Political Economy of Migration: Driving Policies and Destabilization

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

International migration is a salient feature of the international political economy affecting “politics” along various dimensions. Utilizing a political economy perspective, this panel explores how migration – its associated government policies and flow of resources – affects policymaking in democracies and “stabilization” policies in dictatorships. The four papers shed light on these outcomes in both sending and receiving countries, by regime type, and across time. Julian Michel, Michael Miller, and Margaret Peters theorize the conditions under which dictatorships allow citizens to emigrate by articulating the costs and benefits to autocrats. To empirically document these trades-off, they draw on a rich set of Stasi archival data from the German Democratic Republic under Communist rule. Also looking at “sending” countries, Ahmed examines how remittances (the financial resources associated from emigration), in tandem with foreign aid, can be politically destabilizing in ethnically fragmented societies. He advances a formal model and corroborative empirics clarifying how remittances empower ethnically marginalized groups to fight the central government, particularly as capturing the “state prize” increases from aid inflows. Emigration also affects policymaking in “receiving” (host) countries. Steven Liao explores the relationship between firm lobbying and immigration policy. Exploiting a quasi-natural experiment, Liao finds an increase in firm lobbying of executive agencies that hold influence over visa decisions. His findings suggest that lobbying may lead to welfare distortions by creating unequal access to global talent across firms. Finally, Eric Arias and Benjamin Helms analyze the role of credit in migration decisions. While access to finance can increase migration by funding migration costs, it can also provide liquidity to invest locally, thus dissuading migration. They put forward and test the argument that which effect dominates is a function of both the skill endowment of potential migrants as well as on the level of development of their home country. Together, the four papers on this panel advance novel theoretical insights and leverage sophisticated empirical strategies to provide a nuanced perspective on how migration can affect policymaking in democracies and dictatorships.

Sub Unit

• Division 16: International Political Economy

Chair

• Yang-Yang Zhou University of British Columbia

Individual Presentations

• Get Out: How Authoritarian Governments Decide Who Emigrates - Julian Michel, UCLA; Michael K. Miller, George Washington University; Margaret E. Peters, University of California, Los Angeles

• The Effect of Firm Lobbying on High-Skilled Visa Issuance - Steven Liao, University of California, Riverside

• Financing Migration or Development? The Political Economy of Credit & Migration - Ernesto Arias, Independent Researcher; Benjamin Clay Helms, University of Virginia