Remittances, Migrants' Education and Immigration Policy: Theory and Evidence from Bilateral Data

By Frédéric Docquier, Hillel Rapoport, S. Salomone. Social Science Research Network, 2012

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We investigate the relationship between remittances and migrants' education both theoretically and empirically, using original bilateral remittance data. At a theoretical level we lay out a model of remittances interacting migrants' human capital with two dimensions of immigration policy: restrictiveness, and selectivity. The model predicts that the relationship between remittances and migrants' education is ambiguous and depends on the immigration policy conducted at destination. The effect of education is more likely to be positive when the immigration policy is more restrictive and less skill-selective. These predictions are then tested empirically using bilateral remittance and migration data and proxy measures for the restrictiveness and selectivity of immigration policies at destination. The results strongly support the theoretical analysis, suggesting that immigration policies determine the sign and magnitude of the relationship between remittances and migrants' education.

Subfields: Demography, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6bbcabdbae6b2f7344fddd6552864d3ca16e5866

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Citations in the corpus

Transnational ties and performance of immigrant entrepreneurs: the role of home-country conditions (2014, background): “First, this sector is a tie-intensive industry, which perfectly fits the aim of assessing the impact of ties on performance (Saxenian 2006; Nanda and Khanna 2010; Docquier and Rapoport 2012).”
Eight Questions About Brain Drain (2011, background): “Docquier et al. (2007) report these numbers and examine the patterns of brain drain across countries. The strongest association is with country population size—that is, countries with less population have a higher proportion of brain drain. In addition, brain drain rates are higher in countries with”
Migration, entrepreneurship and development: critical questions (2017, background): “…in the Middle East and Eastern Africa), the pendulum had started to swing back towards a more positive assessment of the development impact of migration, with notions of a brain gain being modified to account for brain circulation (Mountford 1997; Saxenian 2006; Docquier and Rapoport 2012).”
Consequences of forced migration: A survey of recent findings (2019, background): “25 For a review see Docquier and Rapoport (2012). 26 Even though state mandated expulsions seek to remove an entire sub-population, usually some individuals of the affected group remain.”
Migration, diversity, and economic growth (2017, background): “Özden, and Parsons (2015) and Docquier and Rapoport (2012) for a”
Climate change and migration: Is agriculture the main channel? (2019, background): “The key assumption is that the wage at origin and at destination depend on a basic income which may vary according to, first, the importance of the agricultural and non-agricultural sector within the country and, second, to a skill measure which accounts for the selection process (see, among others,”
Same difference? Minority ethnic inventors, diversity and innovation in the UK (2015, background): “Second, co-ethnic group membership can improve information flow and lower transaction costs, accelerating within-group ideas generation and transmission (Docquier and Rapoport, 2012).”
The interregional migration of human capital and its regional consequences: a review (2017, background): “Docquier and Rapoport (2012) and Di Maria and Stryszowski (2009) briefly discuss ‘migration[-]induced brain waste’ in the origin.”
Emigration and Wages: The EU Enlargement Experiment (2013, critical): “Contrary to previous literature (Borjas, 2003; Aydemir & Borjas, 2007; Docquier et al., 2011), I nd no signi cant e ect of emigration on the wage distribution between highand low-skilled workers. The di erence in the wage e ects of di erent experience groups can be explained by the demographics of t”
Remittances and Vulnerability in Developing Countries (2014, background): “…(El-Sakka and McNabb, 1999; Lianos, 1997), the size of the diaspora abroad and transaction costs (Freund and Spatafora, 2008), the skill composition of migrant stocks (Faini, 2007; Adams Jr., 2009; Niimi et al., 2010), and the interaction with immigration policies (Docquier et al., 2012).”