Southern Economic Journal

This study evaluates whether the trajectories of forced migrants, specifically Syrian refugees moving towards Germany, exhibit path dependency—meaning that their migration decisions are influenced by past events and their previous migration experiences. Using data from the IAB-BAMF-SOEP survey of refugees, this article investigates whether these migration trajectories adhere to a Markov process, where the likelihood of future migrations depends solely on the current state. By employing global and local Markov score tests, the article systematically tests the Markov assumption across different migration routes, focusing on Turkey, Lebanon, and Egypt as transit countries. The findings indicate that shorter, reactive migrations from Syria to Lebanon and Turkey exhibit path dependency, meaning their likelihood is influenced by recent events. Conversely, longer, logistically complex migrations, such as from Syria to Egypt and from transit countries to Germany, adhere to the Markov property, suggesting path independence. This distinction highlights the impact of route difficulty and destination accessibility on migration behaviors. The implications of the findings are also significant for the use of the Markov property in computational models of migration. Researchers should exercise caution when applying the Markov assumption indiscriminately across different migration contexts, as its validity can vary based on external factors such as policy changes and route accessibility.

This paper draws on qualitative, empirical research conducted with nineteen British travel bloggers as distinctive examples of digital nomads, involved in unique forms of lifestyle migration. The paper analyses travel bloggers’ working lives, paying attention to how travel bloggers own migration geographies inextricably entwine with their digital labour. The paper makes three key contributions to the literature on digital nomadism and lifestyle migration. Firstly, the paper highlights how travel bloggers personal migration geographies are a key resource in travel bloggers commodified performances of digital nomadism to their online audiences. Secondly, that travel bloggers encounter ‘frictions’ associated with this intersection of migration geographies and digital work, namely issues of overwork, mental health struggles and instability of digital platforms. Thirdly, that although travel bloggers may understand themselves as lifestyle migrants, there is limited reflection on how, their own, privileged migration geographies may impact upon other migrants or communities. Within the conclusion, these reflections are used to ponder what travel blogging as a form of lifestyle migration may allow us to consider about the future of work, digital technologies and migration.

This article interrogates whether, and if so how, political factors underlie the migration aspirations of US-born citizens—a group of people often assumed to have the privilege and options to relocate elsewhere, typically “voluntarily” and for a mix of economic or social/cultural/lifestyle reasons, rather than being pushed out politically by war, revolution, or violence. Drawing on a unique, nationally-representative panel of 1,764 US-born citizens surveyed in 2014 and 2019, and despite many media suggesting the contrary, we show that the overall prevalence and distribution of Americans’ migration aspirations period actually stayed stable during this volatile time period. Nevertheless, we do uncover evidence that political considerations do shape what aspirations US-born citizens do express, with both weaker national attachment and liberal political ideology consistently raising their odds, and political engagement operating in different directions, depending on panelists’ ideological affiliations and the specific governing regime. We discuss the relevance of these findings for literature on migration aspirations from the Global North, multicausal theories of migration, and the relationship between Hirschman’s classic concepts of loyalty, voice, and exit.

Recent scholarship has examined the multiple dimensions of structural and cultural inequalities that impact the well-being of intra-Asia marriage migrants in both sending and receiving countries. One missing mechanism that may shape varied patterns of pre- and post-migration inequalities — the different marriage channels that facilitate different types of encounters between prospective brides from emerging economies and prospective grooms from advanced economies — deserves more theoretical and empirical attention. Based on over 100 life-history interviews with Vietnamese marriage migrants in Taiwan and South Korea, our analysis shows how women's meeting their foreign spouse through personal encounters, introduction networks, or commercial brokers denotes their relatively advantaged, constrained, or disadvantaged structural and cultural circumstances and, in turn, shapes the time available for them for expressing decision-making agency. We argue that marriage channel serves as an intermediate stratifying mechanism — an unequal space, reflecting migrant women's differential socioeconomic positions and gendered familial obligations in Vietnam and shaping a hidden dimension of inequality — temporal inequality — that is embedded in the processes of migration decision-making across different marriage channels. Our theorization of marriage channels and how they reflect the interplay between time for expressing agency and socio-cultural circumstances illuminates a comprehensive contextualization of the social phenomenon of intra-Asia marriage migration in the pre-migration phase. Through considering how both economic and non-economic factors shape marriage migration decision-making processes and their impacts on women's time for expressing agency across different marriage channels, our study contributes to scholarship on gender, time and women's agency, intra-Asia marriage migration, and international migration decision-making.

