Migration and resilience during a global crisis
Nathan Barker,
C. Austin Davis,
Paula López-Peña,
Harrison Mitchell,
Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak,
Karim Naguib,
Maira Reimão,
Ashish Shenoy and
Corey Vernot
European Economic Review, 2023, vol. 158, issue C
Abstract:
This study explores the relationship between migration and household resilience during a global crisis that eliminated the option to migrate. We link prior data from four populations in Bangladesh and Nepal to new phone surveys conducted during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. While earnings fell universally, pandemic-induced declines were 14%–25% greater among previously migration-dependent households and urban migrant workers, with household remittance losses far exceeding official statistics. Heightened economic exposure during the pandemic erased prior gains achieved by transnational migrants and caused fourfold greater prevalence of food insecurity among domestic subsistence migrants. Economic distress spilled over onto non-migrants in high-migration villages and labor markets. We show that migration contributed to economic contagion independent of its role in disease transmission. Losing the option to migrate differentially increased the vulnerability of migration-dependent households during a crisis.
Keywords: Migration; Risk management; South Asia; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G52 I15 J61 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292123001538
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:158:y:2023:i:c:s0014292123001538
DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2023.104524
Access Statistics for this article
European Economic Review is currently edited by T.S. Eicher, A. Imrohoroglu, E. Leeper, J. Oechssler and M. Pesendorfer
More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu (repec@elsevier.com).