Emigrant or Sojourner? Migration Intensity and Its Determinants

Florian Kaufmann

Working Papers from Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Abstract: This Working Paper develops the concept of 'migration intensity'--the degree to which a migrant shifts his attachment, association and engagement from his place of origin to the migration destination. Among male Mexican migrants to the United States, Kaufmann finds strong complementarities among remittances, migration patterns, and localized investments in physical, social and human capital. Based on these, he derives an Index of Migration Intensity (IMI). The IMI reveals that the majority of Mexicans have low levels of migration intensity, but migration intensity has been growing over time. Migration intensity varies as expected: education, prior migration experience, foreign family ties, and original residence in communities with few economic opportunities all promote higher migration intensity. From the standpoint of sending countries, low migration intensity has the desirable effects of enhancing positive financial transfers and mitigating the resource losses connected to the human outflow. From the standpoint of receiving countries, low migration intensity may also be desirable, depending on policy goals.

Keywords: International Migration; Migration Strategies; Assimilation; Return Migration; Remittances (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J18 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://per.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers ... rs_151-200/WP154.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to per.umass.edu:443 (No such host is known. )

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:uma:periwp:wp154

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Judy Fogg (peri@econs.umass.edu this e-mail address is bad, please contact repec@repec.org).