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

Abstract

Bilateral flows of international migrants exhibit tremendous variance both across destination countries and over time. We argue that along with economic and social conditions migrants consider the political environment when choosing among various destinations. Specifically we hypothesize that a country’s citizenship policy regime and the strength of support for radical right parties are key determinants of destination choice. We test our hypotheses using an original data set of bilateral migration flows from 178 countries of origin into 22 destination countries over the period 1962-2006. And we directly confront the challenge that both the citizenship policy regime and radical right party support are endogenous; that they are in part a consequence of international migration. Our findings have implications for the study of international migration and for the broader comparative and international political economy literatures.

Keywords: migration, citizenship policy, gravity model, endogeneity

JEL Classification: F22,