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on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Xue, Melanie |
| Abstract: | This paper introduces a structured approach for using genealogical records from FamilySearch to study Chinese historical demography. As a proof of concept, we focus on over 190, 000 digitized records from a single surname, drawn from many provinces and spanning multiple centuries. These lineage-based microdata include individual-level birth, death, and kinship information, which we clean, validate, and geocode using consistent rules and standardized place names. We begin by documenting descriptive patterns in population growth, sex ratios, and migration. Migration was overwhelmingly local, with longdistance moves rare and concentrated in a small number of lineages. Outmigration rose to a high point between 1750 and 1850 and then declined in later cohorts and generations. We then use the genealogical data to test specific hypotheses. Male-biased sex ratios—likely influenced by female infanticide—are strongly associated with higher rates of male childlessness. Migration rates fall sharply with patrilineal generational depth, offering micro-level evidence that clans became more sedentary over time. Together, these findings show how genealogical records can be used to reconstruct long-run demographic patterns and to assess social processes such as kinship, mobility, and reproductive exclusion. The approach is replicable and extensible to other surnames and regions as data coverage improves. |
| Keywords: | crowd-surfed genealogies; historical demography; China |
| JEL: | J11 J13 N10 N35 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:129939 |
| By: | Quivine Ndomo; Elif Naz Kayran; Ilona Bontenbal; Simona Brunnerová; Sarah Tornberg; Mirjam Pot; Selma Kadi; Martin Kahanec |
| Abstract: | This article investigates how migrant labour regimes shape long-term care (LTC) work in Austria, Finland, and Slovakia, amid rising demographic pressures and EU-wide care workforce shortages. Drawing on 39 qualitative interviews with migrant care workers and stakeholders, we apply a layered theoretical framework combining labour process theory and migrant labour regime theory centred on legal dualism, transnationalism, and labour agency to analyse the lived experiences of migrant LTC work. The study reveals how migration, industrial relations, and welfare regimes interact with labour agency to produce segmented and structurally marginal care roles for migrants. Despite divergent pathways into LTC including circular self-employment in Austria, education-based integration in Finland, and informal agency recruitment in Slovakia, all three regimes converge in their reliance on precarious, undervalued migrant labour. Migrant workers navigate these conditions through individualised strategies of resilience and reworking, with limited access to collective representation. Our findings highlight the emergence of niche migrant labour regimes that sustain care provision while reinforcing exclusion from core labour protections. The article contributes to industrial relations scholarship by theorising migrant LTC work as a labour process shaped by legal differentiation, constrained agency, and multi-scalar governance, raising critical questions about equity and sustainability in European care systems. |
| Date: | 2025–10–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cel:dpaper:74 |
| By: | Nathan Lillie; Lisa Berntsen; Olena Fedyuk; Tibor T Meszmann |
| Abstract: | The labour market presence of temporary migrant workers in EU member states, coming both from other EU member states and outside its borders has increased dramatically since 2020 (Eurostat). Migrant workers have begun to appear in locations and in jobs where they haven’t been seen before, mainly in poorly remunerated and precarious jobs. The magnitude of the change is partly obscured by the invisibility of this workforce. Part of the attraction of this workforce for employers is its frequently circular, short-term and precarious nature, which also limits its visibility to mainstream society in host countries. It often occurs outside ‘normal’ labour migration pathways, ‘normal’ in this context meaning the regular organized visa and migrant integration systems that regulate migration. This does not necessarily mean the migrants are undocumented: there are a variety of legal frameworks that regulate third country labour migration, and inter-EU migration is of course regulated under EU free movement principles. However, this migration is shaped by employers and other fragmented constellations of actors, rather than host country regulation per se, creating pressure on national labour market norms and industrial relations systems, sometimes challenging them directly but more often undermining them by circumventing them. Temporary migrants are often vulnerable to exploitation, due to the nature of their work contracts, precarious residence status, poor access to social protection, and weak links to host country trade unions and civil society. The systems by which they are recruited and their labour process is managed tend to reproduce these sources of vulnerability, rather than alleviate them. |
| Date: | 2025–10–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cel:dpaper:78 |
| By: | Assaf Razin |
| Abstract: | Using a comparative framework, the study examines how variations in political regimes across Israel and Europe shape patterns of international migration. In both contexts, episodes of democratic backsliding serve as quasi-exogenous shocks that reveal the causal link between institutional erosion and outward mobility. In Israel, the origin of democratic backsliding lies in a corruption shock—the criminal indictment of the prime minister—which escalated into an executive–judicial shock as the government launched an anti-democratic judicial overhaul. This confrontation between the executive and judiciary provides a natural experiment for identifying how institutional breakdowns shape migration decisions. In Europe, the origin of democratic backsliding stems from a “Syrian shock”—a massive refugee inflow that strained administrative capacity, polarized politics, and weakened liberal institutions. The resulting governance erosion triggered emigration responses structurally like those observed in Israel. Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) estimation, the study identifies causal effects of democratic erosion on migration flows. Across both settings, out-migration emerges as a market-minded response to illiberal regime change—a behavioral signal of sensitivity to policies that features nationalizing industries, restrict free speech, and undermine the rule of law. Together, the Israeli and European experiences demonstrate that illiberal governance functions as a systemic push factor for emigration, beyond standard economic explanations. |