This article explores how the European Union's (EU) externalization of migration policies affects democratization in Morocco, drawing on the perspectives of local stakeholders, including government officials, civil society actors, and frontline bureaucrats. While the EU frames its partnership with Morocco as grounded in shared and normative values, the findings show that migration (control) priorities often take precedence over democratic reforms. Using a multilevel theoretical framework that combines structural factors (linkage, leverage, and organizational power) with the agency of domestic actors (gatekeeper elites and street-level bureaucrats), the analysis identifies three key dynamics: the prioritization of migration control over democratic progress, the consolidation of Morocco's authoritarian power through the externalization bargain, and the marginalization of civil society and migrants, intensifying their repression and curtailing their capacity to advocate for change. Based on qualitative fieldwork, this study highlights how these policies redistribute resources and power in ways that bolster autocratic structures and hinder democratic reform. By focusing on the lived experiences of local stakeholders, the article sheds light on how the EU's approach to migration can inadvertently undermine democratization in Morocco.

The digitalization of professions and the new modes of (remote) work have resulted in an increase in work-related lifestyle mobilities such as digital nomadism. This paper deals with the meanings and configurations of digital nomadic work as recounted by digital nomads themselves. What meanings do digital nomads attach to digital nomadic work? What spatial or other configurations does digital nomadic work entail? What does the examination of meanings attached to digital nomadic work and its configurations tell us more broadly about the rising phenomenon of work on the move? The study data come from qualitative interviews with twenty digital nomads in Mallorca, Spain (2021–2022) and from observation in co-working and co-living spaces, networking meetings, and informal get-togethers. Although the nomads often described digital nomadic work as the opposite to traditional and classical nine-to-five office work, I argue that it should not be approached as such. The study findings show that despite expressing a strong anti-office sentiment and describing digital nomadic work as a way to escape “traditional office work,” digital nomads paradoxically end up “mimicking” and replicating the organizational aspects of office-based work. A closer examination of digital nomadic work's spatial configurations further shows that it has distinct temporal, material and performative dimensions, which is why it deserves analysis in its own right. More research is needed on the paradoxical aspects of digital nomadic work for us to understand whether digital nomadism, as a precursor to work-related mobilities, speaks of broader trends in mobile, digitalized work.

Focusing on the flight of women and girls from Venezuela to Brazil, and on South American refugee regimes, this paper addresses the ethics of forced displacement and the requirements of gender-responsive systems of protection. The analysis centers the voices of displaced women brought in through fieldwork in Manaus and Boa Vista, Brazil, in 2020–2022, to identify gaps and negative effects of gender-blind provision of shelter, healthcare, and other services at crossing and reception. We argue that current approaches to protection privilege humanitarian responses to victims, whereas any efforts to break cycles of deprivation and exclusion affecting displaced women and girls should privilege determinants of relational autonomy and the social agency of displaced women and girls. By developing this analysis, we contribute directly to feminist critiques of refugee protection, and reconstruct (based on migrant women's perspectives and feminist work on relational autonomy) key elements of a gendered account of protection that centers on the recognition of autonomy.

Foreign-born Asian Indians in the United States are among the most highly educated and highly paid. A major facilitator of this population's migration has been the H-1B, a temporary work visa that has brought in foreign scientists and engineers since 1990. Immigration scholarship would regard H-1Bs’ high socioeconomic status as a factor that smooths their integration. Yet an aspect usually not associated with high-skilled migrants–legality–may be compromising the assimilation of Asian Indian professionals: over a million are “waiting in line,” or in queue, for legal permanent residency. The delay is significant. Asian Indians have the longest wait among all nationalities, and it is only becoming increasingly longer; scholars argue that many Asian Indians, especially newcomers, will never get a green card. Drawing on 40 semi-structured interviews with US technology workers from India, the following study is among the first of its kind: it examines how Asian Indians’ experience their temporary status, or “liminal legality.” Findings show that they encounter “legal dragging”: they are in line for a green card but are given no specific acquisition date. The legal dragging of the green card process leads to feelings of stagnation, uncertainty, and frustration. Furthermore, these feelings are gendered: women experience the additional worry of having to go back to a country where they will encounter greater gender inequality. Findings illustrate that legal status plays a role in Asian Indian lives and that it can impede on the mobility of the highly skilled.

