The impact of immigration on housing prices in Australia

In recent years, Australia has experienced high rates of immigration. We investigate the effect that this has had on housing prices at the postcode level. The endogeneity of immigrant inflows is accounted for using the Bartik shift-share approach. Using data from the censuses in 2006, 2011, and 2016, we find that an immigrant inflow of 1% of a postcode's population raises housing prices by around 0.9% per year. As a result, Australian housing prices would have been around 1.1% lower per annum had there been no immigration. The size of this effect is broadly consistent with that found for other countries. The effects of immigration on housing prices were larger in the more recent part of the period examined and strongest in the states of New South Wales and Victoria, and the cities of Melbourne and Adelaide. Chinese and Indian immigrant groups are shown to have a strong positive influence on prices.     

Immigration in gateway cities: Sydney and Vancouver in comparative perspective

Contemporary international migration shows points of departure from the immigration of the past. First, all continents are now significantly implicated in the transfers of populations. Second, there is immense diversity among immigrant characteristics and human capital, including both legal and illegal status, and ranging from the movement of well-resourced cosmopolitans to the flows of refugees who may well be poverty-stricken and without documentation. Third, the numbers of international migrants are at a very high level. Fourth, destinations are more concentrated than has been the case in recent history, focussed upon large metropolitan centres, or gateway cities, in advanced societies.These are contexts confronting planners on an everyday basis in multicultural gateway cities such as Sydney (Australia) and Vancouver (Canada). Both metropolitan areas share a common economic and cultural history, and their Pacific Rim location has recently strongly affected migration flows as legislative reform opened the boundaries of their nation states to new immigrant origins. While Sydney is a nationally primate city and twice the size of Vancouver, each metropolitan area displays similar processes of economic and cultural transformation.This volume addresses a number of intellectual and planning questions that have ensued. In Chapter 2 we ask to what extent contemporary immigration is reshaping urban spatial structure, requiring new concepts of urban form and new strategies for service provision. The housing dimension of immigrant settlement has been an important preoccupation of planners, and in Chapter 3 we consider such issues as tenure, affordability, house price inflation, land use conflicts, and the globalization of urban housing markets accompanying elevated immigration in gateway cities. The differential response to immigration among different family members has recently been identified, and Chapter 4 addresses the gendering of immigration and women's mobilisation to secure necessary services. An important institution in shaping attitudes about immigration is the media, and Chapter 5 considers its representation of minority groups, including two case studies of media coverage of land use conflicts between immigrants and the long-settled population. We argue that it is local government where immigrants typically encounter the state in the delivery of everyday services, and Chapter 6 considers the multicultural readiness of local governments in Sydney and Vancouver in serving a culturally diverse body of citizens. Finally, in Chapter 7 we offer some concluding remarks on the challenges of physical, social, and multicultural planning in gateway cities.     

Slow Growth and Urban Development Policy

This article distinguishes between cities experiencing high rates of growth and those growing more slowly and argues that 1) widely held North American assumptions to the contrary, slow growth is not a pathology; and 2) because we do tend to view it as a pathology, we fail to plan for it and instead follow policies more appropriate to rapidly growing centers. Using Winnipeg as the primary example of a slowly growing city, but drawing on a wide range of data, the article considers the following policy areas: housing, management of infrastructure, economic development, and immigration. In each of these areas the argument is that policies that may be defensible in rapidly growing centers are inappropriately followed in slowly growing cities where different lines of policy would be more beneficial. Appropriate policies for slowly growing cities are suggested and their merits evaluated.     

SAFER CITIES: A MACRO‐LEVEL ANALYSIS OF RECENT IMMIGRATION,HISPANIC‐OWNED BUSINESSES,AND CRIME RATES IN THE UNITED STATES

As the literature examining the relationship between immigration and crime continues to evolve, scholars are now searching for ways to expand this link conceptually. Hand in hand with immigration, the number of Hispanic‐owned businesses has grown at rates far exceeding the growth rate for all US businesses over the past two decades, carrying the expectation of local and national government officials of bringing jobs and revenue back into the economy. Yet research on how this growth in minority‐owned businesses can help explain ecological crime variation is scarce. This study examines the role of Hispanic‐owned businesses in the relationship between immigration and total property and violent crime rates, confirming that cities with higher rates of new immigration are not associated with higher violent crime rates, and have significantly lower property crime rates. Additional analyses examining whether this relationship is mediated by the presence of Hispanic‐owned businesses also yield empirical support. The presence of Hispanic‐owned businesses was found to attenuate the new immigration–property crime relationship significantly, and to render the association of immigration and property crime rates nonsignificant. The implications of these findings will be discussed, in so far as they relate to both public policy and research on immigration and crime.     

