Developmental Idealism and Migration: Theorizing their Relationship and an Empirical Example from Nepal.

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.

A Good Age to Marry? An Intergenerational Model of the Influence of Timing Attitudes on Entrance into Marriage.

Do timing attitudes-subjective evaluations of particular ages as good ages to marry-influence entrance into marriage? To address this question, we formulated an intergenerational model of how parents' and children's timing attitudes influence children's marriage behavior. We theorized that both parents' and children's timing attitudes influence expectations of when children will marry. In turn, both parents' and children's marital expectations would influence children's actual entrance into marriage. We tested the model using intergenerational panel data from Nepal collected in 2008-2014. Timing attitudes of young people and their parents did influence expectations, as well as entrance into marriage. Young people's own attitudes were more influential than their parents' attitudes in determining children's expectations, but not behavior. Further, while the influence of parents was relatively even, mothers appear slightly more influential than fathers.

Fatalistic Beliefs and Migration Behaviors: A Study of Ideational Demography in Nepal.

We investigate influences of fatalistic beliefs on domestic and international migration in Nepal, positing that fatalistic beliefs may affect decisions to migrate and where to locate. Fatalism is the belief that human outcomes are preordained by forces outside of one's power and control. Because of its relationship with effort and innovation, fatalism may be an important factor in people's decision to migrate and destination choice. We expect that fatalistic beliefs encourage or discourage migration depending upon societal expectations to migrate and the relative ease of migration to different destinations. Our empirical analysis relies on migration histories of respondents from the Chitwan Valley Family Study. Results from multinomial logistic regression models provide evidence that fatalistic beliefs increase overall migration propensity and has both positive and negative destination-specific effects. Fatalistic beliefs increase Nepalis' odds of migrating to destinations that are, relatively speaking, easier to access, but decrease the odds of migrating to destinations with higher barriers to entry.

Family Obligation Attitudes, Gender, and Migration.

This study focuses on attitudes related to fulfilling family obligations and their relationships to migration behavior. We hypothesize that men who highly value fulfilling family obligations will be more likely to migrate in order to fulfill material obligations while women who highly value fulfilling family obligations will be less likely to migrate in order to fulfill care obligations. The empirical analysis examines data from the Chitwan Valley Family Study, located in south-central Nepal. We test whether variation in how much individuals value putting family needs before individual needs and caring for their adult parents matter for whether they migrate at all and if so, to which specific destinations. Our results provide only moderate support for these hypotheses but uncover patterns in how these attitudes toward family obligations are related to migration destinations. Men with strong attitudes toward family obligations are more likely to migrate internationally but especially to nearby India, sacrificing some level of economic returns for proximity. For women, the effect of attitudes is consistent: putting family needs first is negatively related to migration, while caring for adult parents is positively related to migration to India but not domestic or other international destinations. The findings suggest that our conventional typology of gendered labor and gender expectations for masculine breadwinning and feminine care might too strictly dichotomize the reality of how people actually care and provide for their families, obfuscating how they negotiate these competing demands.

Ethno-Caste Influences on Migration Rates and Destinations.

While studies commonly show differences in out-migration between ethnic groups, ethnicity most often features no more than a side note in the emigration literature, and we have very little insight about why people from different ethnic groups migrate at different rates. Understanding ethnic differences in migration rates and destination choice has important implications for the present-day and future potential for either dampening or exacerbating ethnic discrimination and opportunity structures. Building on existing migration theory, we identify three possible mechanisms through which ethnicity might influence out-migration rates and destination choice: human and economic capital, contemporary discrimination, and historical legacies that are perpetuated through social networks. Our empirical investigation uses longitudinal panel survey data from Nepal and we find that all three of these mechanisms likely influence out-migration and destinations of the five major ethno-caste groups. However, we show that historical legacy and human and economic capital emerge as the key drivers of ethnic differences in out-migration here. We discuss what these results mean for migration studies as well as the potential for the institution of migration to affect patterns of ethno-caste-based disadvantage in Nepal. The theoretical basis and empirical evidence from our study also suggest ways to understand the reasoning for and consequence of ethnic and racial differentials in migration patterns in other areas of the world.

