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on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Bah, Tijan (World Bank); Batista, Catia (Nova School of Business and Economics) |
| Abstract: | Irregular migration to Europe by sea, though risky, remains one of the most popular migration options for many Sub-Saharan Africans. This study examines the drivers of irregular migration decisions using an incentivized lab-in-the-field experiment in rural Gambia, the African country with the highest per-capita rate of irregular migration to Europe. Potential migrants substantially overestimate the probability of dying en route, reporting an average belief of 51 percent compared with a best available estimate of about 20 percent. In the experiment, reducing the probability of dying en route from 50 to 20 percent raises willingness to migrate irregularly by 3.0 percentage points, while reducing the probability of obtaining legal residence from 50 to 30 percent lowers it by 2.1 points. Our results highlight the importance of potential migrants' prior beliefs in shaping responses to information and suggest that information policies that fail to account for these beliefs may backfire. |
| Keywords: | international migration, irregular migration, migration intentions, information campaigns, prior updating, migration policy, lab-in-the-field experiment, West Africa |
| JEL: | C93 D83 F22 J17 O15 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18966 |
| By: | Shonchoy, Abu (Florida International University and J-PAL); Fujii, Tomoki (Singapore Management University); Raihan, Selim (University of Dhaka) |
| Abstract: | Migration into stable urban manufacturing jobs offers large returns, yet rural-to-urban migration remains limited in developing countries. Using a field experiment in Bangladesh, we sequentially relax constraints on information, skills, liquidity, and migration risk for poor rural youth seeking jobs in the urban apparel sector. Information and training alone have limited effects. By contrast, combining training with a stipend, paid internship, and transition support increases migration, employment, and earnings, reduces poverty, and produces intra-household spillovers. We find that reducing job-search uncertainty and migration risk is central to labor-market entry, and skills-training programs may require complementary financing, migration assistance, and job-search support for scalable impacts. |
| Keywords: | field experiment, internal migration, vocational training, internship, Bangladesh, apparel sector |
| JEL: | J61 O15 R23 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18912 |
| By: | Vasiliki Fouka; Marco Tabellini |
| Abstract: | We discuss how immigration affects identity, with implications for politics. We build on key insights from social psychology and their formalization in economics to derive predictions about how immigration changes both self-identification and categorization of others into groups. These immigration-induced identity changes can explain two recent political transformations that have characterized many Western democracies: the rise of right-wing populism and the realignment of voters and parties along a socio-cultural, rather than economic, dimension of political conflict. We also discuss how immigration can reshape group boundaries and political cleavages, depending on the characteristics of immigrants, host populations, and the local context. We highlight open questions and possible directions for future research. |
| JEL: | D72 D91 J15 N32 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35777 |
| By: | Busso, Matias (Inter American Development Bank); Gonzalez-Velosa, Carolina (Inter American Development Bank); Muñoz-Morales, Juan (IÉSEG School of Management); Ruiz, Juanita (Georgetown University); Valencia, Juan (Inter American Development Bank); van der Werf, Cynthia (Inter American Development Bank) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies whether government-issued skill certification improves labor market integration when workers' skills are hard to verify. We evaluate a randomized offer of access to an occupation-specific certification program in Colombia among locals and migrants, two groups with different ex ante signaling capacity. The program certifies existing skills rather than providing training. Among locals, the offer increases employment by reducing inactivity and raises hours worked. The effects persist unevenly over time and are robust to attrition bounds and alternative outcome measures. Among migrants, estimates are less precise and provide no evidence of effects in employment, hours, or wages. The results show that a common skill certification generates different patterns of labor-market adjustment among locals and migrants. |
| Keywords: | signaling, certifications, skills, migration, Colombia |
| JEL: | J24 J61 J64 I26 O15 D82 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18963 |
| By: | Clemens, Michael (Johns Hopkins University) |
