe to our center's email list and learn more about future events as they are announced. This webinar will be available on video in our center's website. Thank you again
MIN ZHOU: Professor Alejandro Portes. And I also thank the EuroAsia Foundation from Asia.
MIN ZHOU: For their support and thank our friends of both centers and all participants for this great discussion. Good evening, and I hope we will see you again soon.
MIN ZHOU: Bye bye, good night.