Examining regional asymmetries in drivers of international migration flows

Abstract

Migration is key to economic development, with varying implications and uneven impacts on origin and destination regions. This paper examines the variation in the major drivers of migration within and across continental blocs and the OECD in a gravity framework. The empirical model uses bilateral migration flow data for 182 countries over a 25 year period (1990–2015) while controlling for push and pull drivers of migration. The novelty of the study rests in the added dimension of the variation in the impact of migration drivers that is based on the direction of migration flow. The results suggest that migration drivers vary significantly across several economic blocs based in different regions and OECD countries. We find that the weight and significance of the impact of migration drivers vary significantly based on the direction of flow across continental blocs and the OECD, although some similarities exist in some regions regardless of the direction of migration flow. The results specifically show that economic and socio-cultural drivers of migration are strongest when migration originates in continents dominated by developing countries and terminates in other continents, compared to migration that originates and terminates within the continents. This raises some anomalies and several issues of potential policy intervention.