Settlement Patterns and the Geographic Mobility of Recent Migrants to New Zealand

Abstract

Twenty-three percent of New Zealand's population is foreign-born and forty percent of migrants have arrived in the past ten years. Newly arriving migrants tend to settle in spatially concentrated areas and this is especially true in New Zealand. This paper uses census data to examine the characteristics of local areas that attract new migrants and gauges the extent to which migrants are choosing to settle where there are the best labour market opportunities as opposed to where there are already established migrant networks. We estimate McFadden's choice models to examine both the initial location choice made by new migrants and the internal mobility of this cohort of migrants five years later. This allows us to examine whether the factors that affect settlement decision change as migrants spend more time in New Zealand.

The Labour Market Adjustment of Immigrants in New Zealand

“…If the immigrants who leave have poorer labour market outcomes than the average for their arrival cohort, their departure will raise the average outcomes for the cohort and will give the appearance of postarrival improvements even if individual migrants experience no such improvements (and vice-versa if immigrants who leave have better labour market outcomes than the average for their arrival cohort). Maré et al (2007) compare the composition of migrants in NZ less than 5 years in 1996 to the composition of those who are observed in New Zealand 5 to 10 years after arrival in 2001 (ie., the same cohort five-years later). They find that the composition is largely unchanged in regards to the gender composition and age distribution.…”

The Contrasting Importance of Quality of Life and Quality of Business for Domestic and International Migrants

“…Bartel, 1989;Bauer et al, 2007;Epstein, 2008;Lichter and Johnson, 2006;Munshi, 2003;White, 1998). Within New Zealand, studies by Maré et al (2007), Maré et al (2016) and Smart et al (2018) have modelled location choices of new migrants to the country. A number of these studies incorporate both labour market variables and non-pecuniary variables as determinants of migrants' location choices in their analysis.…”

Immigrants Equilibrate Local Labor Markets: Evidence from the Great Recession

“…Similarly, a few demographic studies discuss immigrants' internal migration patterns(Belanger and Rogers 1992, Kritz and Nogle 1994, Gurak and Kritz 2000. More recently,Maré, Morten and Stillman (2007), study initial and subsequent location choices of immigrants to New Zealand.5 In a similar vein, di Giovanni, Levchenko and Ortega (2015) expand the traditional welfare analysis to include effects of immigration on consumption varieties.…”