| Abstract: | The US government has proposed various taxes on high-skill immigration. The effects of such taxes hinge on price elasticities of demand and supply that the literature has rarely measured. I estimate key elasticities to evaluate a $100, 000 tax on Optional Practical Training (OPT) work permits for international graduates of US universities, the largest single channel of high-skill immigration to the US. Depending on the tax's incidence, evaluation requires the price elasticity of demand for US degrees with the OPT option, of universities' supply of OPT placements, or of employers' demand for OPT workers. In all incidence scenarios, OPT starts at a given level of international enrollment fall by roughly a third or more, and by four fifths under university or employer incidence in the central scenarios. The decline in OPT opportunities would cut international enrollment, costing universities hundreds of millions to over four billion dollars a year in net margin, before any compounding with taxes on work visas such as the H-1B. The need for better estimates will grow with the prevalence of immigration taxes. |
| Keywords: | Optional Practical Training, H-1B, immigration, immigrant, labor, tax, fee, payment, duty, tariff, skill, talent, foreign, student, graduate, college, higher ed, university, demand, supply, elasticity, STEM |
| JEL: | F22 H22 I23 J61 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18933 |
| By: | Nxumalo, Mpumelelo (World Bank); Raju, Dhushyanth (World Bank) |
| Abstract: | Formal labor market integration remains central to Türkiye’s Syrian refugee response as policy shifts toward longer-term self-reliance and social cohesion. This paper uses a 2026 survey of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) across all 81 provinces in the country, with a dedicated Syrian refugee employment module in 24 provinces covering about 95 percent of Syrians under temporary protection. Among MSMEs in these provinces, 4.5 percent have ever hired Syrian refugee workers and 2.6 percent currently employ them, representing roughly 100, 000 and 58, 000 firms. Employer-reported experience is generally favorable, yet formal hiring remains constrained by limited knowledge of formal employment requirements, procedural complexity, low support program awareness and use, and reliance on personal networks and direct applications. Current and former employers are far more likely than never-employers to report that additional support would make hiring easier. The findings point to making work authorization pathways clearer and easier to use, reducing administrative frictions, strengthening matching and support services, and differentiating assistance by firms’ prior hiring experience. |
| Keywords: | Syrian refugees, MSMEs, formal employment, work permits, employer-side constraints, labor market integration, Türkiye |
| JEL: | J15 J61 J68 O15 L26 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18916 |
| By: | Kinga Varga; Bence Koll\'anyi; Johannes Wachs |
| Abstract: | The return migration of skilled workers provides origin countries many important benefits. The likelihood of return migration is thought to depend on relative economic opportunities, but quantitative evidence of its relative importance remains limited. Here we measure return migration rates using the public profiles of software developers on GitHub, geocoded across ten waves between 2012 and 2026, in a panel containing more than 270, 000 international movers. Within five years of departure, 8.8% of movers have returned. Origin-country rates range from under 1\% to 16\%. Hazard models with corridor fixed effects show that migrants whose home countries experience greater catch-up growth return at significantly higher rates. Immutable features of country pairs such as cultural or geographic distance do not explain the estimate. We forecast future return rates using IMF growth projections, predicting, for example, that India's return rate will rise 12\% by 2035 and China's 7\%. The difference is driven mostly by India's faster projected growth at home. As developing economies close income gaps with the destinations their emigrants have settled in, they recover more of the workers they lost. |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2609.31236 |
| By: | Kirk Bansak; Jens Hainmueller; Dominik Hangartner; Jeremy Ferwerda; Elisabeth Paulson; Angie Delevoye; Nicholas Adams-Cohen; Ashwin Ramaswami; Selina Kurer; Joelle Pianzola; Michael Hotard |
