Structural influences on outmigrant selectivity: a panel study of three rural Colombian communities

This study examines the influence of household agricultural and socioeconomic attributes on long-term migration of household members and investigates differences in these effects among agriculturally and socioeconomically diverse rural communities. The data are for 180 households surveyed in a panel study conducted in rural portions of three Colombian municipios (counties) in 1963 and 1971. Independent variables incorporated in the logistic regression models include measures of change between 1963 and 1971 as well as stastic measures for 1963. Other than control variables of little substantive interest, no variable significantly predicts migration in more than one of the three communities. Structural reasons for these different patterns of selectivity across communities are identified. The analysis supports earlier contentions that migrants from origins with strong overall resource pushes are less selective than migrants from other settings and that different patterns of community structure and community structural change result in different patterns of selectivity