Structural economic change,labour market segmentation and interregional migration

In the 1970s there were marked changes in internal migration in Australia, with the major metropolitan areas experiencing,for the first time, significant losses in their migration interchanges with other areas. Simultaneously, country regions recorded substantial reductions in their formerly high rates of net outmigration. This paper argues that these migration changes were largely a response to the changing location and structure of labour demand: the high degree of labour market segmentation in Australia, and changes in the industrial structure of employment, together provide an explanation for contrasts in the migration responses of different demographic groups.     

Gender,age, and ethnicity in immigration for an Australian nation

An analysis of Australian immigration policy since the Second World War is presented. The emphasis is on the gender and age of preferred immigrants, rather than on their race or place of birth. "The author proposes that selection of immigrant settlers in Australia since World War 2 has been gendered as well as racialised, often combining particular sexisms with particular racisms and specifying the ways that ethnicity and gender should coexist in immigrants of different age groups. She notes implications for immigrants once in Australia (especially women) of the category under which they have entered the country. And she suggests that a new phase relating immigration to redefinition of the Australian nation, in which the temporary migration of skilled workers is preferred to their permanent migration, may be beginning; a phase whose modes of regulation and outcomes are as distinctively gendered as were those of their predecessors."     

The Migrant Metropolis and American Planning

Problem: Immigration poses various problems for U.S. cities and regions, and the roles planners should play in migrant communities are not clear.

Purpose: I consider how practitioners and scholars have understood and addressed the planning challenges and opportunities presented by the major migrations of ethnic minorities to U.S. cities and regions over the past century.

Methods: I trace discussions of planning and migration at professional planning conferences over the past century and survey planning scholarship and practice related to immigration and migrant communities in three principal eras: early 20th century southern and eastern European immigration; the mid-century internal migrations of African Americans and Puerto Ricans; and immigration in the late 20th and early 21st century.

Results and conclusions: Over the past century, immigration has had physical, economic, and social effects on people and places that are legitimate concerns of urban planners. Yet, the planning profession has had an ambiguous and often ambivalent relationship with migrant communities and has struggled to define specific roles for planners within those communities while social workers and other community and economic development practitioners played larger roles. Planning scholars have not paid as much attention to migrants' adaptation and mobility in U.S. society or their impacts on receiving communities, labor markets, housing, and congestion as have other scholars and urbanists.

Takeaway for practice: Planners have engaged with migrants in a variety of ways. Understanding this history provides context for contemporary debates about immigration and helps frame challenges and opportunities in migrant and receiving communities as planning problems.

Research support: None.     

THE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION AND SUBURBAN REVITALIZATION: DIVERGENT RESPONSES IN ADJACENT PENNSYLVANIA TOWNS

Amidst debates over the impacts of immigration, cities and towns across the United States have alternately opposed or welcomed unauthorized immigrants. Although their “illegal immigration relief acts” and “sanctuary laws” are typically justified in terms of law and order, they also grow from divergent hopes, concerns, and assumptions about newcomers’ integration and effects on local revitalization. These issues have gained importance beyond central cities with the suburbanization of immigration and the economic decline of older suburbs in recent decades. This article explores the case of two adjacent, formerly industrial towns in suburban Philadelphia, examining local leaders’ respective rationale for seeking to incorporate unauthorized immigrants in Norristown and to restrict their settlement and employment in neighboring Bridgeport. Despite their obvious similarities, these towns’ distinct experiences of race, migration, and revitalization explain much of their divergent responses.     

