Deciding to Cross

Abstract

Why are there so many unauthorized migrants in the United States? Using unique survey data collected in Mexico through the Mexican Migration Project, I develop and test a new decisionmaking model of unauthorized labor migration. The new model considers the economic motivations of prospective migrants, as well as their beliefs, attitudes, and social norms regarding U.S. immigration law and legal authorities. My findings show that perceptions of certainty of apprehension and severity of punishment are not significant determinants of the intent to migrate illegally; however, perceptions of availability of Mexican jobs and the dangers of border crossing are significant determinants of these intentions. In addition, individuals' general legal attitudes, morality about violating U.S. immigration law, views about the legitimacy of U.S. authority, and norms about border crossing are significant determinants of the intent to migrate illegally. Perceptions of procedural justice are significantly related to beliefs in the legitimacy of U.S. authority, suggesting that, all else being equal, procedural fairness may produce greater deference to U.S. immigration law. Together, the results show that the decision to migrate illegally cannot be fully understood without considering an individual's underlying values and norms.

Integration across a metacoupled world

“…However, no frameworks have explicitly integrated human-nature interactions between adjacent coupled systems. When issues between adjacent systems are discussed, focuses have usually been on either environmental issues such as pollution crossing the border between Canada and the USA (Wotawa and Trainer 2000) or socioeconomic issues such as human migrants from Mexico to the USA (Ryo 2013) rather than socioeconomic and environmental issues simultaneously. Furthermore, no frameworks simultaneously integrate humannature interactions within a coupled system as well as between adjacent and distant coupled systems.…”

What drives ‘soft deportation’? Understanding the rise in Assisted Voluntary Return among rejected asylum seekers in the Netherlands

“…effect in asylum migration that is difficult for states to control.The attention being paid to policy gaps in migration studies should not divert scholarly attention away from what laws and policies do achieve, and how this occurs, that is, not only via "visible" policy mechanisms (force, facilitation, and highly visible forms of deterrence), but also via more "invisible" mechanisms, including forms of deterrence resulting from the exclusion of unauthorized migrants from labor markets and social provisions, and, especially, perceived legitimacy. While the legitimacy of today's immigration regimes is far from uncontested (also seeRyo, 2013), we suspect that perceived legitimacy still limits international migration considerably, if only because political borders are likely to have the effect of international migration being perceived as less "natural" and "allowed" than domestic migration. A direction for future research on policy effects would be to better understand such mechanisms, and to examine whether cultural developments under the influence of globalization, including the possible rise of an aspired "global citizenship" in countries outside of the Global North, attenuate such normative influences on migration patterns.…”

“…Focusing on AVR among rejected asylum seekers, we aim to contribute to the understanding of various policy mechanisms, the relevance of which is not limited to AVR (coercion, deterrence, facilitation, rewarding, and perceived legitimacy). The latter mechanism in particular has largely been overlooked in the migration literature (but see Ryo, 2013; Van Alphen, Molleman, Leerkes, & van den Hoek, 2013).…”

Choosing Unauthorized Migration: Evidence from Return Migrants

“…This can explain why the poorest individuals of a community often do not migrate despite the highest pressure to do so: They are selected out of migration because they cannot afford it, or cannot afford to take the risk of failure inherent in every migration (Chiswick, 1999). When they are able to migrate, the poorest tend to migrate under conditions that hinder them from improving their wellbeing and indeed may make them economically worse off (Mosse, Gupta, and Rees, 2002;Sloan and Morrison, 2016), although overall risks at the household level may still be reduced in the longterm (Stark and Bloom, 1985;Massey and Espinosa, 1997). Individuals with better education, skills and labour market experience, by contrast, can capture the rewards of migration, and are thus expected to be more likely to migrate (de Haas, 2010).…”

“…Two decades after these changes and the legal possibility of working abroad, unauthorized migration remains a common form for Albanians, frequently referred to as characteristic of Albanian migration (Barjaba and King, 2005;Maroukis, 2012;Vullnetari, 2015). Indeed, Albanian continues to be among the most common nationalities found to be illegally present in the European Union (Sabbati and Poptcheva, 2015). The high rate of unauthorized migration reflects opportunities due to geographical proximity and lenient enforcement in Greece (compare Eschbach et al, 1999;and Massey, Durand, and Pren, 2016, on the effects of strong enforcement in the case of the Mexican-US border).…”