When does Social Capital Matter for Migration? A Study of Networks, Brokers, and Migrants in Nepal.

The study of social capital has been one of the strongest areas of recent advance in migration research, but there are still many questions about how it works and why it has varying effects in studies of different places. In this article, we address the contextual variation in social capital's effects on migration by considering migration brokers. We argue that destinations for which migration is logistically difficult to arrange give rise to brokerage industries and hypothesize that brokers in turn substitute for the informational capital typically provided by social networks. Our empirical tests in Nepal support this narrative, showing that social networks matter for migration to destinations where brokers are not available and have little discernible effect on migration to brokered destinations. Our results suggest that migration research should consider the growing role of brokerage agencies, that theorizations of social capital more broadly must contend with how it is delimited by brokers, and that social scientists might also consider other consequences that can arise from these migration brokers that are increasingly common in many countries and provide a marketized replacement for social capital in some cases.

Strategies for origin-based surveying of international migrants.

This paper addresses methodological challenges of investigations of international migration, including difficulties in obtaining information about representative samples of migrants and both their origin and destination location. Our project used an origin-based sample with a destination focused survey and interviewed 91% of migrants from a community in Nepal to any destination and shares techniques employed. Our procedures and high response rate constitute a significant improvement in survey methods that permit the creation of unbiased data on migrants and allow the study of migration in conjunction with origin communities.

Influences of Material Aspirations on Migration.

In this article, we investigate the influences of material aspirations on migration in Nepal, positing that material aspirations may have important influences on decisions to migrate and where to locate. We discuss a theoretical model explaining how these aspirations might be key influences in the migration decision. Using detailed continuous migration histories from the 2008-2012 Chitwan Valley Family Study, we estimate logistic and alternative-specific conditional logit models to examine how material aspirations in Nepal influence migration rates and destinations. Our empirical analyses provide strong evidence that material aspirations have large effects on overall rates of migration and affect destination-specific migration rates, particularly for relatively wealthy Western and Asian destinations. We also show an interaction effect between material aspirations and destination-specific expected earnings in influencing people's migration choices. It is the people with high aspirations who migrate to destinations with high earning potentials.

The Influence of Developmental Idealism on Marital Attitudes, Expectations, and Timing.

Recent theory suggests that developmental idealism (DI) is an important source of variation and change in family behavior, yet this suggestion is largely untested at the individual level. This study examines the influence of DI beliefs and values on individuals' entrance into marriage. We hypothesize that when individuals and their parents endorse DI, they enter into marriage later, or more slowly. We also hypothesize that two pathways connecting DI to marriage are the instillation of older timing attitudes and expectations of marrying at older ages. We test these hypotheses using panel data collected in Nepal from 2008 to 2014. When young people and their parents endorsed DI, the young people valued older ages at marriage and expected to marry later. Young people's own DI endorsement also delayed their entrance into marriage, but parents' DI did not.

Early Women, Late Men: Timing Attitudes and Gender Differences in Marriage.

Around the world, women marry earlier than men, but it is not well understood why this gender gap exists. Using panel data collected in Nepal, the authors investigate whether attitudes about marital timing held by unmarried youth and their parents account for women marrying earlier than men. They also examine whether the influence of timing attitudes differs by gender. On average, unmarried youth and their parents viewed 20 to 25 as acceptable ages for women to marry, while ages 23 to 30 were appropriate for men. In turn, women entering the acceptable marriage age range earlier than men accounted for a third of the gender gap in marital timing. The influence of youth and parents' timing attitudes did differ by gender, but only at the extreme. When they were much too young for marriage, both genders were less likely to marry, but this dampening effect was substantially larger for women.

Developmental Idealism in China.

