Developmental idealism and migration: theorizing their relationship and an empirical example from Nepal

ABSTRACT

This paper brings together both theoretically and empirically two strands of social science research: migration and developmental idealism. The paper is motivated by the fact that there are extensive bodies of research about migration and about developmental idealism, but almost no discussion in the literature about how they might be interconnected. We present theoretical arguments concerning the influence of migration in distributing developmental idealism around the world and in developmental idealism being a force influencing the migration decisions of people. We also provide an empirical investigation of how variation in developmental idealism may have been an influence on migration and choice of migration destinations in Nepal. Thus, we extend the developmental idealism literature to include migration and the migration literature to include developmental idealism.

Keywords:

• Migration
• Developmental Idealism
• Nepal

Acknowledgments

We thank Christine Bachrach, Katharine Donato, Douglas Massey, and Michael White for their helpful advice and comments. We also appreciate the research support provided by a grant (R01 HD078397) from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Our research was also supported by NICHD research grants (R24 HD041028 and P2CHD041028) to the Population Studies Center of the University of Michigan, by an NICHD research infrastructure grant (R24 HD042828) to the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington, and by research and training grants (P2CHD042849 and T32HD007081) to the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. The research was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (HUM000798886). The content of this article is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See the following links: https://listnepal.com/nepali-baby-boy-names/; https://www.momjunction.com/baby-names/search/bikash/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikash_(given_name)

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Arland Thornton

Arland Thornton is Professor of Sociology and Research Professor at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.  His research focuses on trends, causes, and consequences of marriage, cohabitation, divorce, fertility, gender roles, and intergenerational relations.  Current work explores the ways in which values, beliefs, and people have been and are being distributed around the world.  He is the author of Reading History Sideways: The Fallacy and Enduring Impact of the Developmental Paradigm on Family Life (The University of Chicago Press, 2005).

Jeffrey Swindle

Jeffrey Swindle is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Population Research Center at the University of Texas. He researches the causes and consequences of the transnational flow of ideas and people. Topically, his research examines gender, human rights, violence, and migration.

Prem Bhandari

Prem Bhandariis a Social Demographer working at the Population Studies Center, University of Michigan. His research focuses on the socioeconomic and cultural influences on human fertility, migration and remittances, and population health in Nepal. Other areas include rural social change, population and environment relationships, and social research methods.

Linda Young-DeMarco

LindaYoung-DeMarco is a Lead Social Science Research Area Specialist at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.  She collaborates with researchers in the Family and Demography Program to study people’s values and beliefs about development and the ways in which these beliefs and values influence subsequent behaviors.  Young-DeMarco has co-authored articles and book chapters addressing this topic using data collected from a wide variety of locations around the world including Africa, Argentina, China, Eastern Europe, Nepal, the Middle East, and the United States.

Nathalie Williams

Nathalie Williams is Associate Professor at the Jackson School of International Studies and the Department of Sociology at the University of Washington. She is also Research Affiliate at the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology. Williams’ research focuses on migration during armed conflict, natural disasters, climate change, and during periods of rapid social change. She also studies other behavioral responses to macro-level change, including marriage, childbearing, fear of violence, and mental health disorders. In addition, Williams has worked to develop innovative data collection, measurement, and analysis methods for research on migration and armed conflict, topics that are notoriously difficult to analyze with quantitative methods.

Christina Hughes

Christina Hughes is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Washington. Her research broadly focuses on global-transnational processes of race, class, gender, and imperial formation. Her dissertation elaborates on how gang-involved, Asian-American men have typically constructed their masculinities in response to Western conceptions of Asian masculinity and how, increasingly, their identifications are being revised in response to the perception of the West's waning global dominance and Asia's rising geopolitical standing.