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Treballs Finals del Màster d'Economia, Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2019-2020, Tutor: Rosina Moreno, Many European countries have focused on redistributing wealth across their territory through the decentralization of public services. This so-called functional decentralization is often carried out through investments in various education infrastructures in order to attract migrants into peripheral regions. However, do education infrastructures actually influence gross migratory patterns? It is not clear whether universities or specialized schools only play a role in a student’s short-term migration or if they also have an effect on the residential migration of households. Nonetheless, it is a key determinant of the potential success of a functional decentralization policy. This study will aim at defending the hypothesis that universities and specialized schools do have an important and positive impact on the gross migration inflows into a particular area. Studying such flows in the French province of Bouches-Du-Rhône, some evidence was found that specialized schools in agriculture have a decisive role in attracting migrants. This implies that the current policies focusing on the decentralization of the university system may not be as effective as the one focusing on specialized education infrastructures.

Treball fi de màster de: Master’s in International Relations. Curs 2017-2018 The aim of this paper is to understand the progressive feminization of migratory flows from Tunisia to Europe over the period 2010-2017. The observed increase in female migration took place in the context of economic crises in both sending and receiving countries. In Tunisia, it coincided with dramatic changes at the political, economic and social level that followed the 2011 revolution. In Europe, the issue of migration experienced another wave of politicization during the same period. In light of those developments, the paper studies the different behavior of male and female migrants. It applies a case-oriented approach, testing seven hypotheses derived from standard migration theories, as well as feminist approaches. The results of multivariate regression analyses confirm the importance of migratory networks and unemployment in receiving countries, while bivariate analysis suggests that the severe impact of the Tunisian economic crisis on women may have been an additional driver of female emigration rates. More importantly, a generation of increasingly well-educated women, with very restricted labor market access in Tunisia, are faced with European migration policies favoring the highly-skilled. Due to a growing demand in immigration countries for services traditionally performed by female workers, as well as the need for highly-skilled workers to support technological change, the trend towards a feminization of Tunisian emigration is likely to last.

There is great scientific and popular interest in understanding the genetic history of populations in the Americas. We wish to understand when different regions of the continent were inhabited, where settlers came from, and how current inhabitants relate genetically to earlier populations. Recent studies unraveled parts of the genetic history of the continent using genotyping arrays and uniparental markers. The 1000 Genomes Project provides a unique opportunity for improving our understanding of population genetic history by providing over a hundred sequenced low coverage genomes and exomes from Colombian (CLM), Mexican-American (MXL), and Puerto Rican (PUR) populations. Here, we explore the genomic contributions of African, European, and especially Native American ancestry to these populations. Estimated Native American ancestry is 48% in MXL, 25% in CLM, and 13% in PUR. Native American ancestry in PUR is most closely related to populations surrounding the Orinoco River basin, confirming the Southern America ancestry of the Taíno people of the Caribbean. We present new methods to estimate the allele frequencies in the Native American fraction of the populations, and model their distribution using a demographic model for three ancestral Native American populations. These ancestral populations likely split in close succession: the most likely scenario, based on a peopling of the Americas 16 thousand years ago (kya), supports that the MXL Ancestors split 12.2kya, with a subsequent split of the ancestors to CLM and PUR 11.7kya. The model also features effective populations of 62,000 in Mexico, 8,700 in Colombia, and 1,900 in Puerto Rico. Modeling Identity-by-descent (IBD) and ancestry tract length, we show that post-contact populations also differ markedly in their effective sizes and migration patterns, with Puerto Rico showing the smallest effective size and the earlier migration from Europe. Finally, we compare IBD and ancestry assignments to find evidence for relatedness among European founders to the three populations., Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo, Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Celular

The population of Argentina is the result of the intermixing between several groups, including Indigenous American, European and African populations. Despite the commonly held idea that the population of Argentina is of mostly European origin, multiple studies have shown that this process of admixture had an impact in the entire Argentine population. In the present study we characterized the distribution of Indigenous American, European and African ancestry among individuals from different regions of Argentina and evaluated the level of discrepancy between self-reported grandparental origin and genetic ancestry estimates. A set of 99 autosomal ancestry informative markers (AIMs) was genotyped in a sample of 441 Argentine individuals to estimate genetic ancestry. We used non-parametric tests to evaluate statistical significance. The average ancestry for the Argentine sample overall was 65% European (95%CI: 63-68%), 31% Indigenous American (28-33%) and 4% African (3-4%). We observed statistically significant differences in European ancestry across Argentine regions [Buenos Aires province (BA) 76%, 95%CI: 73-79%; Northeast (NEA) 54%, 95%CI: 49-58%; Northwest (NWA) 33%, 95%CI: 21-41%; South 54%, 95%CI: 49-59%; p

Most individuals throughout the Americas are admixed descendants of Native American, European, and African ancestors. Complex historical factors have resulted in varying proportions of ancestral contributions between individuals within and among ethnic groups. We developed a panel of 446 ancestry informative markers (AIMs) optimized to estimate ancestral proportions in individuals and populations throughout Latin America. We used genome-wide data from 953 individuals from diverse African, European, and Native American populations to select AIMs optimized for each of the three main continental populations that form the basis of modern Latin American populations. We selected markers on the basis of locus-specific branch length to be informative, well distributed throughout the genome, capable of being genotyped on widely available commercial platforms, and applicable throughout the Americas by minimizing within-continent heterogeneity. We then validated the panel in samples from four admixed populations by comparing ancestry estimates based on the AIMs panel to estimates based on genome-wide association study (GWAS) data. The panel provided balanced discriminatory power among the three ancestral populations and accurate estimates of individual ancestry proportions (R2>0.9 for ancestral components with significant between-subject variance). Finally, we genotyped samples from 18 populations from Latin America using the AIMs panel and estimated variability in ancestry within and between these populations. This panel and its reference genotype information will be useful resources to explore population history of admixture in Latin America and to correct for the potential effects of population stratification in admixed samples in the region., Author Summary Individuals from Latin America are descendants of multiple ancestral populations, primarily Native American, European, and African ancestors. The relative proportions of these ancestries can be estimated using genetic markers, known as ancestry informative markers (AIMs), whose allele frequency varies between the ancestral groups. Once determined, these ancestral proportions can be correlated with normal phenotypes, can be associated with disease, can be used to control for confounding due to population stratification, or can inform on the history of admixture in a population. In this study, we identified a panel of AIMs relevant to Latin American populations, validated the panel by comparing estimates of ancestry using the panel to ancestry determined from genome-wide data, and tested the panel in a diverse set of populations from the Americas. The panel of AIMs produces ancestry estimates that are highly accurate and appropriately controlled for population stratification, and it was used to genotype 18 populations from throughout Latin America. We have made the panel of AIMs available to any researcher interested in estimating ancestral proportions for populations from the Americas.