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on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Katharine Hall (Children's Institute, University of Cape Town.) |
| Abstract: | Children are affected by adult migration, whether or not they themselves move. Yet little attention has been paid to patterns of child mobility and changing household contexts in South Africa, and the ways in which these relate to patterns of adult migration. Internal migration in South Africa is historically associated with the social engineering and enforced fragmentation of families that took place under apartheid. In particular, controls on population movement, together with limited residential rights in cities and other places of economic activity, restricted the ability of African families to migrate and live together, while dual housing arrangements allowed for circular movement between urban and rural homes. The term "oscillating migration" was used to describe mobility between urban and rural areas. Rather than being viewed as physically bounded and static units, households came to be viewed as straddling these nodes, both of which could include resident and non-resident members. Contrary to expectations, there was no substantial increase in permanent urban migration when the apartheid-era controls on population movement were removed (Posel 2006). Instead, temporary labour migration has remained an important livelihood strategy for many households, and extended and dual household forms have persisted. |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ldr:wpaper:178&r=mig |
| By: | Bender, Stefan; Dorner, Matthias; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hinz, Tina; Hoisl, Karin |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of social ties on the migration of inventors from East to West Germany, using the fall of the Iron Curtain and German reunification as a natural experiment. We identify East German inventors via their patenting track records prior to 1990 and their social security records in the German labor market after reunification. Modeling inventor migration to West German regions after 1990, we find that Western regions with stronger historically determined social ties across the former East-West border attracted more inventors after the fall of the Iron Curtain than regions without such ties. However, mobility decisions made by inventors with outstanding patenting track records (star inventors) were not impacted by social ties. We conclude that social ties support labor market access for migrant inventors and determine regional choices while dependence on these ties is substantially reduced for star performers. |
| Keywords: | East Germany; inventors; migration; networks; social ties; transition |
| JEL: | J60 O30 P20 R23 |
| Date: | 2016–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:11601&r=mig |
| By: | Julia Bredtmann (RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung); Fernanda Martínez Flores (RWI, Ruhr); Sebastian Otten (University College London) |
| Abstract: | Research on the relationship between high-skilled migration and remittances has been limited by the lack of suitable microdata. We create a unique cross-country dataset by combining household surveys from five Sub-Saharan African countries that enables us to analyze the effect of migrants’ education on their remittance behavior. Having comprehensive information on both ends of the migrant-origin household relationship and employing household fixed effects specifications that only use within-household variation for identification allows us to address the problem of unobserved heterogeneity across migrants’ origin households. Our results reveal that migrants’ education has no significant impact on the likelihood of sending remittances. Conditional on sending remittances, however, high-skilled migrants send significantly higher amounts of money to their households left behind. This effect holds for the sub-groups of internal migrants and migrants in non-OECD countries, while it vanishes for migrants in OECD destination countries once characteristics of the origin household are controlled for. |
| Keywords: | migration, remittances, skill level, brain drain, Sub-Saharan Africa |
| JEL: | F22 F24 O15 |
| Date: | 2016–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:1627&r=mig |
| By: | Heinisch, Katja; Wohlrabe, Klaus |
| Abstract: | The European Commission follows a harmonized approach for calculating structural (potential) output for EU member states that takes into account labor as an important ingredient. This paper shows how the recent huge migrants inflow to Europe affects trend output. Due to the fact that the immigrants immediately increase the working population but effectively do not enter the labor market, we illustrate that the potential output is potentially upward biased without any corrections. Taking Germany as an example, we find that the average medium-term potential growth rate is lower if the migration flow is modeled adequately compared to results based on the unadjusted European Commission procedure. |
| Keywords: | migration, refugee crisis, natural rate of output, filtering, EU-commission |
| JEL: | F22 J11 J61 |
| Date: | 2016–11–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:74905&r=mig |
| By: | Philipp Ager (Department of Business and Economics, University of Southern Denmark); Casper Worm Hansen (Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen) |
| Abstract: | The introduction of immigration quotas in the 1920s fundamentally changed US migration policy. We exploit this policy change to estimate the effect of immigration on local economic growth and industry development. Our analysis demonstrates that areas with larger pre-existing communities of immigrants of nationalities restricted by the quota system experienced larger population declines in the subsequent decades as the quotas reduced the supply of immigrants to these areas. We then show that the quotas led to negative agglomeration effects in the manufacturing sector, while productivity losses are only visible in urban counties, cities, and immigrant dependent industries. We also ?find that the quota system pushed native workers into low-wage occupations. |
| Keywords: | Immigration restrictions, National quota acts, Economic growth |
| JEL: | J11 J61 N12 O11 O47 |
| Date: | 2016–11–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kud:kuiedp:1611&r=mig |
| By: | Pia Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny |
| Keywords: | Unauthorized Immigrants, Illegal Immigration, Temporary Foreign Workers |
| JEL: | J15 J18 J61 |
| Date: | 2016–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cgd:wpaper:436&r=mig |
| By: | Sascha O. Becker (University of Warwick); Thiemo Fetzer (Economic geography, market potential, structural gravity, trade costsAbstract: The 2004 accession of 8 Eastern European countries (plus Cyprus and Malta) to the European Union (EU) was overshadowed by feared mass migration of workers from the East due to the EU’s rules on free mobility of labour. While many incumbent EU countries imposed temporary restrictions on labour mobility, the United Kingdom did not impose any such restrictions. We document that following accession at least 1 million people (ca. 3% of the UK working age population) migrated from Eastern Europe to the UK. Places that received large numbers of migrants from Eastern Europe saw a significant increase in anti-European sentiment after 2004, measured by vote shares for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in elections to the European Parliament. We show that the migration wave depressed wages at the lower end of the wage distribution and contributed to increased pressure on public services and housing.) |
| Keywords: | Political Economy, Migration, Globalization, Voting, EU JEL Classification: R23, D72, N44, Z13creation-date: 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:306&r=mig |