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on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Yajna Govind (PSE - Paris School of Economics - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement) |
| Abstract: | Better integration is beneficial for both migrants and the host country. In this respect, granting citizenship could be an important policy to boost migrants' integration. In this paper, I estimate the causal impact of obtaining citizenship on migrants' labor market integration. I exploit a change in the law of naturalization through marriage in France in 2006. This reform amended the eligibility criteria for applicants by increasing the required number of years of marital life from 2 to 4, generating an exogenous shock and thus a quasi-experimental setting. Using administrative panel data, I first show evidence of the impact of the reform on naturalization rates. I then use a difference-indifferences model to estimate the labor market returns to naturalization. I find that, among those working, citizenship leads to an increase in annual earnings. This effect is driven by a significant increase in the number of hours worked, as well as a positive effect on hourly wages. While the gain in earnings is similar for both men and women, the effect for men is mostly driven by an increase in hours worked compared to an increase in hourly wages for women. I provide suggestive evidence that naturalization helps reduce informality, and discrimination. This paper thus provides strong evidence that naturalization acts as a catalyst for labor market integration. |
| Keywords: | Naturalization,Immigrants,Labor market,Mixed marriages |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:psewpa:halshs-03265055&r= |
| By: | Bedaso, Fenet |
| Abstract: | Using the panel data from 1995 to 2019, this paper investigates the labor market integration of non-EU immigrants in Germany. The existing evidence shows that the economic outcomes of migrants are far behind natives. However, immigrants are a heterogeneous group in terms of their motives for migration and skills composition. In this paper, I disentangle immigrants into refugees and other migrants and compare the employment probability gap between refugees, other migrants, and natives. I also examine whether refugees have a lower employment outcome than other migrants and to what extent the level of education, language proficiency, health status, years since migration, and cohort effects explain the employment gap between the refugees and other migrants. The result confirms that refugees and other migrants are less likely to be employed than natives and the employment gap is much higher for refugees. I also find evidence of heterogeneity across gender. Other migrant men do not significantly differ from native men in the probability of being employed. In contrast, refugee women have an economic disadvantage than other migrant women and native women. I find no evidence that health status differences attribute to the employment gap between refugees, other migrants, and natives. Finally, this paper highlights the importance of the migration category when assessing the integration of immigrants into the labor market. |
| Keywords: | Employment,Refugees,other Migrants,Labor Market,Integration |
| JEL: | J15 J21 J61 F22 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:884&r= |
| By: | Abdurrahman B. Aydemir (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabancı University); Erkan Duman (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabancı University) |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates effects of birth place migration networks and other location attributes on destination choices of internal migrants conditional on migration. We also study heterogeneity in the role of these factors for migrant types who differ by skill group, age at migration, and reason of migration. We use data on male migrants from three rounds of Turkish censuses 1985, 1990 and 2000 who choose among 67 provinces. We find that migrants are drawn to provinces with larger networks, relatively better economic conditions, and distance is a significant deterrent for migration. There are, however, significant heterogeneities across migrant types. More educated and those migrating for employment reasons rely less on networks for destination choice. More educated move longer distances and labor market conditions play a significant role only in choices of migrants moving for employment reasons. Importance of labor market conditions increases and the effect of distance decreases with age. |
| Keywords: | migration, networks, destination choice, education, reason of migration, heterogeneous effects. |
| JEL: | J61 O15 R23 Z13 |
| Date: | 2021–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:koc:wpaper:2109&r= |
| By: | Luis E C Rocha; Petter Holme; Claudio D G Linhares |
| Abstract: | Differences in the social and economic environment across countries encourage humans to migrate in search of better living conditions, including job opportunities, higher salaries, security and welfare. Quantifying global migration is, however, challenging because of poor recording, privacy issues and residence status. This is particularly critical for some classes of migrants involved in stigmatised, unregulated or illegal activities. Escorting services or high-end prostitution are well-paid activities that attract workers all around the world. In this paper, we study international migration patterns of sex-workers by using network methods. Using an extensive international online advertisement directory of escorting services and information about individual escorts, we reconstruct a migrant flow network where nodes represent either origin or destination countries. The links represent the direct routes between two countries. The migration network of sex-workers shows different structural patterns than the migration of the general population. The network contains a strong core where mutual migration is often observed between a group of high-income European countries, yet Europe is split into different network communities with specific ties to non-European countries. We find non-reciprocal relations between countries, with some of them mostly offering while others attract workers. The GDP per capita is a good indicator of country attractiveness for incoming workers and service rates but is unrelated to the probability of emigration. The median financial gain of migrating, in comparison to working at the home country, is 15.9%. Only sex-workers coming from 77% of the countries have financial gains with migration and average gains decrease with the GDPc of the country of origin. Our results shows that high-end sex-worker migration is regulated by economic, geographic and cultural aspects. |