This paper examines the intersection of developmental idealism with China. It discusses how developmental idealism has been widely disseminated within China and has had enormous effects on public policy and programs, on social institutions, and on the lives of individuals and their families. This dissemination of developmental idealism to China began in the 19th century, when China met with several military defeats that led many in the country to question the place of China in the world. By the beginning of the 20th century, substantial numbers of Chinese had reacted to the country's defeats by exploring developmental idealism as a route to independence, international respect, and prosperity. Then, with important but brief aberrations, the country began to implement many of the elements of developmental idealism, a movement that became especially important following the assumption of power by the Communist Party of China in 1949. This movement has played a substantial role in politics, in the economy, and in family life. The beliefs and values of developmental idealism have also been directly disseminated to the grassroots in China, where substantial majorities of Chinese citizens have assimilated them. These ideas are both known and endorsed by very large numbers in China today.

Evaluating the measurement reliabilities and dimensionality of developmental idealism measures.

This paper investigates the measurement of developmental idealism. Developmental idealism is a set of beliefs and values stating that modern societies and families are better than traditional ones, that modern families facilitate modern societies, and that modern societies foster modern families. Prior research has shown that developmental idealism is widespread globally but has provided little evidence about whether beliefs concerning developmental idealism can be measured reliably at the individual level. It also has provided little information about the dimensionality and psychometric properties of measures of developmental idealism. Using cross-sectional survey data from Argentina, China, and Egypt, we explore and test the factor structure underlying observed measures for aspects of developmental idealism and estimate the reliability of different models. Theory and data suggest that developmental idealism consists of multiple dimensions, and when family-related items are measuring similar underlying constructs, the measurement reliabilities are high. These results provide evidence that the dimensions of developmental idealism can be measured with a high degree of reliability.

Developmental Idealism: The Cultural Foundations of World Development Programs.

This paper extends theory and research concerning cultural models of development beyond family and demographic matters to a broad range of additional factors, including government, education, human rights, daily social conventions, and religion. Developmental idealism is a cultural model-a set of beliefs and values-that identifies the appropriate goals of development and the ends for achieving these goals. It includes beliefs about positive cause and effect relationships among such factors as economic growth, educational achievement, health, and political governance, as well as strong values regarding many attributes, including economic growth, education, small families, gender equality, and democratic governance. This cultural model has spread from its origins among the elites of northwest Europe to elites and ordinary people throughout the world. Developmental idealism has become so entrenched in local, national, and global social institutions that it has now achieved a taken-for-granted status among many national elites, academics, development practitioners, and ordinary people around the world. We argue that developmental idealism culture has been a fundamental force behind many cultural clashes within and between societies, and continues to be an important cause of much global social change. We suggest that developmental idealism should be included as a causal factor in theories of human behavior and social change.

Caste and Choice: The Influence of Developmental Idealism on Marriage Behavior.

Is the marriage behavior of young people determined by their socioeconomic characteristics or their endorsement of developmental idealism? This article addresses this question using a unique longitudinal data set from Nepal and provides the first individual-level test of developmental idealism theory. The authors find that unmarried individuals with greater endorsement of developmental idealism in 2008 were more likely by 2012 to choose their own spouse, including a spouse of a different caste, rather than have an arranged marriage. Those with salaried work experience were also less likely to have arranged marriages, but urban proximity and education were not significant. The authors conclude that both developmental idealism and socioeconomic characteristics influence marriage and that their influences are largely independent.

The making of family values: developmental idealism in Gansu, China.

This paper examines the role of developmental thinking in the making of family values. We analyze survey data collected from Gansu Province in China with regular and multilevel logit models. The results show that individuals' endorsement of neolocal residence, self-choice marriage, gender egalitarianism, late marriage for women, and low fertility depends on the conjunction of preference for development and beliefs in its association with those family attributes, which we term developmental idealism associational evaluation. Furthermore, such impact of developmental thinking on family values holds robust in the presence of indigenous ideational forces, in this case Islamic religion. Although Islam influences family values in the opposite direction than developmental ideas do, the effect of Developmental Idealism associational evaluation does not differ significantly between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Developmental Idealism and Cultural Models of the Family in Malawi.

