Seminar: Migrants strategies for mobility: Education and Smuggling

DATE
09-04-2019
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TIME
from: 11:00
to: 12:30

As part of the its seminar series, the Migration Policy Centre will host the following presentations:
 
Immigrant’s demand for informal education: Evidence from US

Rezart Hoxhaj (Migration Policy Centre, RSCAS, EUI)

Co-authors: Nicola D. Coniglio (University of Bari Aldo Moro), Hubert Jayet (University of Lille, France)

Economic research on immigrants’ behavior and performance has focused almost exclusively on outcomes (monetary such as wages, income, remittances and non-monetary such as crime rates and educational attainments) leaving in the shadow the analysis of the process which leads to such outcomes. The recent availability of individuals’ time-use data has allowed researchers to shed lights on the process of time allocation across different market and non-market activities. In this work we study the allocation of time devoted to informal learning and education, i.e. those activities carried out during leisure time and outside formal training courses which boost individuals’ human capital. For immigrants the private investment in these activities is likely to have relevant external effects as informal learning and education enhances the likelihood of greater socio-economic integration in the host society. We first develop a simple theoretical framework, which allows us to highlight the different constrains/opportunity costs faced by immigrants as compared with natives. Then, we empirically investigate the determinants of participation in informal education using the American Time Use Data (ATUS; period 2003-2015) which contains detailed information on daily time budgets of a large sample of immigrants and natives in the US. Consistently with a theoretical model of time allocation with fixed participation costs and heterogeneous returns to informal education we find evidence that immigrants are more likely to engage in informal education and, conditionally on participation, they allocate more time to these activities. Over time, immigrants show a higher degree of assimilation into the host society. Our results also highlight heterogeneous patterns across gender and ethnic groups.

 

Why hasn’t Tunisia become a migrant smuggling hub? Some preliminary thoughts and findings

Gabriella Sanchez (Migration Policy Centre, RSCAS, EUI)

In the context of EULISTCO (Europe’s External Action and the Dual Challenges of Limited Statehood and Contested Orders), the Migration Policy Centre is completing two case studies on the smuggling dynamics in Libya and Tunisia and their potential transformations. This seminar will describe some of the preliminary findings identified during two rounds of fieldwork in Tunisia in the Winter/Spring of 2019. The data suggests practices conducive of irregular migration are under the control of small-size local groups which have primarily focused on providing services to their own community members creating a domestic market that has forced non-Tunisian migrants to explore other processes and strategies to migrate out of the country. These include entering or even re-entering Libya, despite its security conditions. The data points to the existence of mobility processes among non-Tunisian migrants that have until now not been identified or reported in the EU-bound migration narrative, and that emphasize the need to account for regional and/or internal mobility patterns.