Attitudes Towards Emigration (Pre-Recorded)

• In Event: Migration: Causes and Consequences

Abstract

What determines attitudes towards emigration policies? With more than two percent of the world population being migrants and its processes relating to it affecting many more people, it is among the major processes affecting the world today. Studies on immigration to Western countries abound, but there is relatively little literature on one of its counterparts - emigration from developing countries. This paper contributes to this field by testing a range of arguments about the determinants of attitudes towards emigration with original data collected in The Gambia. It develops theoretical conjectures about the distributive consequences of emigration on individuals and argues that these effects in turn influence people's attitudes towards emigration policies. Building on the extensive literature on immigration, it tests how well approaches such as the labor market hypothesis, group threat theory as well as other economic and sociocultural arguments hold up for the case of emigration in a developing country. Besides, this paper also develops further arguments based on the distributive effects that are particular to emigration and argues how these affect attitudes towards emigration. The arguments are tested on data collected in an original face-to-face survey experiment conducted on a nationally representative sample in The Gambia.

Author

• Salif Jaiteh, Columbia University