Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T19:45:42.164Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Defying the Law of Gravity: The Political Economy of International Migration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2014

Get access

Extract

Bilateral flows of international migrants exhibit tremendous variance both across destination countries and over time. To explain this variance, studies of international migration tend to focus on economic determinants such as income differentials or on social conditions such as the presence of coethnics in certain destination countries. The authors argue that migration is driven not solely by economic or social determinants; rather, the political environment across destinations plays a substantively large role in influencing bilateral migration flows. They test the importance of the political environment—citizenship rights and the prominence of right-wing parties—using data on migration flows from 178 origin countries into 18 destination countries over the period 1980–2006. They find, even after controlling for a variety of economic, social, policy, and international variables, that variation in political environments across time and destination plays a key role in observed patterns of international migration.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)
Supplementary material: File

Fitzgerald Supplementary Material

Appendix

Download Fitzgerald Supplementary Material(File)
File 48.5 KB