Demography of the world’s regions: situation and trendsThe Demography of Latin America and the Caribbean since 1950
J. M. Guzmán, J. Rodríguez, J. Martínez, J. M. Contreras, D. González
Covering Latin America and the Caribbean (more than fifty states and territories, 564 million inhabitants), this chronicle gives an overview of the main socio-demographic and health developments in the region since the 1950s. It includes a summary of census and survey data on each country, with statistics on population size and structure, fertility, nuptiality, mortality, migration, urbanization and education. For several decades, Latin America and the Caribbean have been engaged in a rapid process of demographic transition, attributable to the fertility decline from the early 1970s and a decrease in mortality which raised average life expectancy by 20 years between 1950 and 2000. It now stands at 68 years for men and 75 years for women. The rate of natural increase has slowed down rapidly (1.4% in 2000-2005), while net migration is affected by more massive emigration to destinations outside the region. Against a backdrop of general fertility decline (2.6 children per woman in 2000-2005), the models of early family formation have persisted. Among the so-called developing regions of the world, Latin America and the Caribbean have the highest level of urbanization (77% in 2005). Another specific feature of the countries in this region is the onset of population ageing, a phenomenon yet to emerge in sub-Saharan Africa and in the Arab World and the Middle East, the regions covered in our two previous chronicles (Population, 5, 2004 and 5-6, 2005).
Foreigners, immigrants and children of immigrants historical and sociological aspects of integration and employment
Judged on their Paperwork: The Processing of Migrant Applications for Residence and Work Permits in France (1917-1984)
A.-S. Bruno, P. Rygiel, A. Spire, C. Zalc
Thousands of foreign migrants have one or more personal files stored in French archives, providing a historical record of the administrative control of residence and employment of non-national workers from World War I up to the present day. The article explores this material via four different areas of investigation and identifies the many agents and institutions taking part in the implementation of immigration policy. It also illustrates the room for manoeuvre left to migrants themselves, as captured by their administrative trajectories and by the range of declarative strategies deployed to obtain residence and work permits. This choice of scale sheds new light on the everyday management of migrants in twentieth-century France and on the social effects of this management.
The Persistence of Intergenerational Inequalities linked to Immigration: Labour Market Outcomes for Immigrants and their Descendants in France
D. Meurs, A. Pailhé, P. Simon
Though intergenerational mobility is a classic field of research in France, the social trajectories of immigrants’ descendants are a relatively new topic of interest. Using data from the Study of Family History survey combined with the 1999 census, this article analyses the occupational integration of the children of immigrants compared with immigrants themselves and "native" French people, as reflected by access to employment and labour market status. Though the types of employment occupied have changed substantially from one generation to the next, the "second generations" are still severely disadvantaged on the labour market, facing overexposure to unemployment, job insecurity and heavy reliance on subsidized jobs. On the other hand, the strong occupational segregation observed for immigrants decreases with the next generation, indicating a process of diffusion across the labour market. The persistent gap between second generations and native French people contradicts the hypothesis of intergenerational mobility between immigrants and their descendants as a result of schooling and socialization in France. This "inherited" disadvantage testifies to the reality of discrimination that weighs most heavily on the trajectories of sub-Saharan African, North African and Turkish immigrants, but also on those of their descendants.
Short papers
An Extension of Sports Demography: Duration Analysis Applied to Populations of Sports Federation Members
F. de Bruyn, A. Bringé
In sports demography, demographic models, tools and concepts are applied to sporting populations. An approach based on the sociology of sport is also applied for the theoretical framework which defines the concept of "sporting career". The first sports demography studies revealed the exceptional mobility of sports populations, the effects of age and sex, and the existence of invidivuals who drop their sporting activity but return to it later. While anchored in a longitudinal perspective, duration analysis, applied here to members of the French swimming federation between 1997 and 2003, sheds light on the timing of events in individuals’ sporting careers (beginning, end, club changes, temporary breaks), but also provides a means to assess the effect of these events on careers and on the duration of federation membership. Along each sporting career, the pattern of such events varies over time as the process of socialization advances.
The Iranian Fertility Decline, 1981-1999:an Application of the Synthetic Parity Progression Ratio Method
M. Hosseini-Chavoshi, P. McDonald, M. J. Abbasi-Shavazi
Iran has experienced one of the most rapid falls in fertility ever recorded. The observed pattern is one in which fertility has fallen simultaneously in all age groups, in all geographic settings and in all social groups, hence accounting for the rapidity of the decline at the national level. Available single calendar year time trends in the age-based total fertility rate and in age specific fertility rates elicit an interpretation of the fertility decline that is dominated by the influence of cross-sectional events such as the Islamic Revolution and the re-establishment of the family planning program. In this paper, we show that an analysis based on synthetic parity progression ratios provides a much richer interpretation of the trend in period fertility in Iran than does the conventional age-based model. In particular, the parity-duration model better identifies the impact on cross-sectional fertility of changes in the timing of marriage and successive births.
