No abstract

These findings suggest that research and policies using recently arrived immigrants' completed schooling as a determinant of socioeconomic integration need to be interpreted with care.

Circular migration in settings of free mobility has received increasing policy attention. However, due to data constraints, little is known about the mechanisms underlying it. Using linked Finnish and Swedish register data that allow us to follow Finnish migrants across national borders, we analyse whether the determinants of circular migration differ from those of the first and return move. People move freely between Sweden and Finland, as they are in the common Nordic labour market. Event history analysis shows that many moves are temporary and short term. Moreover, the patterns of circular migration reflect those of the first emigration and first return, respectively. Swedish speakers and individuals who are not married are more prone to emigrate for the first and second time, whereas Finnish speakers and married individuals have a higher risk of return migration. This implies that circular migration may amplify demographic features related to emigration and return migration.

Motivations for migrants to return clearly change with integration, but the time-changing aspect of return migration has received little attention in the literature. This paper studies how migrants’ preferences for the home country change with intermarriage, i.e., marriage to a spouse from the host country. Specifically, I analyse the association between intermarriage and three outcomes related to migrants’ home country preference – intentions to return, remittances sent and actual return – using German panel data (SOEP) for the period 1984–2012. The results reveal a negative association between intermarriage and home country preference that is moreover stronger for female than for male migrants. However, some of the effect seems driven by selection since the relationship gets weaker once I control for person fixed effects.

Beginning in the 1990s and intensifying after the events of September 11, deportations in the United States increased to record levels under President Obama and continued at high levels under President Trump. Although a growing literature addresses how migrants respond to the shifting context of reception, empirical evidence on how migrants’ remitting and saving behavior changed as a result of immigration enforcement remains limited. Using detailed individual-level data from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP, N = 6787) for the years 1970–2019, this study examines how deportations relate to Mexican migrants’ joint decisions to remit and/or save, and how this relationship differs by documentation status. Results from multinomial logistic regressions reveal that rising deportations are associated with an increase in the transnational economic engagement of undocumented migrants. This is largely due to an increase in remittances; savings brought back decrease with rising deportations, likely because keeping savings in the United States is riskier than sending money back directly. Among documented migrants, the remitting and saving behavior does not appear to change as deportations rise. Analyzing these behaviors together is important to gain a more complete understanding of migrants’ transnational economic ties and links to the country of destination.