Free movement of persons is one of the fundamental values and achievements of the European
Union, however, intentions towards mobility vary across and within the member states. Economic
literature has remarkable theories to explain migration fl ows and individual selection factors of
potential migrants, but it ignores major achievements of other social sciences. This paper builds an
economic framework to incorporate the Hirschmanian concept of loyalty into the microeconomic
(human capital) model of international migration by using interdependent preferences. Hirschman
assumes that even after exiting, loyal people care about their previous communities, thus it imposes
a certain psychological ‘exit tax’ on them. Based on this concept, it is hypothesized that people
with altruistic motives have weaker intentions to migrate, so the presence of loyalty towards others
makes international migration less likely, conveying that loyalty towards local or national community
may be responsible for moderate labor mobility among EU member states. Results show
that attachment to one’s country makes one’s intention to move abroad in the near future less likely,
while loyalty towards one’s city has more moderate impact on their intentions