| JEL: | F0 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34432 |
| By: | Adrjan, Pawel (Indeed Hiring Lab); Gromadzki, Jan (Vienna University of Economics and Business) |
| Abstract: | We investigate whether exclusionary government rhetoric targeting a minority group affects residents' migration decisions. In 2019, almost 100 local governments in Poland voted to declare their localities "free from LGBTQ ideology, " providing a unique setting in which government narratives suddenly changed, but the legal situation of targeted minorities remained the same. We study the impact of these resolutions on migration intentions using novel data on domestic and international job search from a large global job site. Comparing counties with anti-LGBTQ resolutions to neighboring counties in a difference-in-differences design, we find that the resolutions increased domestic out-of-county job search by 12 percent and international job search by 15 percent. Our results are likely driven by the shock to beliefs about local social norms, as we find the largest effects in counties with relatively low prior support for far-right parties. We also present suggestive evidence that the rise in job search translated into actual migration, with the treated counties losing nearly 1 percent of their young adult population. |
| Keywords: | job search, migration intentions, migration, discrimination, LGBTQ |
| JEL: | F22 R23 N40 J15 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18217 |
| By: | Dragan Aleksić; Mihail Arandarenko; Ines Chrťan; Tibor T Meszmann |
| Abstract: | Serbian migrant workers have played a prominent role in the expansion of the Slovak automotive sector in the 2016-2019 period, but became a less dominant migrant group by 2023. Analysing statistical data on Serbian labour migrants in Slovakia, migrant workers in Slovak automotive companies, as well as secondary sources and interviews, in this article we shed light on the determinants of temporary or circular labour migration and its interrelation with a sectoral and company-based labour regime. Our assessment incorporates factors such as the needs of employers, sector-specific considerations, the role of intermediaries and the motivations of migrant workers. We show that migrant workers’ labour was a key factor in subsidiaries of global automotive companies' strategy to expand production and employment, and simultaneously cut costs, putting constant pressure on working conditions and wages. Thus we found that employers - user companies were consciously shaping such a migrant labour based regime. Unions could only modestly remedy the highly flexible arrangement. Finally, our exercise shows that Serbian workers integrated in a highly precarious manner in Slovak automotives, which corresponds to declining migration trends from Serbia since 2019. |
| Date: | 2025–10–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cel:dpaper:77 |
| By: | Maja Breznik; Nermin Oruč; Veronika Bajt; Amela Kurta; Katerina Kočkovska Šetinc |
| Abstract: | This paper examines higher education institutions as a factor facilitating international labour migration. Drawing on the notion of the education-migration nexus, it explores the role of higher education institutions as channels of labour migration in Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina within the transnational labour migration regime. Our research data, obtained through the compilation of statistics, contextual factors, and interviews, show that educational institutions have resolved internal contradictions, such as declining enrolment in Slovenia and the lack of labour market absorption capacity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by aligning with migration policies. These linkages have led to international students being exploited as a workforce for sweatshops in Slovenia and to a workforce being produced for foreign labour markets in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This paper provides both a theoretical contribution and new empirical insights into the education-migration nexus from the perspectives of two Western periphery countries that have been largely neglected in the existing literature. |
| Date: | 2025–10–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cel:dpaper:75 |
| By: | Stuhler, Jan (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid); Dustmann, Christian (University College London); Otten, Sebastian (RWI); Schönberg, Uta (University College London) |
| Abstract: | Most studies on the labor market effects of immigration use repeated cross-sectional data to estimate the effects of immigration on regions. This paper shows that such regional effects are composites of effects that address fundamental questions in the immigration debate but remain unidentified with repeated cross-sectional data. We provide a unifying empirical framework that decomposes the regional effects of immigration into their underlying components and show how these are identifiable from data that track workers over time. Our empirical application illustrates that such analysis yields a far more informative picture of immigration’s effects on wages, employment, and occupational upgrading. |
| Keywords: | elasticity, upgrading, employment effects, wage effects, immigration, selection, identification |
| JEL: | J21 J23 J31 J61 R23 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18229 |
| By: | Sarzin, Zara Inga |
| Abstract: | This paper synthesizes recent evidence on refugee self-reliance in low- and middle-income countries, clarifying definitions, reviewing measurement approaches, and assessing the effectiveness of policies and programs that foster self-reliance. Refugee self-reliance varies across contexts. It is lowest in camps, and higher in urban, non-camp settings that offer better access to jobs and markets. Host country policies that provide refugees with secure legal status, the right to work, and freedom of movement consistently correlate with higher employment and earnings. Programmatic interventions to support economic participation and self-reliance show heterogeneous impacts. Active labor market and entrepreneurship support programs typically yield modest gains in the short term, while “graduation” programs deliver larger improvements in welfare. The paper argues that enabling policies, combined with targeted, context-specific support, and use of national systems can improve refugee self-reliance, lower hosting costs, maximize the impact of financing for refugee situations, and transform fiscal costs into development gains for host countries. More rigorous evidence is needed on long-term impacts, demand-side job creation, and large-scale government-led policy reforms, underscoring the need to integrate empirical evaluation into policy and program design. |
