Remittances, Labour Supply and Activity of Household Members Left-Behind

This paper analyses the role of remittances on labour supply and activity of household members left behind, by explicitly distinguishing between different types of self employment. Contrary to the existing evidence, we find no ‘dependency’ effect of remittances. Our results show that remittances received by households in Tajikistan decrease the probability of wage employment and increase that of small-scale self employment activities of men staying behind, without affecting the number of job specific hours worked. Any positive effect on economic development would be, however, limited, as self-employment is in rather small-scale activities that do not generate a regular income stream

Remittances and Return Migration

This paper utilises survey data of return migrants to analyse the determinants of remittances sent while the migrants were abroad. We approach our research question from the perspective of three sending countries in the Maghreb, namely Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. We investigate the remittance behaviour using the migrants’ conditions before migration as well as during the migration experience. Using a two-part model, we show that the decision to remit and the amount remitted depend on a combination of different migrant characteristics as well as the duration and form of migration. We also consider if the remittance behaviour is dependent on the type of return: decided or compelled. We show that those who decided to return have a higher probability to remit for investment purposes and remit more as the time spent abroad increases

Return Migration and Occupational Choice: Evidence from Albania

This paper explores the impact of return migration on the Albanian economy by analyzing the occupational choice of return migrants while explicitly differentiating between self-employment as either own account work or entrepreneurship. We find that the own account workers have characteristics closer to non-participants in the labor market (i.e., lower education levels), while entrepreneurship is positively related to schooling, foreign language proficiency, and savings accumulated abroad. Furthermore, compared to having not migrated, return migrants are significantly more likely to be entrepreneurs, showing the positive impact of migration on job-creating activities in Albania

Self-selection and the Performance of Return Migrants: The Source Country Perspective

Self-selection, Return migrants, Albania, F22, J61,

Immigrant Over- and Under-Education: The Role of Home Country Labour Market Experience

Literature on the immigrant labour market mismatch has not explored the signal provided by the quality of home country work experience, particularly that of education-occupation mismatch prior to migration.?We show that type of work experience in the home country plays a significant role in explaining immigrant mismatch in the destination country’s labour market. We use the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia and find that having been over-educated in the last job held in the home country increases the likelihood of being over-educated in Australia by about 45 percent. Whereas having been under-educated in the home country has an even stronger impact, as it increases the probability to be similarly mismatched in Australia by 62 percent

Migration and Culture

Culture is not new to the study of migration. It has lurked beneath the surface for some time, occasionally protruding openly into the discussion, usually under some pseudonym. The authors bring culture into the open. They are concerned with how culture manifests itself in the migration process for three groups of actors: the migrants, those remaining in the sending areas, and people already living in the recipient locations. The topics vary widely. What unites the authors is an understanding that though actors behave differently, within a group there are economically important shared beliefs (customs, values, attitudes, etc.), which we commonly refer to as culture. Culture and identify play a central role in our understanding of migration as an economic phenomenon; but what about them matters? Properly, we should be looking at the determinants of identity and the determinants of culture (prices and incomes, broadly defined). But this is not what is done. Usually identity and culture appear in economics articles as a black box. Here we try to begin to break open the black box