The role of loyalty in migration intentions: Theory and evidence from the EU

József Golovics ()
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József Golovics: Department of Comparative and Institutional Economics, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary

Society and Economy, 2020, vol. 42, issue 2, 172-192

Abstract: Free movement of persons is one of the fundamental values and achievements of the European Union, however, intentions towards mobility vary across and within the member states. Economic literature has remarkable theories to explain migration flows and individual selection factors of potential migrants, but it ignores major achievements of other social sciences. This paper builds an economic framework to incorporate the Hirschmanian concept of loyalty into the microeconomic (human capital) model of international migration by using interdependent preferences. Hirschman assumes that even after exiting, loyal people care about their previous communities, thus it imposes a certain psychological ‘exit tax’ on them. Based on this concept, it is hypothesized that people with altruistic motives have weaker intentions to migrate, so the presence of loyalty towards others makes international migration less likely, conveying that loyalty towards local or national community may be responsible for moderate labor mobility among EU member states. Results show that attachment to one’s country makes one’s intention to move abroad in the near future less likely, while loyalty towards one’s city has more moderate impact on their intentions.

Keywords: migration; loyalty; altruism; EU (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D00 D90 F22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
Note: This paper has been supported by the European Union and Hungary and co-financed by the European Social Fund through the project EFOP-3.6.2-16-2017-00017, entitled “Sustainable, intelligent and inclusive regional and city models.”
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