| Abstract: | Refugee integration is a central policy challenge for host countries, and where governments initially place refugees shapes their integration trajectories. Yet placement officers often have limited information about where each case is most likely to succeed. Algorithmic refugee matching uses administrative data, machine learning, and constrained optimization to recommend employment-optimized placements in real time as cases arrive, with human placement officers retaining final authority. Between January 2020 and June 2023, the Swiss State Secretariat for Migration randomly assigned about 2, 000 refugee cases to receive a canton recommendation either algorithmically optimized for employment or drawn to approximate existing procedures, with placement officers and refugees blinded to assignment. The two arms used identical but separate canton and origin-group quotas, so gains reflect better refugee-canton matching rather than reallocation toward stronger labor markets. The trial began just before the COVID-19 pandemic shifted labor-market conditions. For the pre-registered primary outcome -- the share of months employed during the first three years -- the pooled intention-to-treat (ITT) estimate across the 2020-2023 placement cohorts was +2.2 percentage points (about 10% of the 22.3% control mean; 95% CI [+0.05, +4.33]), rising to +3.9 pp (about 17%; [+1.11, +6.68]) for the post-COVID 2022-2023 cohorts. Effects grew over time: at 36 months, the pooled ITT on the employment rate was +5.2 pp (about 11%; 95% CI [+1.10, +9.25]) -- comparable to the gains from hundreds of hours of intensive language training. Overall, the results provide rare field evidence that AI-based decision support can improve high-stakes public-sector allocation, offering a scalable, low-cost way to raise refugee employment. |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2609.35448 |
| By: | Sparber, Chad (Colgate University) |
| Abstract: | H-1B status grants highly-educated foreign nationals the right to work in specialized occupations in the United States. Recent policy proposals include altering the method for allocating H-1B status, raising payments associated with entry into the country, and changing the limit on new issuances available. To help inform policy, this paper uses the universe of cap-bound H-1Bs awarded in fiscal year 2024 to examine how wages vary across different groups. Workers on F-1 student status accounted for 45% of new issuances, while another 43% went to individuals living abroad without any contemporary US immigration status. This former group earned 10% higher wages than the latter, or 6% more after accounting for observable differences between groups. Indian-born workers without current status seeking new employment at H-1B dependent firms earn the lowest wages. Policies favoring one of these groups over another -- whether intended or not -- will affect the average wage paid to H-1B recipients. |
| Keywords: | skilled immigration, H-1B, wage differentials |
| JEL: | J61 J68 J31 F22 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18940 |
| By: | Swindle, Jeffrey (University of Texas at Austin); Blanton, Matthew |
| Abstract: | Across a new transnational wave of illiberal governance, tough-on-crime approaches to public safety and migration are growing. The case of El Salvador, in which President Nayib Bukele suspended due process protections and imprisoned suspected gang members in mass beginning in late March 2022 under a State of Exception policy, offers a window into this process. Turning to a combination of administrative datasets and cross-national surveys, we show that despite tremendous public approval for President Bukele’s strategies as the solution to a long history of persistent gang violence and international migration, violence largely reduced before he implemented the State of Exception, and Salvadorans’ migration intentions have not declined. Moreover, we find no evidence that the policy or Bukele taking office produced a particular reduction in Salvadoran migration to either the U.S. or Mexico compared to Guatemalan and Honduran migration. Nor do we uncover clear evidence that return migration to El Salvador uniquely increased, undercutting conclusions that illiberal tough-on-crime policies like El Salvador’s are likely to address “root causes” of international migration. |
| Date: | 2026–09–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:4zvqb_v1 |
| By: | Joanna Jadwiga Fröhlich |
| Abstract: | Locus of control is a fruitful concept for analysing how individuals perceive and evaluate their migration histories, yet it remains underused in migration research. It offers a way to address central questions of agency and discrimination in migration processes without relying on ‘critical’ reductions such as ethnicisation or migrantisation, which pose well-known challenges for (trans)national research methodologies. In this article, data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) migration samples are combined with qualitative interviews with a subgroup of survey respondents (n=37). This mixed methods approach links statistical locus of control measures with narrative accounts in order to develop a typology of perceived agency in migration processes. The results indicate systematic variation in how migration is evaluated: individuals with a generally high internal locus of control tend to view their migration – despite chance, obstacles and setbacks – as something largely within their own control (types: ‘(Life) Artists’ and ‘Controlled Migrants’). In contrast, migrants with a more external locus of control describe both their migration and their living conditions as uncontrollable or determined by others (type: ‘The Passives’), often seeing their achievements as lying beyond their own influence or as hindered by external forces. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative evidence, this article further demonstrates that experiences of discrimination are reported differently depending on locus of control. It concludes by discussing how these findings contribute theoretically and methodologically to the understanding of discrimination and related phenomena such as the (de-)migranticization, integration paradox and mobility capital. |
