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on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Clemens, Michael A. (Center for Global Development) |
| Abstract: | A recent surge in child migration to the U.S. from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala has occurred in the context of high rates of regional violence. But little quantitative evidence exists on the causal relationship between violence and international emigration in this or any other region. This paper studies the relationship between violence in the Northern Triangle and child migration to the United States using novel, individual-level, anonymized data on all 178,825 U.S. apprehensions of unaccompanied child migrants from these countries between 2011 and 2016. It finds that one additional homicide per year in the region, sustained over the whole period – that is, a cumulative total of six additional homicides – caused a cumulative total of 3.7 additional unaccompanied child apprehensions in the United States. The explanatory power of short-term increases in violence is roughly equal to the explanatory power of long-term economic characteristics like average income and poverty. Due to diffusion of migration experience and assistance through social networks, violence can cause waves of migration that snowball over time, continuing to rise even when violence levels do not. |
| Keywords: | violence, migration, forced, refugee, UAC, unaccompanied children, Northern Triangle, Central America, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, minors, survival migration, youths, Cartagena Declaration, Global Compact, war, drug trade, smugglers, traffickers, trafficking, cocaine, cartel, gang, mara, homicide, murder, mobility, asylum, asylee, war, deaths |
| JEL: | D74 F22 K42 O15 R23 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10928&r=mig |
| By: | Christiaensen, Luc; De Weerdt, Joachim; Ingelaere, Bert; Kanbur, Ravi |
| Abstract: | This paper develops the concept of "action space" as the range of possible destinations a migrant can realistically move to at a given point in time and, intimately linked to this, the set of possible livelihoods at destination. We show how this space expands and contracts over time through cumulative causation. Such a dynamic framework allows us to appreciate the role of secondary towns in rural-urban migration and poverty reduction. Secondary towns occupy a unique middle ground between semi-subsistence agriculture and the capitalistic city; between what is close-by and familiar and what is much further away and unknown. By opening up the horizons of the (poorer) rural population and facilitating navigation of the non-farm economy, secondary towns allow a broader base of the poor population to become physically, economically and socially mobile. Secondary towns therefore have great potential as vehicles for inclusive growth and poverty reduction in urbanizing developing countries. These are the insights emerging from in-depth life history accounts of 75 purposively selected rural-urban migrants from rural Kagera, in Tanzania. |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12193&r=mig |
| By: | Yang, Guangliang; Li, Lixing; Fu, Shihe |
| Abstract: | We combine the 2005 China Inter-Census Population Survey data and the 2004 China Manufacturing Census to test whether workers, particularly rural migrants, benefit from labor market Marshallian externalities. We find that workers in general, and rural migrants in particular, benefit from labor market pooling effect (measured by total employment in a city-industry cell) and human capital externalities (measured by share of workers with a college degree or above in a city-industry cell). These findings are robust to various sorting bias tests. However, rural migrants benefit much less than do local or urban workers, possibly because rural migrants lack social networks and are discriminated doubly in terms of being both “rural” and “migrants.” Our findings have policy implications on how Chinese cities can become skilled during the rapid urbanization process coupled with global competition. |
| Keywords: | Rural migrants; labor market agglomeration economies; Marshallian externalities; labor market pooling; human capital externalities |
| JEL: | J30 J61 J71 O15 O18 R23 |
| Date: | 2017–08–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:80713&r=mig |
| By: | Baltagi, Badi H. (Syracuse University); Deng, Ying (School of International Trade and Economics, Beijing); Ma, Xiangjun (School of International Trade and Economics, Beijing) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the fact that 37 percent of the internal migrants in China do not sign a labor contract with their employers, as revealed in a nationwide survey. These contract-free jobs pay lower hourly wages, require longer weekly work hours, and provide less insurance or on-the-job training than regular jobs with contracts. We find that the co-villager networks play an important role in a migrant's decision on whether to accept such insecure and irregular jobs. By employing a comprehensive nationwide survey in 2011 in the spatial autoregressive logit model, we show that the common behavior of not signing contracts in the co-villager network increases the probability that a migrant accepts a contract-free job. We provide three possible explanations on how networks influence migrants' contract decisions: job referral mechanism, limited information on contract benefits, and the "mini labor union" formed among co-villagers, which substitutes for a formal contract. In the sub-sample analysis, we also find that the effects are larger for migrants whose jobs were introduced by their co-villagers, male migrants, migrants with rural Hukou, short-term migrants, and less educated migrants. The heterogeneous effects for migrants of different employer types, industries, and home provinces provide policy implications. |
| Keywords: | contract, co-villager network, spatial autoregressive logit model, internal migrants |
| JEL: | O15 R12 J41 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10926&r=mig |
| By: | Mahmud, Mir |
| Abstract: | Although Immigrant children represent approximately 3 percent of total U.S. child population, they remain the most vulnerable group in terms of access to public health insurance since the enactment of the “five-year-ban” for legal immigrants in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Children Health Insurance Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) of 2009 provided states an option to receive federal funds to expand eligibility for immigrant children regardless of their length of residency. In this paper, we utilize the cross-state variation in policy environment before and after the adoption of CHIPRA to compare the differences in access to public health insurance among the low-income immigrant children. We find that adoption immigrant child option of CHIPRA has resulted 8 percentage points increase in health coverage for the target group, almost entirely contributed by equal increase in coverage through public health insurance. Our measure of estimated treatment effect is lower than what existing literature reports. We attribute the difference to the existing state-funded programs to support immigrant children among majority of the CHIPRA states. Increase in coverage entirely comes from the ranks of previously uninsured children; no evidence of crowding out from the private insurance was found. We also verify the lack of crowding out by estimating the labor market response among mothers of immigrant children. |
