The economics of international migration: A short history of the debate

Abstract

This paper provides a view of progress over the last quarter century in the economics of international migration. I focus on two long established topics and two that have surged in the last decade. Interest in immigrant and assimilation and in the labour market effects of immigration has been kept going by methodological debates and by the diffusion of empirical work from the United States to the wider world. More recently, the difficult politics of immigration policy has fuelled the research agenda and has given rise to a new literature on the forces that drive immigration policy and on the assessment of its effects. Important also is the growth of interest in the causes and consequences of emigration from developing countries. Most notable has been the revival of interest in the brain drain and the wider consequences of the expanding emigrant diaspora.

The Economics of Temporary Migrations

“…One issue that has received much controversial attention in the economic literature is brain drain through emigration, a context in which return migration has been used as one argument to support the possibility that high-skilled emigration can also lead to a brain gain (see Rapoport, 2012, andHatton, 2014). For example, Domingues Dos Santos and Postel-Vinay (2003) formulate a theoretical model in which returning migrants contribute to the overall skill endowment of their home country, leaving a potentially positive overall effect even when the initial emigration from the source country is positively selected.…”

Foreign workers and productivity in an emerging economy: The case of Malaysia

“…The majority of studies on static regional labor market impacts of migrants do not find evidence of large negative effects (Friedberg & Hunt, 1995;Longhi et al, 2005, Kerr & Kerr, 2011Nathan, 2014;Hatton, 2014). In response to this, new research is developing along two lines.…”

“…Traditionally, research on the effects of migrants has focused on static labor market impacts. In particular, many studies have followed a spatial correlations approach (Hatton, ), addressing the question whether migrant‐induced increases in labor supply in regional labor markets within host countries decrease employment and wages among native workers (Borjas, ; Kerr & Kerr, ). Overall, the evidence indicates that regional negative labor market effects from migrants are modest or absent (Card, ; Kerr & Kerr, ).…”

Trading Off Welfare and Immigration in Europe.

“…Education -A general finding in the literature is that low-educated individuals are more likely to oppose low-skill immigration Hiscox, 2007, 2010;Hatton, 2014). Usually this is driven by fears of competition in the labor market.…”

“…Consistent with prior empirical research on the fiscal effects of low-skill immigration, we assume poor immigrants to be recipients of transfers. We also take into account a large body of empirical research on the labor market effects of immigration (Ottaviano and Peri, 2012;Manacorda, Manning and Wadsworth, 2012;Hatton, 2014). The general conclusion from this literature is that labor market effects on natives are small and largely negligible.…”