Refugees’ Self-selection into Europe: Who Migrates Where?

Cevat Giray Aksoy and Panu Poutvaara

VfS Annual Conference 2019 (Leipzig): 30 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Democracy and Market Economy from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: About 1.4 million refugees and irregular migrants arrived in Europe in 2015 and 2016. We model how refugees and irregular migrants are self-selected. Using unique datasets from the International Organization for Migration and Gallup World Polls, we provide the first large-scale evidence on reasons to emigrate, and the self-selection and sorting of refugees and irregular migrants for multiple origin and destination countries. Refugees and female irregular migrants are positively self-selected with respect to education, while male irregular migrants are not. We also find that both male and female migrants from major conflict countries are positively self-selected in terms of their predicted income. For countries with minor or no conflict, migrant and non-migrant men do not differ in terms of their income distribution. We also analyze how border controls affect destination country choice.

Keywords: International migration; refugees; self-selection; human capital; predicted income (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Working Paper: Refugees’ Self-selection into Europe: Who Migrates Where? (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc19:203665

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