Basic Income for Immigrants? The Pull Effect of Social Benefits on Migration

Boso Àlex () and Vancea Mihaela ()
Additional contact information
Boso Àlex: Department of Political and Social Science, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, C/Ramon Trias Fargas, 25-27, 08005 Barcelona, Spain
Vancea Mihaela: Department of Political and Social Science, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, C/Ramon Trias Fargas, 25-27, 08005 Barcelona, Spain

Basic Income Studies, 2012, vol. 7, issue 1, 18

Abstract: Despite the large number of studies in the past two decades about the basic income proposal, its relationship to the process of international migration has not yet been comprehensively addressed. In this article, we explore the feasibility of implementing a basic income that would include, in addition to citizens, those immigrants with more than one year of residence. The main objective of this study is to examine the hypothesis that basic income produces a pull effect on migration. The analysis focuses on the behaviour of agents seeking to migrate because of a basic income in a possible destination country. Using theoretical arguments and empirical analysis, we question the magnitude and even the existence of this pull effect of basic income. In our view, there are no sufficient grounds to think that introducing a basic income would lead to an increase in immigrant population.

Keywords: international migration; migration policy; pull effect; social welfare; territorial boundaries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/1932-0183.1234 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

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:bpj:bistud:v:7:y:2012:i:1:p:1-18:n:7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/bis/html

DOI: 10.1515/1932-0183.1234

Access Statistics for this article

Basic Income Studies is currently edited by Anne-Louise Haagh and Michael W. Howard

More articles in Basic Income Studies from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().