Regional Cities In The Australian Urban System, 1961-1991

This paper examines change in the economic functions of Australia's regional cities and the relationship between industry structure and growth rates. It considers the role of regional cities within the national economy and suggests that they are becoming a more significant part of the national urban system. Labour force and population data indicate that while regional cities are growing more quickly than Australia as a whole, there are substantial variations between cities. The paper goes on to discuss functional classifications of Australia's regional cities based on the 1961, 1976 and 1991 Censuses and highlight the emergence of new functions over this period. It is argued that while the highest rates of growth have occurred amongst cities with economies founded on tourism, retirement and recreation, development has not been limited to these centres. The paper also considers the reasons why this research presents a picture of change within the urban system that is at odds with the views of other writers.     

Immigration,Globalisation and House Prices in Canada's Gateway Cities

This paper begins by examining house price movements in eight metropolitan areas in Canada between 1971 and 1996. At the start of this period there was considerable conformity in price levels among the eight centres, but by the mid-1990s wide disparity in the price structure had emerged, with Vancouver and Toronto (and their satellites) having broken away from the rest as a result of rapid price inflation after 1985. At the same time, the cities showing the most marked gains also suffered the heaviest losses during economic downturns. The geography and timing of rapid price inflation coincided with the onset of heavy and concentrated immigration in Toronto and Vancouver after 1985, and the remainder of the paper considers the relations in these cities between price change and globalisation in general, immigration in particular. In both cities, and especially Vancouver, aside from growth in the provincial GDP, conventional regional and national factors seem to have declining significance in accounting for price movements, while indicators of globalisation, including immigration, exert stronger effects. These effects are consistent not only with globalisation but also with economic polarisation in post-industrial cities.     

Dynamics of job satisfaction around internal migrations: a panel analysis of young people in Britain and Australia

There is ample evidence that internal migration is a vehicle for upwards economic and social mobility, particularly amongst young educated people, with studies documenting favourable effects on objective labour market outcomes such as employment status, earnings and occupational standing. However, this literature has been more silent about the potential effects of internal migration on subjective measures of utility. In this paper I use panel data from Australia and Britain and panel regression models to examine whether and how internal migration is associated with young people’s self-reported job satisfaction, paying attention to the time dynamics underpinning the associations. This enables gaining a more holistic picture of the outcomes associated with internal migration during early adulthood. Key findings indicate that long-distance and work-motivated migrations have positive and statistically significant effects on the job satisfaction of young people in Britain and Australia, particularly amongst those who hold university degrees. Additionally, the results reveal time patterns in the ways in which job satisfaction and residential mobility intersect: long-term trends in job dissatisfaction can trigger internal migration, and internal migration can set long-term onwards trends in job satisfaction. I conclude by calling for further research on the outcomes of internal migration on subjective well-being leveraging the properties of panel data and using a life course approach.     

Population forecasting with endogenous migration: an application to trans-Tasman migration

"This article focuses on forecasting migration between Australia and New Zealand (trans-Tasman migration), which is largely visa-free and therefore resembles internal migration. Net trans-Tasman migration is a major component of New Zealand population change and is embedded in this article in a Bayesian or unrestricted vector autoregression (VAR) model, which includes foreign and domestic economic variables. When time series of net migration are available, this approach provides a useful input into forecasting population growth in the short run in the absence of major policy changes. This conclusion applies equally to interregional migration and to unrestricted international migration between economically integrated nations."     

Population Growth in Northern Australia

Population changes in rural Australia continue to influence governmentinvestmentandpolicies.partly because somuch emphasis is placed on whether towns and rural areas are growing in size or declining. More recently the effects of rural structural adjustments are being extended to analyses of small towns and the non farm sector. However, northern Australia has featured very little in these analyses. This paper aims to broaden the focus by outlining population changes in northern Australia, emphasising that the predominant trend has been one of growth. In spite of this, the current economic conditions and government policies do not bode well for rural Australia in the 1990s.     

Internal migration in a developing country: A panel data analysis of Ecuador (1982–2010)

In this paper, we examine determinants of internal migration flows between the 21 provinces of Ecuador from 1982 to 2010. Using specifications based on the gravity model, we identified push and pull factors. We considered multilateral resistance to migration by using various monadic and dyadic fixed effects structures. The study confirmed the concentration of the population in the two provinces that contain the country's main cities. However, in recent years, this trend has weakened, to the extent that the provinces with the greatest influx of migrants are not necessarily the most populated. This indicates that growth has become more balanced throughout the territory, and that small and medium‐sized cities are increasingly important.     

