Offshoring Migration Policy: Migrant Responses to Restrictive Policies in Transit Countries

Abstract

To curtail irregular immigration, Global North countries increasingly externalize their migration controls, promoting movement restrictions along transit corridors. Proponents claim that restrictive controls discourage migrants from continuing onward, reducing overall immigrant inflows. We argue that this conventional wisdom neglects the possibility that externalization policies may produce backfire effects because restrictive conditions in transit-states drive individuals who would have otherwise remained in these countries toward Global-North host states. We study these dynamics in the context of the 2017 Italy-Libya migration deal. Using synthetic control methods, we find that the deal did not reduce migrant flows to Italy. Exploiting a survey that coincidentally sampled migrants in Libya before and after the deal, we study changes in migrant decisionmaking, and find the deal increased intentions to migrate to Italy. Our findings show that outsourcing border controls to transit-countries can backfire, pushing migrants to rush towards Global North destinations rather than back to origin countries.

Keywords: Migration, Immigration, Refugees, Border Control, Italy, Libya