| Date: | 2021–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2107.02633&r= |
| By: | De Schrijver, Lotte; Krahé, Barbara; Beken, Tom Vander; Roelens, Kristien; Keygnaert, Ines |
| Abstract: | Background: Migrants, applicants for international protection and refugees (MAR) have been identified as vulnerable for sexual violence (SV) victimization. Since many European countries, including Belgium, have been confronted with high migratory pressure, it is important to develop prevention strategies and care paths for MARs affected by SV. Knowing possible risk factors for and consequences of SV in MAR in Europe and their help-seeking behavior is crucial to this. Methods: A critical interpretive synthesis of 37 peer-reviewed articles and 22 grey literature documents gave an overview of the existing evidence based on the socio-ecological model. Results: Risk factors and consequences of SV in MAR are comparable to those in the general population, but engender a different impact. We identified barriers for seeking and finding appropriate help after SV in MAR. Conclusions: The vulnerability for and impact of SV on MAR may be far greater than in the general population due to the specific risk factors emerging from their vulnerable situation and help-seeking barriers associated with their migration status. |
| Date: | 2021–06–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:85wxh&r= |
| By: | Nguyen, Ha Trong; Mitrou, Francis; Zubrick, Stephen R. |
| Abstract: | This paper provides the first causal evidence on the impact of retirement on housing choices. Our empirical strategy exploits the discontinuity in the eligibility ages for state pension as an instrument for the endogenous retirement decision and controls for time-invariant individual characteristics. The results show that retirement leads to a statistically significant and sizable increase in the probability of making a residential move or the likelihood of becoming outright homeowners. We also find that individuals downsize both physically and financially and tend to move to better neighbourhoods or closer to the coast upon retirement. We additionally discover that some housing adjustments take place up to 6 years before retirement. Moreover, our results reveal significant heterogeneity in the retirement impact by gender, marital status, education, housing tenue, income and wealth. Within couple households, housing mobility choices are primarily influenced by the wife’s retirement while housing downsizing decisions are only affected by the husband’s retirement. The results suggest that failing to address the endogeneity of retirement often under-states the retirement impact on such housing arrangements. |
| Keywords: | Retirement,Housing,Migration,Residential Mobility,Quality of Neighbourhood,Downsizing,Instrumental Variable |
| JEL: | J14 J26 J61 R21 R23 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:882&r= |
| By: | Calderon, Alvaro (Stanford University); Fouka, Vasiliki (Stanford University); Tabellini, Marco (Harvard Business School) |
| Abstract: | Between 1940 and 1970, more than 4 million African Americans moved from the South to the North of the United States, during the Second Great Migration. This same period witnessed the struggle and eventual success of the civil rights movement in ending institutionalized racial discrimination. This paper shows that the Great Migration and support for civil rights are causally linked. Predicting Black inflows with a shift-share instrument, we find that the Great Migration increased support for the Democratic Party and encouraged pro-civil rights activism in northern and western counties. These effects were not only driven by Black voters, but also by progressive and working class segments of the white population. We identify the salience of conditions prevailing in the South, measured through increased reporting of southern lynchings in northern newspapers, as a possible channel through which the Great Migration increased whites' support for civil rights. Mirroring the changes in the electorate, non-southern Congress members became more likely to promote civil rights legislation, but also grew increasingly polarized along party lines on racial issues. |
| Keywords: | race, diversity, civil rights, Great Migration |
| JEL: | D72 J15 N92 |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14488&r= |
| By: | IGARASHI Akira; MIWA Hirofumi; ONO Yoshikuni |
| Abstract: | Why do citizens prefer highly skilled immigrants to low-skilled immigrants? To understand the causal mechanism behind this tendency among citizens, we conducted a vignette survey experiment that enables us to clarify the role of multiple mediators. We specifically focused on three key factors that have been proposed in existing research as those that could lead citizens to be more welcoming to highly skilled immigrants: expectations of economic contributions, welfare contributions, and smaller potential for increases in crime rates. Our findings revealed that the effect of immigrants' skill levels on citizens' attitudes was fully mediated by the economic factor. In other words, people welcome high-skilled immigrants simply because they welcome the economic benefits of those immigrants, not because of the expected contributions to welfare or assumptions of low crime levels related to highly skilled immigrants. |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:21048&r= |