DOES MIGRATION EQUALISE REGIONAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATES? EVIDENCE FROM AUSTRALIA

Whether inter-regional migration equilibrates regional economic performance is a question which has received considerable attention in recent literature. The author examines that question, focusing upon regional unemployment rates and real wages within the context of a 24-hour equation econometric model of the interaction between regional wages, regional unemployment, and inter-regional migration in Australia. Used to solve for steady-state values of wage and unemployment differences, the model determined that the steady state involves non-zero unemployment rate differences and non-zero wage differences. The model is also used to investigate the stability of the equilibrating mechanism and to simulate the effects upon unemployment, migration, and wage rates of a shock to employment growth. The main findings are that inter-regional equilibrating forces are slow and do not help equalize regional unemployment rates or wages.     

Immigration to Western Europe, 1952-1982: a time-series analysis of movement to Sweden,France, and Essen

"Two contradictory approaches--an equilibrium view based on neoclassical economic principles and a structuralist view based on labour needs of core economies--dominate contemporary international migration research. Using a monthly time-series for Essen [Federal Republic of Germany], Sweden, and France for 1952-1982 of immigration by different nationalities, a specific hypothesis derived from the neoclassical view, relating immigration to economic growth and stagnation, was tested using the Box-Jenkins ARIMA modelling approach." The only support for the hypothesis came from the example of the local labor market in Essen. The author notes that "most migration flows are described by complex ARIMA models. Immigration legislation had a stronger and more direct effect on the strength and timing of flows than economic trends. Predictions based on univariate and bivariate models are not very useful: immigration trends over the past decade are significantly different from earlier flows."     

Internal migration and educational outcomes in Italy: Evidence from a cohort of youths

This paper analyses the educational outcomes and the human capital accumulation of a cohort of youths, focusing on their family origin. Using a unique survey of a Northern Italian province traditionally interested by large internal migration inflows especially from the South, we find that migrants' children have a higher probability of early dropout, especially in the case of males. This evidence calls into question the integration of internal migrants, for whom education plays a crucial role, even in a period in which foreign immigration seems to be of major concern.     

A dynamical model of labor-market change in international labor migrations when demand for labor is exogenous

"Relatively little is known about the long-run behavior of international labor migrations. One of the biggest concerns in immigration debates relates to the continued pressure on the borders of the wealthy countries. This immigration pressure will decline significantly only if the poor nations manage to provide more high-wage jobs. An earlier model of international labor migration is used to derive additional insights into the growth and decline of labor supply in different labor markets resulting from migration. Particular attention is paid to labor demand growth requirements in a sending country so that out-migration will slow down and eventually stop."     

Spatial Inequality and Locational Disadvantage: New Perspectives on an Old Debate

The group of papers within this Forum represent the contents of a seminar on spatial inequality in Australia's cities organised by the Geography Discipline, Flinders University of South Australia. The seminar addressed two important issues for urban policy and research in Australia, the spatial pattern of disadvantage within Australia's cities and recent Federal initiatives in this area. In the early 1990s the Federal Government used its major policy reviews and research programs to commission a number of studies into the structure of our cities. Their findings were, to a certain extent at least, at odds with the commonly accepted view of Australian cities (see for example, Stretton 1989; Badcock 1984) because they challenged the image of the outer suburbs as areas of pronounced disadvantage (see Burgess and Skeltys 1992; NHS 1992a; and Maher el al. 1992). They have been the source of some unease within the academic community.     

Migration in the urban-rural hierarchy of China: insights from the microdata of the 1987 National Survey

Microdata from the 1987 National Population Survey are used to analyze internal migration in China in the 1980s. The focus is on the impact of migration policies on rural-urban migration. "There are two main findings. First, although the migration policy resulted in a very low migration level and systematic distortions in migration schedules, its encouragement of downward migrations was very ineffective, whereas its control on rural-to-urban migrations was partially weakened by the strong upward aspirations of rural families awakened by recent economic reform. Consequently, net in-migration contributed substantially to the growth both of city and of town populations. Second, although the level of education had a strong positive effect on the migration propensities both of males and of females in general, it had a strong negative effect on the migration propensities of females at the time of marriage, a finding which suggests that the families at subsistence income level tended to marry their daughters to grooms in other communities in order to reduce the risk of familial income shortfalls."