The Dynamics of Repeat Migration: A Markov Chain Analysis

By Amelie F. Constant, Klaus f. Zimmerman. Social Science Research Network, 2003

117 citations recorded by the source corpus.

While the literature has established that there is substantial and highly selective return migration, the growing importance of repeat migration has been largely ignored. Using Markov chain analysis, this paper provides a modeling framework for repeated moves of migrants between the host and home countries. The Markov transition matrix between the states in two consecutive periods is parameterized and estimated using a logit specification and a large panel data with 14 waves. The analysis for Germany, the largest European immigration country, shows that more than 60% of the migrants are indeed repeat migrants. The out-migration per year is low, about 10%. Migrants are more likely to leave again early after their arrival in Germany, and when they have social and familial bonds in the home country, but less likely when they have a job in Germany and speak the language well. Once out-migrated from Germany, the return probability is about 80% and guided mainly by remittances and family considerations.

Subfields: Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c781708e2805eac15f077fda304abfe946dd81fa

Citations in the corpus

• Returning Home at Times of Trouble? Return Migration of EU Enlargement Migrants During the Crisis (2013, unknown): “8 For example, Constant and Zimmermann (2012) find very high probability of a repeated move back to Germany for return migrants from Germany, and that this probability is guided mainly by remittances and family considerations.”