GPCO 412: Migration I - Demographic and Economic Forces

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering the economic, demographic, and institutional forces driving global migration, returns to mobility, the emigration life cycle, and diaspora networks.

Labor Mobility

A mechanism of globalization allowing individuals to utilize their skills in a different economic environment, distinct from trade (which moves commodities) and foreign investment (which moves capital and production tasks).

Migrant Stock

A demographic measure that quantifies the total number of people living outside their country of birth at a single point in time.

Migration Flow

A measure of the number of individuals moving across borders during a specified period of time, where gross inflows differ from net migration.

Refugee / Asylum Seeker

A legal classification referring either to an individual who has been granted international protection status or one whose protection claim is formally awaiting legal determination.

Internal Displacement

The involuntary or forced movement of individuals and populations that occurs entirely within the borders of their own country.

World Migration Rate

The share of the global population living outside their country of birth, which has remained relatively stable between approximately $2.5\%$ and $3.5\%$ from 1960 to 2015 despite rising absolute migrant totals.

South–South Migration

The movement of workers between developing nations, such as flows from South Asia to the Gulf and East Asia, frequently organized under temporary recruitment contracts without permanent settlement.

Demographic Mismatch

The structural divergence between ageing, high-productivity economies facing declining working-age populations and regions such as Africa, which is projected to account for approximately $80\%$ of global growth in the $15\text{--}64$ age group through 2050.

Adaptation Options for Ageing Economies

Four policy and economic adjustments to address shrinking workforces: higher labor force participation or later retirement, automation and productivity growth, increasing birth rates, and international migration.

Place Premium

The large disparity in real, purchasing power parity-adjusted earnings received by workers with identical observable characteristics (such as education and experience) depending solely on the country where they work.

Selection Problem (Migration)

The empirical difficulty of estimating returns to migration caused by unobservable characteristics (such as ambition, ability, or risk tolerance) that differentiate movers from non-movers.

Palm Oil Visa Lottery Experiment

A randomized natural experiment by Mobarak, Sharif, and Shrestha (2023) evaluating Bangladeshi workers applying for temporary employment in Malaysia, finding substantial causal gains in household income, consumption, and female decision-making for lottery winners.

Emigration Life Cycle

An inverted-U empirical relationship documented by Michael Clemens (2020), showing that a country's emigration rate initially rises as GDP per capita grows before eventually declining once middle- to high-income levels are reached.

Liquidity Constraint (in Emigration)

The financial barrier faced by impoverished individuals who lack sufficient funds to cover the up-front costs of moving; relaxing this constraint through early income gains leads to higher emigration rates.

Opportunity Cost Mechanism (in Emigration)

The economic force that takes over at higher levels of domestic development, where improved domestic wages and living standards reduce the relative incentive to seek employment abroad.

Remittances

Cross-border financial transfers sent by migrants back to family members in their country of origin to support consumption, insure against adverse shocks, repay debts, or fund investments in education, health, and housing.

Trillion Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk

Michael Clemens's (2011) metaphor characterizing the massive potential efficiency gains from eliminating international barriers to labor mobility (estimated at $67\%$ to $147.3\%$ of world GDP), which dwarf the gains from eliminating trade or capital barriers.

Income Per Natural

A people-based development metric introduced by Clemens and Pritchett that measures the average economic well-being of all persons born in a country, regardless of where in the world they currently reside and work.

Brain Circulation

The continuous, multidirectional transfer of human capital, skills, and technology back to origin countries through return migration, diaspora business networks, and knowledge exchange.

Diaspora Network Effects

The mechanism whereby historical migrant communities facilitate trade, business creation, and investment flows between their host destination and origin country, as shown by Parsons and Vézina (2018) in the case of Vietnamese refugees in the United States.