International Migration Intentions and Illegal Costs: Evidence from Africa-to-Europe Smuggling Routes

Guido Friebel (), Miriam Manchin, Mariapia Mendola and Giovanni Prarolo ()

No 11978, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Irregular migrants from Africa and the Middle East flow into Europe along land and sea routes under the control of human smugglers. The demise of the Gaddafi regime in 2011 marked the opening of the Central Mediterranean Route for irregular border - crossing between Libya and Italy. This resulted in the immediate expansion of the global smuggling network, which produced an asymmetric reduction in bilateral distance between country pairs across the Mediterranean sea. We exploit this source of spatial and time variation in irregular migration routes to estimate the elasticity of migration intentions to illegal moving costs proxied by distance. We build a novel dataset of geolocalized time-varying migration routes, combined with cross-country survey data on individual intentions to move from Africa (and the Middle East) into Europe. Netting out any country-by-time and pair-level confounders we find a large negative effect of distance along smuggling routes on individual migration intentions. Shorter distances increase the willingness to migrate especially for youth, (medium) skilled individuals and those with a network abroad. The effect is stronger in countries closer to Libya and with weak rule of law.

Keywords: international migration; human smuggling; illegal migration; Libyan Civil War (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K23 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2018-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-int and nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Forthcoming - published in: Journal of International Economics, 2024, 148, 103878.

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Working Paper: International Migration Intentions and Illegal Costs: Evidence from Africa-to-Europe Smuggling Routes (2018)
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