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This article analyses the determinants of international migration flows within the European Union and specifically focuses on the role of cultural and linguistic differences in explaining the size of these flows. For that purpose, a set of indicators of cultural distance is controlled for along with economic, demographic, geographical, political and network variables using data from 28 member states of the EU over the period 1998–2018. Economic factors play an important role in examining migration flows, but economic differentials alone may be insufficient to explain the uneven real-life migration pattern in the EU. The results suggest strong evidence of the importance of linguistic distance in explaining the direction of migration flows across the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 23 June 2016, the people of the UK voted to leave the European Union. This article examines how Brexit impacted international student applications. Using administrative data along with a difference-in-differences approach, we find that Brexit curtailed the growth rate of international student applications by 7 per cent even before tuition fees had changed, ultimately lowering enrolment as well. The impact is larger for applications to pursue STEM studies, as well as for those from countries with worse employment prospects and weaker economies, hinting on students' ability to stay long-term in the UK as an important pull factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic produced a significant decline in international immigration to the USA between 2020 and 2021. This paper documents the timing, characteristics, and heterogeneity of the change in immigration across states and economic sectors. Additionally, we describe the trends in internal native mobility in the USA prior to and after the pandemic, investigating whether natives responded to the decrease in immigration by relocating either geographically or across sectors. Despite the substantial drop in international migration, we do not observe any significant changes in native internal mobility. Employing a panel regression and a shift-share IV, we study the effect of foreign immigration, the emergence of remote-work, and changes in labor demand on cross-state native mobility. Our results indicate that the decline in immigration following COVID-19 and the differential availability of remote-work opportunities across sectors and states did not drive changes in natives' cross- state or cross-sector mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important goal of immigration policy is facilitating the entry of foreign-born workers whose skills are in short supply in destination labor markets. In recent decades, information and communication technology (ICT) has fueled the demand for highly educated workers at the expense of less-educated groups. Exploiting the fact that regions in Switzerland have been differentially exposed to ICT due to their pre-ICT industrial composition, we present evidence suggesting that more exposed regions experienced stronger ICT adoption, accompanied by considerably stronger growth in relative employment and wage premia for college-educated workers. Following this change in the landscape of relative economic opportunities, we find robust evidence that these regions experienced a much larger influx of highly educated immigrants in absolute terms as well as relative to lower educated groups. Our results suggest that immigrants' location decisions respond strongly to these long-run, technology-driven changes in their economic opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the effects of female immigration to the Dominican Republic (DR)—most of which is from Haiti and of low-education levels—on the labor supply of native women. Using individual-level data for 2003–2016 and exploiting geographic variation in early immigrant settlements together with time variation in female immigration inflows, we find that female immigration has led to disparate outcomes across women of different education levels and family structures. In line with the evidence from developed countries, female immigration to the DR is associated with an increase in the hours worked by highly educated native women with family dependents (relative to equally educated women without dependents). However, for low-educated native women, female immigration is associated with a decrease in hours worked and in earnings. Our results underscore the importance of studying the disparate effects of migration on vulnerable groups in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between social identity and labor market outcomes of immigrants. Using survey data from Italy, we provide robust evidence that integrated immigrants, who state they have strong feelings of belonging to the societies of both the host and home country, have higher employment rates than do assimilated immigrants, who identify exclusively with the host country culture. Unlike previous literature, our findings indicate that assimilation does not necessarily provide a clear labor market advantage over immigrants who identify only with their original ethnic group. The positive labor market effect of integration is especially large for women, low-skilled, and immigrants with a brief experience in Italy and arriving in Italy at older ages, who generally face stronger barriers to entry into the labor market. The main mechanism driving the positive effect of multiple social identities points to belonging to local networks that ensure in-group favoritism and sharing of information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the impact of immigration on the US macroeconomy. I identify structural vector autoregressions (SVARs) with time-varying parameters (TVPs) and stochastic volatility (SV) using a novel set of restrictions. The TVP-SV-SVARs are estimated on a quarterly sample including average labor productivity (ALP), hours worked, immigration, consumption, and term spread from 1953 to 2017. An immigration supply shock increases domestic ALP and hours worked over the business cycle horizons. Movements in immigration are explained by its own shock and to a lesser extent by the productivity and news shocks. IRFs driven by these shocks vary over the sample, especially around changes in immigration policy such as the Immigration Act of 1990. In contrast, the forecast error variance decompositions exhibit little change over the sample. Immigration plays an important role in the US macroeconomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The availability of child-care services has often been advocated as one of the instruments to counter the fertility decline observed in many high-income countries. In the recent past, large inflows of low-skilled migrants have substantially increased the supply of child-care services. In this paper, we examine if immigration has actually affected fertility exploiting the natural experiment occurred in Italy in 2007, when a large inflow of migrants—many of them specialized in the supply of child care—arrived unexpectedly. With a difference-in-differences method, we show that immigrant female workers have increased native births by a number that ranges roughly from 2% to 4%. We validate our result by the implementation of an instrumental variable approach and several robustness tests, all concluding that the increase in the supply of child-care services by immigrant women has positively affected native fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Human capital flight from developing countries to developed nations has been rising and giving concerns to governments and scholars alike. This paper aims to explore the impact migration from Nigeria has on economic output growth by focusing on the migration rate, remittances, population growth and secondary school enrolment. This has not received adequate attention in the literature, as many papers have primarily focused on the impact of remittances on economic growth. Design/methodology/approach – Leveraging on the macro-level approach to migration, remittances and the economy, this research considers the nexus among the human capital flight and output growth variables by using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method of analysis for time series data between 1986 and 2018. Findings – The net migration rate from Nigeria was found from the empirical analysis to be more disadvantageous for the economy, given its negative relationship with economic growth despite the large volume of foreign incomes (remittances). It also shows that secondary school enrolment positively and significantly impacted the Nigerian growth rate in the long run. Originality/value – This research has widened the use of variables by combining net migration rate, remittances from abroad, population growth rate and secondary school enrolment to obtain a more robust outcome with implications for research and practice.