Digital nomads who travel internationally while working remotely with digital technologies constitute a small but increasing migrant population that has attracted significant research attention lately. Since 2020, there is also a corresponding rise of “digital nomad” visas adopted by several countries around the world to cater for this type of global mobility and even to attract digital nomads. This paper reviews the resurgence of digital nomadism and a concomitant emergence of digital nomad visas to analyze how and why they emerged. The findings allow for categorizations of such policies in terms of their heterogeneity of designs, objectives, and implications. Our findings reveal that the states offering digital nomad visas have designed their visas either through creating a brand new or an adaptive policy approach — the choice of the policy design approach explains the states’ policy priorities. Our analysis shows that digital nomad visas are motivated by three broader socioeconomic interests of the visa issuing countries which include the promotion of tourism, attraction of foreign investments and entrepreneurship, and talent acquisition through a migration policy model. Furthermore, the digital nomad visas invoke the notion of “hypermobility” and permeability of state borders in light of widespread adoptions of digital technologies in work and employment; however, there are paradoxes and contradictions embedded within these policies which manifest through restrictive and exclusionary criteria based on wealth, skills, and nationality. The paper concludes with some critical observations on the novelty of digital nomad visas as a novel migration regime.

Contrary to narratives in the media, most African migrants move across borders within the continent, and most often to other countries in their immediate region. Drawing on a sample of roughly 43,000 people from 36 African countries, this article uses multilevel models to investigate the factors influencing support for either free cross-border movement or government restrictions on immigration. In contrast to previous studies, this article illuminates the substantial importance of regional economic communities within Africa and associated policies around mobility and labor market integration. Empirically, the quantitative results demonstrate that individual support for open borders is significantly higher in regional blocs with well-established free movement protocols and supportive policies, compared to those residing in blocs with more restrictive mobility and labor market integration policies. To better understand the country-level variation within these blocs, I draw on secondary literature to highlight the importance of certain economic, demographic, and security considerations, which likely both shape and reflect citizens’ attitudes toward open borders. This is a novel contribution to the public attitudes toward immigration policy literature, which has neglected the importance of regional frameworks even though they are a crucial instrument in determining national-level migration and integration policy within Africa and beyond.

Dual citizenship provides access to secure legal status and rights in more than one country for an unprecedented number of migrants and their descendants worldwide. While this double allegiance requires matching legal regulations between two states, existing studies of dual citizenship typically focus on migrant origin or destination perspectives. To explore this phenomenon's dyadic nature, we introduce a procedure that leverages existing monadic data on two distinct types of dual citizenship restrictions: origin country restrictions on the loss of citizenship by citizens naturalizing abroad and destination country restrictions requiring foreigners acquiring citizenship in a country to renounce any other citizenship. We add novel data on dyad-specific regulations in place in nearly 13 thousand country-country-year combinations. This results in a global panel dataset of the regulation of dual citizenship in 1.8 million directed dyad-year observations in place between 201 states back to 1960. An open access replication script allows reproducing and updating the dyadic dataset with new available data. We identify regulatory trends and present estimates of the number and proportion of global migrants affected by changing policy constellations and variation in acceptance across political regimes. We show that migrants are more likely to acquire destination country citizenship and thus achieve democratic representation in constellations where they can maintain a legal link with their origin country.

We study the effect of age at migration among immigrants in Sweden on political participation as adults. To identify the effect, we use validated individual turnout data over three elections in Sweden (1994, 2010, and 2018), and compare outcomes among siblings who arrive at the same time but at different ages. We document a clear effect on political participation from early arrival: immigrants arriving in early childhood (ages 0–5) are about 5 to 10 percentage points more likely to partake in national elections as adults compared to immigrants arriving later (ages 12–17) during their childhood. We further show that the effect is partially persistent over the life-cycle.