| By: | Holmlund, Helena (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy); Rainer, Helmut (University of Munich); Reich, Patrick (ifo Institute) |
| Abstract: | Although geographical and temporal variations in gender achievement gaps have received considerable attention, the role of culture in explaining this variation is not well understood. We exploit a large Swedish administrative data set to study gender gaps in education among second-generation immigrant youth with different cultural backgrounds. Guided by hypotheses we derive from the economics literature on gender differences and gender convergence, we explore the predictive power of a set of cultural dimensions including achievement orientation, acceptance of inequality, risk avoidance, and long-term orientation. Our empirical strategy relies on within-family, cross-gender sibling comparisons, identifying culture's differential impact on girls relative to boys while netting out unobserved family heterogeneity. We find that the central cultural dimension that matters for gender gaps in student achievement is the extent to which a society emphasizes ambition, competition, and achievement, which is strongly predictive of a relative achievement disadvantage of girls compared with boys. Exploring factors that may explain the results, we find that parents from achievement-oriented cultures choose higher quality schools for their children, and that boys benefit more from exposure to higher quality schools than girls do. Using PISA data to probe external validity, we find qualitatively and quantitatively remarkably similar results in a very different sample of second-generation immigrant youth. |
| Keywords: | Culture; Achievement Orientation; Gender Gaps in Education |
| JEL: | J16 Z10 |
| Date: | 2021–07–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2021_010&r= |
| By: | Parello, Carmelo Pierpaolo |
| Abstract: | This paper incorporates endogenous migration into a second-generation Schumpeterian growth model to study how migration, innovation and growth interact one another. I find that migration always enhances the rates of innovation and growth of the receiving economy, but also that the other way round is not true when the gap in technical knowledge between country is fixed over time. However, when the technology gap is allowed to adjusts endogenously, I find that implementing pro-innovation policies in the receiving economy shrinks immigration flows and reduces the across-country technology. |
| Keywords: | R&D-based Growth, Labor Migration, R&D policy, Technology Transfer |
| JEL: | J61 O3 O4 |
| Date: | 2021–06–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:108701&r= |
| By: | Ernest Miguelez (Université de Bordeaux and AQR-IREA, University of Barcelona); Andrea Morrison (Bocconi University) |
| Abstract: | How do regions enter new and distant technological fields? Who is triggering this process? This work addresses these compelling research questions by investigating the role of migrant inventors in the process of technological diversification. Immigrant inventors can indeed act as carriers of knowledge across borders and influence the direction of technological change. We test these latter propositions by using an original dataset of immigrant inventors in the context of European regions during the period 2003-2011. Our findings show that: immigrant inventors generate positive local knowledge spillovers; they help their host regions to develop new technological specialisations; they trigger a process of unrelated diversification. Their contribution comes via two main mechanisms: immigrant inventors use their own personal knowledge (knowledge creation); they import knowledge from their home country to the host region (knowledge transfer). Their impact is maximised when their knowledge is not recombined with the local one (in mixed teams of inventors), but it is reused (in teams made by only migrant inventors). Our work contributes to the existing literature of regional diversification by providing fresh evidence of unrelated diversification for European regions and by identifying important agents of structural change. It also contributes to the literature of migration and innovation by adding fresh evidence on European regions and by unveiling some of the mechanisms of immigrants’ knowledge transmission. |
| Keywords: | Patents, Migration, Technological diversification, Relatedness, Europe. JEL classification: O30, F20, F60 |
| Date: | 2021–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aqr:wpaper:202105&r= |
| By: | Björn Brey |
| Abstract: | Did recent technological change, in the form of automation, affect immigration policy in the United States? I argue that as automation shifted employment from routine to manual occupations at the bottom end of the skill distribution, it increased competition between natives and immigrants, consequently leading to increased support for restricting low-skill immigration. I formalise this hypothesis theoretically in a partial equilibrium model with constant elasticity of substitution in which technology leads to employment polarization, and policy makers can vote on immigration legislation. I empirically evaluate these predictions by analysing voting on low-skill immigration bills in the House of Representatives during the period 1973-2014. First, I find evidence that policy makers who represent congressional districts with a higher share of manual employment are more likely to support restricting low-skill immigration. Second, I provide empirical evidence that representatives of districts which experienced more manual-biased technological change are more likely to support restricting low-skill immigration. Finally, I provide evidence that this did not affect trade policy, which is in line with automation having increased employment in occupations exposed to low-skill immigration, but not those exposed to international trade. |
| Keywords: | Political Economy, Voting, Immigration Policy, Technological Change. |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notnic:2021-02&r= |
| By: | Weichselbaumer, Doris (University of Linz); Schuster, Julia (University of Linz) |
