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DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES IZA DP No. 11777 Migration, Political Institutions, and Social Networks Catia Batista Julia Seither Pedro C. Vicente AUGUST 2018 DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES IZA DP No. 11777 Migration, Political Institutions, and Social Networks Catia Batista Universidade Nova de Lisboa, CReAM, IZA and NOVAFRICA Julia Seither Universidade Nova de Lisboa, University of California at Berkeley and NOVAFRICA Pedro C. Vicente Universidade Nova de Lisboa, BREAD and NOVAFRICA AUGUST 2018 Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world’s largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. IZA – Institute of Labor Economics Schaumburg-Lippe-Straße 5–9 Phone: +49-228-3894-0 53113 Bonn, Germany Email: [email protected] www.iza.org IZA DP No. 11777 AUGUST 2018 ABSTRACT Migration, Political Institutions, and Social Networks* What is the role of international migrants and, specifically, migrant networks in shaping political attitudes and behavior in migrant sending countries? Our theoretical framework proposes that migration might change individual social identities and thus stimulate intrinsic motivation for political participation, while it may also improve knowledge about better quality political institutions. Hence, international migration might increase political awareness and participation both by migrants and by other individuals in their networks. To test this hypothesis, we use detailed data on different migrant networks (geographic, kinship, and chatting networks), as well as several different measures of political participation and electoral knowledge (self-reports, behavioral, and actual voting measures). These data were purposely collected around the time of the 2009 elections in Mozambique, a country with substantial emigration to neighboring countries – especially South Africa - and with one of the lowest political participation rates in the region. The empirical results show that the number of migrants an individual is in close contact with via regular chatting significantly increases political participation of residents in that village – more so than family links to migrants. Our findings are consistent with both improved knowledge about political processes and increased intrinsic motivation for political participation being transmitted through migrant networks. These results are robust to controlling for self-selection into migration as well as endogenous network formation. Our work is relevant for the many contexts of South-South migration where both countries of origin and destination are recent democracies. It shows that even in this context there may be domestic gains arising from international emigration. JEL Classification: D72, D83, F22, O15 Keywords: international migration, social networks, political participation, information, diffusion of political norms, governance Corresponding author: Catia Batista Nova School of Business and Economics Universidade Nova de Lisboa Campus de Campolide 1099-032 Lisboa Portugal E-mail: [email protected] * The authors are grateful for helpful comments to Francisca Antman, Ben Elsner, Margherita Comola, Frederic Docquier, Emilio Gutierrez, Valerie Mueller, Susana Peralta, Ana B. Reis, Danielle Resnick, Michele Tuccio, Leonard Wantchekon, and participants at the Princeton Workshop on Immaterial Remittances, NEUDC Conference, CSAE Oxford Conference, 13th IZA Annual Migration Meeting, IFPRI Conference on Information and Rural Governance, and Louvain Workshop on Migration and Conflict. We would also like to thank superb research assistance by Miguel Lino Ferreira and Ana Vaz, as well as fantastic work offered by supervisors Egídio Chaimite, Alberto da Cruz, Egídio Guambe, and Aquílcia Samuel, and the group of enumerators with whom we worked: their dedication to this project was critical to its success. The authors wish to also acknowledge the statistical offices that provided data used in this research: National Statistical Office, Malawi; National Institute of Statistics, Portugal; Statistics South Africa, South Africa; and Bureau of Statistics, Tanzania. Funding: This work was supported by the DfID – Department for International Development (UK), in the context of the International Growth Centre. 1. Introduction The economic importance of international migration has been increasing steadily in the recent decades. Not only has the number of labor migrants increased massively, but also the financial flows generated by these migrants have been rising rapidly, often surpassing the national budgets of many developing countries. 1 As a result, the strand of economics literature that examines the potentially positive effects of emigration on the economic development of origin countries has been growing. It highlights that the positive effects of emigration on economic development may happen as a result of a number of mechanisms such as overcoming liquidity constraints through remittances, promoting human capital accumulation and entrepreneurship, and increasing foreign direct investment and international trade.2 While the importance of good political institutions for economic development is by now well established, as influentially described by Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2005), one area that has deserved relatively less attention in the economics literature is the relationship between international migration and the quality of political institutions in countries of migrant origin.3 The main objective of this paper is to make a specific contribution to this literature by examining in detail different mechanisms through which international migration may play a role in the diffusion of improved political attitudes and behavior of those left behind. For this purpose, we make use of a number of different measures of political participation (namely self-reports, behavioral and actual measures of political behavior), and of different types of migrant social networks (geographical, kinship, and chatting networks). We start by proposing a theoretical framework where migration might change individual social identities and in this way intrinsic motivation for political participation, while it may also improve information and knowledge about better quality political institutions. Through these 1 World Bank (2018) “Moving for Prosperity – Global Migration and Labor Markets”. 2 Edwards and Ureta (2003) and Yang (2008) described how remittances may provide the financial resources to overcome credit constraints in migrant sending countries. Furthermore, return migration may bring not only financial resources, but also human capital, which can promote entrepreneurship and economic growth, as in Mesnard and Ravallion (2006) and Batista et al. (2017). Migrant networks may also foster increased Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and international trade, as found by Gould (1994), Rauch and Trindade (2002), Kugler and Rapoport (2007) or Javorcik et al. (2011). An additional possibility empirically examined and supported by Beine et al. (2008) and Batista et al. (2012) is the “brain gain” hypothesis put forward by Mountford (1997) and Stark et al. (1997, 1998), according to which the simple prospect of emigration can promote human capital accumulation in migrant origin countries. 3 Throughout this paper, we define the quality of political institutions as combining compliance to the electoral principle of democracy where rulers are made responsive to citizens through periodic elections, together with compliance to the participatory principle that can be summarized as active participation by citizens in all political processes - including not only elections, but also other forms of political engagement, as described by Coppedge et al. (2016). 2 mechanisms, international migration might increase political awareness and participation. This effect may not only influence migrants themselves, but also trigger peer effects - thus impacting the social network of current and return migrants in their country of origin. In order to evaluate whether international migration may foster political participation, and examine the importance of different types of migrant networks in this transmission process, we exploit data from nationally representative household surveys conducted immediately before and after the 2009 national elections in Mozambique. These elections followed the lowest election turnout ever in Mozambique in 2004 (36% according to official numbers), which was also the lowest among all SADC countries. Because Mozambique is a country with substantial emigration to neighboring countries (especially to South Africa), this therefore seems like an ideal context in which to study the role of the increasingly important but relatively
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