Networks and the location of foreign migrants: evidence for Southern Europe

Guadalupe Serrano-Domingo (), Bernardí Cabrer-Borrás () and Francisco Requena-Silvente ()
Additional contact information
Guadalupe Serrano-Domingo: Department of Economic Analysis, Universitat de València. Spain.
Bernardí Cabrer-Borrás: Department of Economic Analysis, Universitat de València. Spain.
Francisco Requena-Silvente: Department of Applied Economics II, Universitat de València. Spain.
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Francisco Requena Silvente

INVESTIGACIONES REGIONALES - Journal of REGIONAL RESEARCH, 2020, issue 47, 97-112

Abstract: This paper investigates the effect of co-national immigrant´s communities (social networks) and historical international trade relationships (business networks) on the decision of migrants to locate in a particular province within Italy, Portugal and Spain. We study whether spatial dependence also determines the immigration decision by testing for migration spillover effects across provinces in the destination country and by accounting for the effects of social and business networks in contiguous provinces. We find that social networks enhance immigration of co-nationals, a positive effect that is moderated if neighbor provinces have large co-nationals´ communities. For the case of business networks, neighbor provinces having commercial linkages with the immigrants’ origin country compete as alternative destinations. Thus, the impact of immigration spreads over alternative destinations in the host country, so the coordination of local and national migration policies is required to be fully effective.

Keywords: International migration; networks; spatial interdependence; spatial gravity model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 F22 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://investigacionesregionales.org/en/article/n ... for-southern-europe/ Full text (application/pdf)

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:ris:invreg:0439

Access Statistics for this article

INVESTIGACIONES REGIONALES - Journal of REGIONAL RESEARCH is currently edited by Vicente Royuela Mora

More articles in INVESTIGACIONES REGIONALES - Journal of REGIONAL RESEARCH from Asociación Española de Ciencia Regional C/ Viladomat, 321 entresuelo - 08029 Barcelona, Teléfono y Fax: + 34 933101112, E-mail: info@aecr.org, Web: www.aecr.org, Web Investigaciones Regionales: www.investigacionesregionales.org. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by IIRR-JORR ().