Internal and International Migration: Is A Dichotomous Approach Justified?

1. Internal and International Migration: Is A Dichotomous Approach Justified? Authors: Adrian Otoiu, PhD Candidate Emilia Titan, PhD Remus Dumitrescu, PhD Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, Department of Statistics and Econometrics University of Bucharest

2. Introduction • Internal and international migration are similar phenomena studied separately • International migration often referred as “migration” although internal migration is 780 million people worldwide vs only 200 million international migrants in 2000 (Bell and Muhidin, 2009) • There is no reason for separate analyses to be carried out since the drivers are very similar. An unified analysis and an awareness of the differences is a more appropriate approach • An analysis framework based on previous work that analysed both types of migration together, and the use of widely available data, is advocated in this paper

3. Literature Review (1/2) • In the literature, a few papers have pointed out the interdependence of the two phenomena and carried out an integrated analysis • King and Skeldon (2010). show how rural to urban migration may precede international migration, and capital attracting rural workers to urban areas can trigger international economic migration • Ellis (2012) points out that for the US: - questions relevant to immigrants on their social, economic and cultural impact are relevant to internal migrants, - state regulations on labour and education act similarly as national barriers, - the highly educated can move easily across borders.

4. Literature Review (2/2) • Decisions to migrate should take into consideration both internal and international migration to the US, • Different factors such as wage differentials, education, agriculture and manufacturing share of employment, household characteristics, and remittances can affect the migration in different ways, even within different regions of Mexico (Aguayo-Téllez and Martínez-Navarro, 2013) • In Pakistan, almost all migration determinants apply to both internal and international migration, except for age and different marital status (Oda, 2007) • A regression analysis using Eurobarometer data, carried out on the two types of migration intentions reveals significant similarities in the intention to migrate among people with different ages, levels of education, family, and employment status. Almost all regression coefficients that are significant for one type of migration are significant for the other (Fouarge and Ester, 2007)

5. Review of International Migration Factors International Migration: • Two main themes: push and pull factors, and who are the migrants and what are their reasons to do so • Push factors refer to the conditions in the originating country • Pull factors consider the effect from abroad • Variables used: unemployment rates, output gap, wages/incomes probability of employment in the destination country, age/cohort structure, stocks of previous migrants, flows of remittances, and costs of migration • Factors: demographics, education, cultural ties, availability of social networks • Analyses have failed to cope with their high volatility.

6. Review of Internal Migration Factors • Todaro internal migration model factors: rural-urban contacts, distance, education, information flows, land ownership, government policies and social systems, employment status, earnings, probability of getting a job, cost of living, transportation cost, and states that it is based on expected future values of the migration decisions. • Microeconomic approaches focus on the migration decision process, using human capital, heterogeneity among individuals, unemployment rate and wage differentials between the rural and the urban sectors, personal characteristics (age, education), and creation and availability of social networks. Often, the analysis is based on the household rather than the individual as the decision-making unit. • Macroeconomic variables: population size, distance between origin and destination, income and unemployment rate.

7. First Things First • While both phenomena seem determined by almost the same drivers, are they in fact related? And how? • Question relevant as the magnitude of some factors may be different for different types of migration • E.g. social networks are essential in international migration due to cultural differences between two different countries • Literature shows internal and international migration can behave as substitutes of each other • Or, rather, is their evolution similar given the same factors • A basic analysis of the two time series is needed first

8. Data and Model • The model used to test the magnitude of both types of migration is a standard OLS panel regression model. • Country differences in measuring internal migration required the use of country dummies. • Limited internal migration data also posed difficulties in doing a time series model on the relationship between internal and international migration (e.g. an ARIMA model, testing for unit roots and cointegration, etc.)

9. Regression: Main results • Internal migration, controlled for time and country dummies, manages to explain almost half of the explained variation of international migration • The Great Recession has increased migration, which appears to be largely unaffected otherwise by time variables • Almost all country effects (not shown here) were significant at 1% level. Their negative sign indicates their offsetting effect with respect to a high intercept value (given by the higher relative magnitude of internal migration)

10. Conclusions • The main purpose of this paper was to ascertain whether there is a significant relationship between the two types of migration • It is clear that both migration types exhibit a similar evolution • Country differences, mainly triggered by differences in internal migration numbers, may impact the analysis • There is a high similarity among the factors that determine both migration types. Their influence may differ with respect to their relative magnitude • The integrated analysis of the two migration types is appropriate, with attention towards the differences in the relative strength of the common determinants needed to properly analyze them