| Keywords: | Key Words: Health Insurance, Medicaid, Immigrants |
| JEL: | I1 I18 |
| Date: | 2016–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:80602&r=mig |
| By: | Joël Machado (CREA, Université du Luxembourg) |
| Abstract: | This paper aims to assess the effects of two different policies dealing with undocumented immigrants on agents’ welfare: amnesties and deportations. I develop a two-period overlapping generations model which accounts for the ex-ante production by undocumented workers and their partial contribution and access to public transfers. Additional channels, such as the discrimination on the labor market and a different productivity of regularized workers are also discussed. The impact of a migration policy strongly depends on the wage effects of the legalized/ deported workers and their net fiscal contribution. The calibration of the model for the United States in 2014 allows to disentangle the importance of the different channels at work. Overall the impact of the two policies on natives’ welfare is quite limited (between -0.1% and +0.15%). Retired agents benefit from an amnesty and are harmed by a deportation. The effect on workers is ambiguous and depends on the wage and fiscal effects in addition to the change in the returns on savings. |
| Keywords: | undocumented immigration, amnesty, regularization, deportation, discrimination. |
| JEL: | F29 J61 J68 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:luc:wpaper:17-11&r=mig |
| By: | Kumar, Dr.B.Pradeep |
| Abstract: | In recent times, internal migration has intensified in different parts of the world. In tune with this, migration issues in Kerala have assumed different dimensions thanks to the inflow of a large number of migrants from the far away states like Assam and West Bengal. This has made Kerala a destination which attracts internal migrants besides being a state sending its own people to the Middle East and Europe. The large influx of migrants has caused precarious socio-economic issues in Kerala society. At the same time, Kerala’s dying productive sectors find resurrection only on the ride of the present wave of migrant workers to the State. Set in this background, this paper intends to look into these issues and try to bring out policy interventions by the government to improve the living conditions of migrant workers. |
| Keywords: | Migration, foreign remittances, Labor Market, Discrimination, Intervention |
| JEL: | J01 J6 J62 |
| Date: | 2016–06–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:80586&r=mig |
| By: | Piracha, Matloob; Tani, Massimiliano; Tchuente, Guy |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the impact of a change in Australia's immigration policy, introduced in the mid-1990s, on migrants' remittance behaviour. More precisely, we compare the remittance behaviour of two cohorts who entered Australia before and after the policy change, which consists of stricter entry requirements. Our empirical strategy uses conditional difference-in-differences in the presence of interactive fixed-effects. We first show that Bai's (2009) least squares estimator and conditional difference-in-differences are biased if used on their own. We then derive conditions that are required to obtain a consistent estimator using a combination of conditional difference-in-differences and Bai's (2009) least squares estimator. The results indicate that those who entered under more stringent conditions - the second cohort - have a higher probability to remit than those in the first cohort, though the policy change has no discernible effect on the level of remittances. |
| Keywords: | Immigration,Treatment effect,difference-in-differences |
| JEL: | C13 F22 F24 J61 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:94&r=mig |
| By: | Scheller, Friedrich |
| Abstract: | The paper analyses the role of the relative regional group size for the labor market integration of three different ethnic groups in Germany. The analysis addresses the question of whether there is a consistent group size effect, or if group size functions differently for different immigrant groups and for different indicators of labor market integration in Germany. Using data provided by the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) multilevel cross-classification models are fitted. The final dataset contains 10,970 observations from Turkish, Greek, and Italian immigrants, and their offspring. Results generally show no effect of relative regional group size on the risk of unemployment, but a significant effect on job status. The effect is nonlinear, and manifests differently for each ethnic group. It becomes apparent that findings on the relationship between group size and labor market integration found for one immigrant group cannot readily be extended to other origin groups. |
| Keywords: | group size,labor market integration,migration,cross-classification,Gruppengröße,Arbeitsmarktintegration,Migration,Kreuzklassifizierung |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:udesoz:201703&r=mig |
| By: | Michel beine (CREA, Université du Luxembourg); Marco Delogu (CREA, Université du Luxembourg); Lionel Ragot (Université Paris Nanterre) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the determinants of international students' mobility at the university level, for using specifically on the role of tuition fees. We derive a gravity model from a Random Utility Maximization model of location choice for international students in the presence of capacity constraints of the hosting institutions. The last layer of the model is estimated using new data on student migration flows at the university level for Italy. We control for the potential endogeneity of tuition fees through a classical IV approach based on the status of the university. We obtain evidence for a clear and negative effect of fees on international student mobility and confirm the positive impact of the quality of the education. The estimations also support the important role of additional destination-specific variables such as host capacity, the expected return of education and the cost of living in the vicinity of the university. |
| Keywords: | Foreign students; Tuition fees; Location choice; University Quality |
| JEL: | F22 H52 I23 O15 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:luc:wpaper:17-09&r=mig |
| By: | Massimo Morelli (Bocconi University, CEPR, Dondena and IGIER); Margherita Negri (University of St Andrews) |
| Abstract: | When exposed to similar migration flows, countries with different institutional systems may respond with different levels of openness. We study in particular the different responses determined by different electoral systems. We find that Winner Take All countries would tend to be more open than countries with PR when all other policies are kept constant, but, crucially, if we consider the endogenous differences in redistribution levels across systems, then the openness ranking may switch. |
| Keywords: | Proportional representation, Median voter, Taxation, Occupational Choice, Migration, Walls. |
| JEL: | D72 F22 |
| Date: | 2017–08–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:san:wpecon:1714&r=mig |