| Abstract: | A large body of research documents the existence of discrimination against migrants and ethnic minorities in the labour market. This study investigates for Austria, to what degree employment discrimination against ethnic minorities is mitigated, when they abstain from following the Austrian norm of including a photograph to their job application that would make their ethnicity salient or when they hold a local sounding name. In our correspondence test, we found that with matching ethnic names and ethnic photographs, black but not Asian job applicants suffered from discrimination. With a local sounding name, blacks (but not Asians) bettered their employment chances. Although photographs may facilitate ethnic discrimination, we did not find that their omission improved minorities' labour market chances. On the contrary, Asians were penalised for leaving out their photograph. Indeed, if candidates did not attach photos despite the convention to do so, we found statistically significant discrimination not only against black, but also Asian applicants. |
| Keywords: | migration, discrimination, hiring, correspondence testing |
| JEL: | C93 J15 J71 |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14495&r= |
| By: | Cirolia, Liza Rose; Hall, Suzanne; Nyamnjoh, Henrietta |
| Abstract: | Remittances are increasingly central to development discourses in Africa. The development sector seeks to leverage transnational migration and rapid innovations in financial technologies (fintech), to make remittance systems cheaper for end-users and less risky for states and companies. Critical scholarship, however, questions the techno-fix tendency, calling for grounded research on the intersections between remittances, technologies, and everyday life in African cities and beyond. Building on this work, we deploy the concepts of ‘micro-worlds’ and ‘migrant infrastructure’ to make sense of the complex networks of actors, practices, regulations, and materialities which shape remittance circulations. To ground the work, we narrate two vignettes of remittance service providers who operate in Cape Town, South Africa, serving the Congolese diaspora community. We showcase the important role of logistics companies in the ‘informal’ provision of remittance services and the rise of fintech companies operating in the remittance space. These vignettes give substance to the messy and relational dynamics of remittance micro-worlds. This relationality allows us to see how remittances are circulations, not unidirectional flows; how they are not split between formal and informal, but in fact intersect in blurry ways; how digital technologies are central to the story of migrant infrastructures; and how migrants themselves are compositional of these networks. In doing so, we tell a more relational story about how remittance systems are constituted and configured. |
| Keywords: | remittances; mobile money; regulation; migrant infrastructure; micro-worlds |
| JEL: | R14 J01 |
| Date: | 2021–05–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:110472&r= |
| By: | Christoph Albert; Paula Bustos; Jacopo Ponticelli |
| Abstract: | We study the effects of climate change on labor and capital reallocation across regions, sectors and firms. We use newly digitized administrative reports on extreme weather events occurred in Brazil during the last two decades and a meteorological measure of excess dryness relative to historical averages to estimate the effects of droughts in the local economy of affected areas, on the magnitude of the labor and capital flows they generate and on factor allocation in destination regions. We document two main results. In the short run, local economies insure themselves against negative weather shocks via financial integration with other regions. However, in the long run, affected regions experience capital outflows driven by a reduction in loans, consistent with a permanent decrease in investment opportunities. Second, we find that abnormal dryness affects the structure of both the local economy and the economy of areas connected via migrant networks. Directly affected areas experience a sharp reduction in population and employment, concentrated in agriculture and services. While local manufacturing absorbs some of the displaced workers, these regions experience large out-migration flows. Regions receiving climate migrants expand employment in agriculture and services, but not in manufacturing. Using social security data, we provide evidence that labor market frictions direct migrants to firms connected to migrant social networks, which are mostly outside the manufacturing sector. This has implications for the composition of economic activity and the firm size distribution in destination regions. |
| JEL: | J61 O1 O16 Q54 |
| Date: | 2021–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28995&r= |
| By: | Jesper EDMAN; Riki TAKEUCHI |
| Abstract: | One of the key challenges for Japanese multinational enterprises is where or whether to employ headquarter expatriates in the management of foreign subsidiaries. We contribute to addressing this issue by theorizing and examining how expatriates in different positions (e.g., CEO, Sales manager, HR manager or line manager) impact different aspects of subsidiary performance. We examine how expatriate positions influence two facets of subsidiary performance -- sales and productivity and how these effects are moderated by country-specific factors. Controlling for self-selection effects, we find that knowledge and economic distance between the destination staff and expatriate CEOs and sales managers have negative moderation interaction effects on subsidiary sales. Conversely, we find a statistically significant impact on productivity whereby locations with strong nationalist sentiment exhibit negative moderation interaction effects in the case of Japanese line managers. Taken together, our findings point to the contingent effects of both position-based and country-level factors when examining expatriates' impacts on subsidiary performance. |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:21046&r= |