Determinants and Consequences of Worldwide Migrations: a Sociological Analysis

 

ABSTRACT :

This statement on ‘Sociology and Demography’ is introduced by some personal remarks on how, for some time in his early academic career, the author felt that he was in a no-man’s-land between sociology and demography. Next, it is asked how the relationship between sociology and demography can be described and interpreted. It seems that a few demographers still regard sociology as a somewhat dubious enterprise, which lacks, for instance, the precision which mathematical demographic models claim to possess and precise definitions of its central variables. On the other hand, there are (also only a few) sociologists who do not consider demography to be a real science, but rather a kind of accountancy: population bookkeeping. In the view of these sociologists, demography is neither a social science nor any kind of science at all, because it does not have explanatory theories. One might even maintain that demography is, in fact, ultimately unable to explain population processes, nor prognosticate such processes, beyond solely empirically-based extrapolations. However, an open-minded sociologist cannot overlook the fact that demography has many virtues which will also be referred to in detail here. This statement concludes with a presentation of the results of a quantitative content analysis of articles that appeared in four demographic journals between 1997 and 1999. This content analysis has been carried out in order to give an empirically-based answer to the question regarding the relationship between sociology and demography.

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Determinants and Consequences of Worldwide Migrations: a Sociological Analysis
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