This paper examines the extent to which developmental idealism has been disseminated in Malawi. Developmental idealism is a set of beliefs and values about development and the relationships between development and family structures and behavior. Developmental idealism states that attributes of societies and families defined as modern are better than attributes defined as traditional, that modern societies help produce modern families, that modern families facilitate the achievement of modern societies, and that the future will bring family change in the direction of modernity. Previous research has demonstrated that knowledge of developmental idealism is widespread in many places around the world, but provides little systematic data about it in sub-Saharan Africa or how knowledge of it is associated with certain demographic characteristics in that region. In this paper, we address this issue by examining whether ordinary people in two settings in Malawi, a sub-Saharan African country, have received and understood messages that are intended to associate development with certain types of family forms and family behaviors. We then examine associations between demographic characteristics and developmental idealism to investigate possible mechanisms linking global discourse about development to the grassroots. We analyze data collected in face-to-face surveys from two samples of Malawian men in 2009 and 2010, one rural, the other in a low-to-medium income neighborhood of a city. Our analysis of these survey data shows considerable evidence that many developmental idealism beliefs have been spread in that country and that education has positive effects on beliefs in the association between development and family attributes. We also find higher levels of developmental idealism awareness in the urban sample than we do in the rural sample, but once dissimilarities in education and wealth between the two samples are controlled, awareness levels no longer differed between urban and rural respondents. We explore how these beliefs intersect with longstanding local values and beliefs in Malawi.

Migrant Values and Beliefs: How Are They Different and How Do They Change?

This is a study of the values of migrants. We examine processes of selection-how values affect migration-and adaptation-how migration influences value changes. Empirical analyses use a unique collection of data that combines detailed information on values from a representative sample of non-migrants in Nepal with a representative sample of Nepali migrants living in the Persian Gulf. Results suggest that migrants were selected from those who were more materialistic, less committed to religion and more family-oriented. In terms of adaptation, our results are consistent with the idea that migrants become more religious, less committed to historical Nepali values, and change ideas about family-orientation in mixed ways. Thus, we find that value adaptations of migrants are complex processes that could have immense impacts on ideational diffusion around the world.

Perceptions of societal developmental hierarchies in Europe and beyond: A Bulgarian Perspective.

We examine how ordinary citizens in Bulgaria view the developmental levels of European countries and certain states outside of Europe. Our research is motivated by the understanding that scholars and policy makers have for centuries used developmental hierarchies to characterize countries and that this perception of differential development has shaped interactions among different groups, countries and regions. We expect that views of such developmental hierarchies and models have great potential for influencing demographic and family behavior and political and cultural identities of ordinary people. Using data from a 2009 survey in Bulgaria we document that developmental hierarchies are widely perceived in Bulgaria, but are distributed differentially by age, education, and degree of urbanization. We also consider internal mechanisms underlying this hierarchical understanding of development and how hierarchical understandings may be related to national identities.

Influences on the Knowledge and Beliefs of Ordinary People about Developmental Hierarchies.

This paper is motivated by the idea that development and developmental hierarchies have been constructed and embraced for centuries by scholars and policy makers, and have been disseminated among ordinary people. Recent research shows that most people have constructions of development hierarchies that are similar across countries. In this paper, we extend this research by examining how basic social factors influence ordinary people´s beliefs about development and developmental hierarchies in six countries: Argentina, China, Egypt, Iran, Nepal and the United States. Results show that the understanding and perception of developmental hierarchies vary by gender and education. These results are important because they show how distinct groups of people have differential access to information or ideas.

Knowledge and beliefs about national development and developmental hierarchies: The viewpoints of ordinary people in thirteen countries.

Scholars and policy makers have for centuries constructed and used developmental hierarchies to characterize different countries. The hypotheses motivating this paper are that such social constructions have been circulated internationally, are constructed similarly in various countries, and follow the social constructions of elite international organizations, such as the United Nations. This paper uses data from 15 surveys in 13 diverse countries to study how developmental hierarchies are understood in everyday life. Our research shows that most people have constructions of developmental hierarchies that are similar across countries and are similar to the developmental hierarchies constructed by the United Nations. These findings suggest that developmental hierarchies are widely understood around the world and are widely available to ordinary people as they make decisions about many aspects of life.