| Date: | 2025–10–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11246 |
| By: | Chen, Wen-Hao (OECD); Fang, Tony (Memorial University of Newfoundland) |
| Abstract: | This study examines the labor market impacts of Canada’s 2014 reforms to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), which introduced stricter limits on hiring low-skilled foreign workers. Using a difference-in-differences framework with Labour Force Survey data from 2005 to 2019, we compare wage outcomes for domestic workers in TFW-intensive occupations to those in similar low-skill jobs unaffected by the reforms. Robustness checks— including event study analysis, propensity score matching, placebo tests, and additional validation with Census data (2006, 2011, 2016)—consistently show that the reforms led to a statistically significant increase in wages for affected domestic workers. The estimated impact ranges from 3.7% to 4.5%, suggesting that restricting access to temporary foreign labor modestly improves wage outcomes for low-wage Canadians. These findings offer timely insights amid renewed policy efforts to tighten immigration, highlighting the potential benefits of targeted reforms while cautioning against broader restrictions that could undermine labor market responsiveness and sectoral needs. |
| Keywords: | policy evaluation, low-skilled workers, wages, labor market, immigration policy, temporary foreign workers, difference-in-differences |
| JEL: | J61 J68 J31 J21 O15 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18240 |
| By: | Stephen Ayerst; Nina Chebotareva; Oksana Dynnikova; Amanda Edwards; Charles Zhang |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a structural model of interconnected European labor markets to examine how further EU integration would impact the Western Balkan economies and how policy can improve output and employment in these countries. Risks of increased emigration from further integration can be managed through promoting faster productivity growth, including through structural reforms. Model simulations show that productivity increases of 30 percent, similar to previous EU accession cases, would results in wage growth, help close the unemployment gap, and offset increased emigration through higher immigration and labor participation. Policies to improve the efficiency of the labor market (participation, job search, production) are essential to boost employment and support output. |
| Keywords: | Western Balkans; Labor Markets; Migration; EU Accession |
| Date: | 2025–10–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2025/226 |
| By: | Michelle Majid (Department of Economics, University of Reading); Akeem Rahaman (independent researcher, Trinidad and Tobago); Scott Marc Romeo Mahadeo (Department of Economics, University of Reading) |
| Abstract: | The migration literature shows that labour-seeking and remittance-driven motives are central determinants of movement, with identifiable push and pull factors shaping flows across countries. Yet, the role of foreign exchange (FX) availability remains unexplored despite its relevance in small, open economies. We address this gap by introducing the concept of currency- seeking migration, where limited access to convertible currency acts as a push factor and the ability to earn FX abroad functions as a pull factor. Using Trinidad and Tobago, a country facing protracted FX shortages, we estimate autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models using data from 1975 to 2016 and find a long-run relationship in which a decline in net official reserves reduces net migration, signalling greater emigration pressures. We also observe a slow error- correction process, indicating that there is a sluggish adjustment toward long-run equilibrium as pressures or short-run disturbances persist once triggered. Our results are robust across multiple specifications using different measures of FX positions. We recommend improving access to FX as an essential step to reduce emigration pressures, achievable in the short-run through export reform, via more targeted protectionist policies, and export diversification. This can assist in stabilising the external balance and pave the way for more long-term structural reforms through exchange rate liberalisation. |
| Date: | 2025–11–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rdg:emxxdp:em-dp2025-04 |
| By: | Jaan Masso; Maja Breznik; Liis Roosaar; Tibor T Meszmann |
| Abstract: | The growth of immigrant labour in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has put pressure on labour market institutions and actors shaping industrial relations. Estonia, Slovakia and Slovenia – countries representing different models of capitalism – have adopted different regulatory strategies to address the growing need for temporary migrant labour. In some sectors, the high presence of migrant workers on temporary contracts puts pressure on wages and working conditions, creating conditions for sectoral and company-based migrant labour regimes (MLR). Starting with the thesis on the divergence of industrial relations in the EU's eastern periphery, we investigate the roles of employers and trade unions in Estonia, Slovakia, and Slovenia in addressing the issues arising from the temporary employment of migrant workers. While there are convergences towards similar outcomes, there are also clear differences: from the near-absence of trade union action to help migrant workers to new forms of employee representation. In all three countries, the driving force behind the increased reliance on migrant labour has been some employers’ economic need to fill low-paid jobs. Our article shows that trade unions and employer organisations are involved to varying degrees in the national regulatory processes concerning changes to the labour market access of TCNs. However, their influence on sectoral or company-level migrant worker employment practices is low to non-existent. While these sector- and company-based MLRs are growing in significance, trade unions in particular are caught in a vicious cycle of deregulation and reregulation. |
| Date: | 2025–10–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cel:dpaper:73 |