Purpose – Human capital flight from Nigeria to developed countries has remained a topical issue. This paper aims to empirically analyze the push factors for the migrants who explore the various legal migrant schemes from a macro perspective. The authors examine human capital development and its role in contributing to human capital flight to more developed counties. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is anchored on the push–pull model. Using secondary data from 1990 to 2019, the authors look at the relationship between human capital flight and variables such as life expectancy, infant mortality rate, population growth rate and Nigeria’s unemployment rate. The auto-regressive lag model (ARDL) was adopted to estimate the empirical relationship among these variables. Findings – The results from the ARDL model suggest a positive relationship exists between population growth rate and migration rate. A negative relationship was, however, observed between life expectancy and migration rate. This study also found that an increase in the infant mortality rate negatively impacted migration significantly. Therefore, an increase in infant mortality rate lowered the migration rate. Finally, an increase in the unemployment rate increased migration; however, insignificantly. Research limitations/implications – The findings from this study are limited to the push factors influencing migration out of Nigeria. These factors are also restricted to variables for which data can be derived under the study’s scope. The results of this study have far-reaching implications, especially for policymakers and citizens alike. Better human capital development through enhanced life expectancy and reduced population in Nigeria will reduce the migration rate. Therefore, this study calls for the doubling of developmental and infrastructural efforts at all levels of governance. Originality/value – This paper’s importance lies in its ability to elucidate push factors that influenced migration out of Nigeria empirically. An empirical approach to the subject matter will explain these factors and the degree to which they influence migration. This will guide the policy-making process in curbing brain drain, which is a major challenge in Nigeria.

This paper incorporates government immigration policy variables in a job search and match framework to examine its implication on labour market outcomes. The main assumption is that illegal workers can be penalized by receiving lower equilibrium wages or face possible deportation; and government can regulate illegal workers by introducing a “caught variable”, η, in the model. By a comparative statics analysis, the study has revealed that changes in the wages of illegal workers have both direct and indirect effect on wages of legal workers. Also, an important finding is that η has positive impact on most of the labour market parameters considered in the study.

A controversial issue in the US is how to reduce the number of illegal immigrants and what effect thiswould have on the US economy. To answer this question we set up a two-country model with search inlabor markets and featuring legal and illegal immigrants among the low skilled. We calibrate it to theUS and Mexican economies during the period 2000-2010. As immigrants, especially illegal ones, have aworse outside option than natives their wages are lower. Hence their presence reduces the labor costof employers who, as a consequence, create more jobs per unemployed when there are more immigrants.Because of such effect our model shows that increasing deportation rates and tightening border controlweakens the low-skilled labor markets, increasing unemployment of native low skilled. Legalization,instead decreases the unemployment rate of low-skilled natives and it increases income per native. (Copyright: Elsevier)

In this paper, we investigate the long-term effects of climate change on the mobility of working-age people. We use a world economy model that covers almost all the countries around the world, and distinguishes between rural and urban regions as well as between flooded and unflooded areas. The model is calibrated to match international and internal mobility data by education level for the last 30 years, and is then simulated under climate change variants. We endogenize the size, dyadic, and skill structure of climate migration. When considering moderate climate scenarios, we predict mobility responses in the range of 70–108 million workers over the course of the twenty-first century. Most of these movements are local or inter-regional. South–South international migration responses are smaller, while the South–North migration response is of the "brain drain" type and induces a permanent increase in the number of foreigners in OECD countries in the range of 6–9% only. Changes in the sea level mainly translate into forced local movements. By contrast, inter-regional and international movements are sensitive to temperature-related changes in productivity. Lastly, we show that relaxing international migration restrictions may exacerbate the poverty effect of climate change at origin if policymakers are unable to select/screen individuals in extreme poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent surveys of the literature on climate change and migration emphasize the important diversity of outcomes and approaches of the empirical studies. In this paper, we conduct a meta-analysis in order to investigate the role of the methodological choices of these empirical studies in finding some particular results concerning the role of climatic factors as drivers of human mobility. We code 51 papers representative of the literature in terms of methodological approaches. This results in the coding of more than 85 variables capturing the methodology of the main dimensions of the analysis at the regression level. These dimensions include authors' reputation, type of mobility, measures of mobility, type of data, context of the study, econometric methods, and last but not least measures of the climatic factors. We look at the influence of these characteristics on the probability of finding any effect of climate change, a displacement effect, an increase in immobility, and evidence in favor of a direct vs. an indirect effect. Our results highlight the role of some important methodological choices, such as the frequency of the data on mobility, the level of development, the measures of human mobility and of the climatic factors as well as the econometric methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politicians, the media, and the public express concern that immigrants depress wages by competing with native workers, but 30 years of empirical research provide little supporting evidence to this claim. Most studies for industrialized countries have found no effect on wages, on average, and only modest effects on wage differentials between more and less educated immigrant and native workers. Native workers’ wages have been insulated by differences in skills, adjustments in local demand and technology, production expansion, and specialization of native workers as immigration rises.