Stop, in the name of COVID!

Abstract

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, travel restrictions implemented to prevent its spread, likethe suspension of international transit and closure of borders, first put into place in March 2020, oftensuddenly, have created complex, fast-evolving networks of restrictions between the countries of origin anddestination of migrants and would-be migrants. These restrictions have had a particularly noteworthyimpact on migrants from North and West Africa, who have reported experiencing greater impacts from thepandemic on their journeys than migrants from any other region in the world, as flows registered throughkey transit points in West and Central Africa and irregular arrivals to Europe plummeted, especiallyalong the Western Mediterranean Route key to migrants from North and West Africa. The InternationalOrganization for Migration (IOM) has postulated that international migrant stocks have fallen well shortof their pre-pandemic projections in West/North Africa, Europe, and globally, by more than 2 million,due to travel restrictions. However, this is not testable with migration data from traditional sourceslike censuses and population surveys, which on top of pre-existing timeliness and granularity limitations,have had data collection operations delayed, canceled, interrupted, or data quality otherwise seriouslycompromised by the pandemic. Recognizing these challenges, key migration stakeholders, including theIOM, have called for the use of data from alternative sources, including social media, to fill in thesegaps. Inspired by this call, we endeavor to test the hypothesis that COVID-related travel restrictionsreduced migrant stock compared to what it would have been in the absence of such restrictions usingestimates of expats, or individuals living in a given destination country who formerly lived in a givenorigin country, from Facebook’s advertising platform. We take advantage of the quasi-natural experimentprovided by different countries’ staggered adoption of different levels of travel restrictions, which weformulate as a treatment, and attempt to control for non-travel restriction-related factors that may besimultaneously influencing migration, using the method developed by Arellano and Bond for estimatingdynamic linear panel models. Looking specifically at four key origin countries in North and West Africa,Côte d’Ivoire, Algeria, Morocco, and Senegal, and their 23 key destination countries, we estimate thata destination country implementing a total entry ban over the course of a month may have expected a3.39% reduction in migrant stock compared to the counterfactual in which no travel restrictions wereimplemented. However, when taking pandemic-related mortality, broader restrictions on activity andmovement, and the onset of the global pandemic itself into account, we estimate that a destinationcountry implementing an entry ban over the course of a month may expect a 5.47% increase in migrantstock. While further research is needed on both the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on migrationand using social media data to obtain accurate migration estimates, travel restrictions do not appear tohave been effective in curbing migration in the countries that implement them in the context of the widerdisruptions wrought by the pandemic.