Attitudinal Predictors of Potential Illegal Cross-Border Migration

Abstract

This paper reports on the relationship between attitudes toward illegal immigrants and illegal immigration, and people's private behavioural intention to immigrate illegally into a foreign country. The research was carried out in 2005, in Bulgaria, a country with a net emigration rate, using a sample of 505 undergraduate Bulgarian students (22.5% male; M age = 23.3; SD = 4.8). A pool of 78 items assessed attitudes toward undocumented immigrants and evaluation of illegal migration. These two measures were used to predict potential undocumented immigration. Based on a factor analysis six subscales were identified and labelled: improvement of life, moral evaluation, courage to live, failure experienced in own country, expectations of benefits from illegal migration, and right to immigrate. Results of a multiple regression analysis explained 62 percent of the variance of the behavioural intention to migrate illegally into a foreign country. The analysis yielded the following factors: attitudes to improve life (β = 0.35), the moral evaluation of illegal immigrants (β = -0.26), expectancies of benefits (β = -0.19), the courage of migrants (β = 0.10), and seeing illegal immigration as a right (β = 0.09), These findings support the hypothesis that attitudes may predict potential behaviour, the strongest predictor for undocumented migration being the urge to improve life, and moral evaluation of migrants.

Strengths and Resilience of Migrant Women in Transit: an Analysis of the Narratives of Central American Women in Irregular Transit Through Mexico Towards the USA

“…In the case of the women in the present study, they expressed that they left their countries (1) in search of better opportunities for themselves and for their children and to (2) leave behind the situation of poverty and violence that is lived in their countries of origin. In this sense, the women who participated in this study are not different from the ones in the study by Ommundsen et al (2010), and they made a courageous decision in order to change the life they previously had.…”

“…Monica said that it was not necessary for her to have a visa or passport to achieve her goals, but that the most important thing was to have the courage to do things. Ommundsen et al (2010) studied the perception on Bulgarian migrants without documentation. The study showed that undocumented migrants are perceived as courageous because they are seen as people who had the nerve to change their life and look for better opportunities.…”

Irregular Immigration, Labour Market and Enforcement at the US‐Mexico Border. Evidence from a Time‐Series Analysis (1963–2014)

“…All these models include the US Minimum Wage, which measures the wage that an immigrant coming to the US would expect to earn in case of successful entry, and the Unemployment Rate that describes the probability of irregular immigrants finding a job once in the US. The Minimum Wage is intended as a low‐level measure, as irregular immigration is strongly linked to the demand for low‐skilled jobs (Ommudsen et al., ; Herman, ; Aronowitz, ; Salt and Stein, ). The same models verify the effect of border enforcement on apprehensions.…”

“…While the literature on legal immigration is abundant at both the macro (Borjas, 2009;1994) and micro levels (Salt and Stein, 1997;Herman, 2006;Zhang, 2008;Aronowitz, 2001;Carling, 2006;Ommudsen et al, 2010), literature on irregular immigration is comparatively limited at an empirical level. Researchers provided evidence about the key role of oscillations in the global labour market in irregular immigration (Dixon et al, 2011;Hanson, 2006;Hanson and Spilimbergo, 1999).…”

Explaining migration intention from selected psycho-social variables in South Wollo, Ethiopia

“…Attitude toward migration is the most important predicting factor of the intention to migrate which is justified as a means to improve the person's and their family's material standard of living (Minaye and Zeleke, 2017 ). Migration is perceived as means of improving the lives of family members by many young persons and as a result of this, they showed a strong propensity to migration (Ommundsen et al, 2010 ). A similar effect of attitude toward migration in determining intention was found in Russia.…”