No abstract

International audienceThe economic literature provides much evidence of the positive impact of social capital on migrants' economic outcomes, in particular through assistance upon arrival and insurance in times of hardship. Yet, although much less documented, migrant networks may well have a great influence on remittances to their home country and particularly to their origin households. Given all the services provided by the network, the fear of being ostracized by network members and being left with no support could provide incentives for migrants to commit to prevailing redistribution norms. In this perspective, remittances may be a fee that migrants pay to get access to network services. In this paper, we thus analyze to what extent migrant networks in the destination country influence the degree to which migrants meet the claims of those left behind. We first review existing models of remitting behavior and investigate how the potential role of networks could affect their main predictions. We then provide a simple illustrative theoretical framework to account for the double impact networks may have on remitting behavior, through the provision of services to migrants and the spread of information flows between home and host countries. We finally use an original dataset of 602 Senegalese migrants residing in France and Italy to explore the main predictions of our model

Using a unique panel data set of state-to-state outward and return migration flows between Mexico and the United States from 1995 to 2012, this study is the first to analyze Mexico-U.S. migration at the state level and explore simultaneously the effect of economic, environmental, and social factors in Mexico over two decades. Pairing origin and destination states and controlling for a rich structure of fixed effects, we find that income positively impacts migration outflows, especially for Mexican states of origin with a recent migration history and for low-educated migrant flows, suggesting the existence of credit constraints. We find evidence that drought causes more out-migration, while other climatic shocks have no effect. Violence is found to increase out-migration flows from border states and to decrease migration from other Mexican states, especially where violence is directed at migrants. Last, return flows are larger when income growth at destination is lower, consistent with the accumulation of savings as a primary motivation of migrants. Exploring the impact of the crisis, we find evidence of significant changes in the geography of migration flows. Traditional flows are drying up, and new migration corridors are rising, with implications on the composition of the Mexican population in the United States. Although the effect of income on flows in both directions is unchanged by the crisis, the negative effect of violence on out-migration tends to reverse at the end of the period. Overall, this study emphasizes the interest of analyzing disaggregated flows at the infra-country level.