The Effect of Migrant Regularization on Labor Exploitation

Francesco Amodio (), Elia Benveniste (), Mario F. Carillo () and Marc Riudavets-Barcons ()
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Francesco Amodio: McGill University, BREAD, and CEPR
Elia Benveniste: European Bank for Reconstruction and Developmet
Mario F. Carillo: Departament of Applied Economics, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain & IPEG
Marc Riudavets-Barcons: University of Helsinki & HGSE

Working Papers from Department of Applied Economics at Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona

Abstract: This paper shows that granting migrants legal status reduces labor exploitation. We study Spain's 2005 large-scale regularization program, which granted legal status to 600,000 undocumented migrants. We proxy labor exploitation with hospitalizations for heat-related illnesses among working-age individuals, capturing exposure to hazardous working conditions in outdoor occupations. We implement a triple-difference design that exploits cross-provincial variation in pre-reform shares of undocumented migrants and temporal variation in extreme temperatures. Our results show that the incidence of heat-related hospitalizations during heatwaves declined significantly in provinces with greater exposure to the amnesty. Specifically, an additional day above 35°C became 3.3 percentage points less likely to result in heat-related hospitalization in highly exposed provinces, representing a 9.4% reduction relative to the pre-reform mean. Our findings demonstrate that migrant regularization is a powerful policy for improving worker well-being and reducing their vulnerability to extreme climatic events.

Keywords: amnesty programs; working conditions; exploitation; extreme heat (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2025-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-mig
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