Exploring Immobility Aspirations: Why Youth in India, Ethiopia, Peru and Vietnam Do Not Want to Migrate

• In Event: 4151 - International Migration Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 13: Comparative Migration Studies

Abstract

It is now well established that youth, those between the ages of 15 and 30, are the most likely to aspire to migrate and to realize their migration intentions. However, we know relatively little about why some young people, and especially those who presumably have good reasons to aspire to migrate, do not wish to do so. Using survey data collected for the Young Lives project on migration aspirations from Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam, this paper asks - among the cohort most prone to leave - who aspires to stay and why? We find the majority of young people surveyed – between 61 percent (Ethiopia) and 82 percent (Vietnam) – aspire to stay in their home country, and across country contexts, aspirations to stay were most often highest among the poorest. Further, the desire to stay decreases with higher levels of education, which suggests that widening access to formal schooling is an important driver of internal and international migration aspirations. Finally, respondents most often mentioned family-related reasons as the main motivation to stay in place. These findings contribute to a broader debate about the relationship between migration and development by challenging the linear relationship between poverty levels and migration aspirations that migration theories often implicitly or explicitly assume.

Authors

• Kerilyn Schewel, Duke University

• Sonja Fransen, University of Maastricht