| Keywords: | migration, mixed methods, social positions, integration paradox, mobility capital |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp1239 |
| By: | Marina Díez-Rituerto; Javier Gardeazabal; Nagore Iriberri; Pedro Rey Biel |
| Abstract: | Geographic mobility facilitates labor-market adjustment, yet home bias can impede relocation and perpetuate regional disparities, including in the provision of essential services. Using administrative records covering the universe of Spanish medical graduates who selected their first job between 1986 and 2019, we examine whether university lo- cation shapes early-career mobility. We first document substantial home attachment: more than half of graduates begin their careers in their home province. We then show that university location has a large effect on subsequent location choices. Completing a medical degree in one's home province increases the probability of starting work there by 22 percentage points. The effect of opening a medical school on aggregate home bias depends on the local labor market's capacity to absorb additional graduates. Finally, a nationwide liberalization of university admissions reduced students' propensity to study in their home university district and, through this channel, significantly weakened home bias. These findings show that the location of higher-education institutions and the de- sign of admissions policies can shape the geographic allocation of skilled workers at labor-market entry. |
| Keywords: | home bias, labor mobility, university location |
| JEL: | J61 I23 J18 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:1594 |
| By: | Shujaat Farooq (Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, Islamabad) |
| Abstract: | If the conflict prolongs, there is a likely that around half a million of workers may not go abroad this year, and another half a million could be forced to repatriate. This combined influx will have serious implications on domestic labor market, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, where migration traditionally absorbs nearly one-third of new labor entrants. |
| Keywords: | middle east conflict |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pid:pviewp:2026:54 |
| By: | Emeline Bezin (CREM-UMR6111); Maxence Gerard (CREM-UMR6111); Ingmar Schumacher (University of Birmingham) |
| Abstract: | How will urban growth affect the long-run environment? This paper focuses on an overlooked channel: how urbanization shapes environmental values and, with them, political support for environmental protection. Our theory combines two mechanisms: the extinction of experience documented by conservation science, whereby reduced contact with nature erodes attachment to it, and a cultural transmission process involving rational socialization decisions. Both are embedded in an overlapping-generations model with rural–urban migration and voting over environmental policy. When the extinction of experience dominates, urbanization erodes support for environmental protection. However, when socialization is effective, the picture reverses: the interaction between location and socialization choices gives rise to a process of cultural dissemination through which urbanization raises environmental values. Our main theoretical predictions are consistent with a set of stylized facts on environmental preferences, residential location, and policy support that we document using data from the International Social Survey Programme. |
| Keywords: | Urbanization, political economy, environmental values, cultural transmission, extinction of experience |
| JEL: | Q58 D72 Z13 R11 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bir:birmec:26-05 |
| By: | Mark Colas |
| Abstract: | Occupational licenses are typically jurisdiction-specific: workers who cross borders must relicense before resuming work. I quantify the resulting misallocation in the United States. I estimate a dynamic equilibrium model of occupation and location choice with occupational licensing and interstate relicensing costs. Non-portability reduces migration among workers in non-portable occupations, reduces employment among those who move, and deters entry into these occupations altogether because workers anticipate future relicensing costs. As a result, non-portability reduces aggregate earnings by roughly $18 billion annually. Workers in these occupations benefit, however, as non-portability raises their earnings. |
| Keywords: | occupational licensing, spatial equilibrium, labor market dynamics |
| JEL: | J44 J24 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12992 |