Chapter 6 Migration as a Substitute for Informal Activities: Evidence from Tajikistan

Ilhom Abdulloev, Ira Gang and John Landon-Lane ()

A chapter in Informal Employment in Emerging and Transition Economies, 2012, pp 205-227 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: How is migration related to informal activities? They may be complementary since new migrants may have difficulty finding employment in formal work, so many of them end up informally employed. Alternatively, migration and informality may be substitutes since migrants’ incomes in their new locations and income earned in the home informal economy (without migration) are an imperfect trade-off. Tajikistan possesses both a very large informal sector and extensive international emigration. Using the gap between household expenditure and income as an indicator of informal activity, we find negative significant correlations between informal activities and migration: the gap between expenditure and income falls in the presence of migration. Furthermore, Tajikistan's professional workers’ ability to engage in informal activities enables them to forgo migration, while low-skilled nonprofessionals without postsecondary education choose to migrate instead of working in the informal sector. Our empirical evidence suggests migration and informality substitute for one another.

Keywords: Informal; migration; remittances; Tajikistan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... 9121(2012)0000034009
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

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:eme:rleczz:s0147-9121(2012)0000034009

DOI: 10.1108/S0147-9121(2012)0000034009

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Research in Labor Economics from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().