IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jgeosy/v21y2019i4d10.1007_s10109-019-00306-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Migration aspirations among youth in the Middle East and North Africa region

Author

Listed:
  • Raul Ramos

    (Universitat de Barcelona)

Abstract

The Middle East and North Africa region has high unemployment rates for youth, and the number of youth not in education, employment, or training is also among the highest in the world. In this context, migration is one of the more obvious reactions of youth facing unmet aspirations in the labour market. This paper analyses the determinants of the intentions of youth to migrate during their school-to-work transitions in selected countries in the region. With this aim, microdata from School-to-Work Transition Surveys conducted by the International Labour Organization from 2013 to 2015 are used in this research covering Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Tunisia. These surveys target a nationally representative sample of young people between the ages of 15 and 29 and include data on intentions to migrate (internal and international) and factors related to social and educational background. Microeconometric models are used in order to achieve a better understanding of factors influencing youth decisions to migrate.

Suggested Citation

  • Raul Ramos, 2019. "Migration aspirations among youth in the Middle East and North Africa region," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 21(4), pages 487-507, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:jgeosy:v:21:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s10109-019-00306-1
    DOI: 10.1007/s10109-019-00306-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10109-019-00306-1
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10109-019-00306-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas Bauer & Ira Gang & Gil Epstein, 2000. "What Are Migration Networks?," Departmental Working Papers 200016, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
    2. Francesco Pastore, 2015. "The Youth Experience Gap," SpringerBriefs in Economics, Springer, edition 127, number 978-3-319-10196-5, June.
    3. Esteban Sanromá & Raúl Ramos & Hipólito Simón, 2015. "How Relevant Is the Origin of Human Capital for Immigrant Wages? Evidence from Spain," Journal of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(1), pages 149-172, May.
    4. Stark, Oded & Bloom, David E, 1985. "The New Economics of Labor Migration," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(2), pages 173-178, May.
    5. Stéphane Carcillo & Rodrigo Fernández & Sebastian Königs & Andreea Minea, 2015. "NEET Youth in the Aftermath of the Crisis: Challenges and Policies," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 164, OECD Publishing.
    6. Raul Ramos & Vicente Royuela, 2017. "Graduate migration in Spain: the impact of the Great Recession on a low-mobility country," Chapters, in: Jonathan Corcoran & Alessandra Faggian (ed.), Graduate Migration and Regional Development, chapter 8, pages 159-172, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. O'Higgins, Niall, 2015. "Youth Unemployment," IZA Policy Papers 103, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Docquier, Frédéric & Marfouk, Abdeslam & Salomone, Sara & Sekkat, Khalid, 2012. "Are Skilled Women More Migratory than Skilled Men?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 251-265.
    9. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/7gu5r9nb899om9oin7k24kjpgt is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Dibeh, Ghassan & Fakih, Ali & Marrouch, Walid, 2017. "Decision to Emigrate Amongst the Youth in Lebanon," IZA Discussion Papers 10493, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Christian Dustmann & Joseph-Simon Görlach, 2016. "The Economics of Temporary Migrations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(1), pages 98-136, March.
    12. Rémi Bazillier & Cristina Boboc, 2016. "Labour migration as a way to escape from employment vulnerability? Evidence from the European Union," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(16), pages 1149-1152, November.
    13. Asmaa Elbadawy, 2011. "Migration Aspirations among Young People in Egypt: Who Desires to Migrate?," Working Papers 619, Economic Research Forum, revised 09 Jan 2011.
    14. Gibson, John & McKenzie, David, 2011. "The microeconomic determinants of emigration and return migration of the best and brightest: Evidence from the Pacific," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 18-29, May.
    15. Stéphane Carcillo & Rodrigo Fernandez & Sebastian Königs & Andreea Minea, 2015. "NEET Youth in the Aftermath of the Crisis," Working Papers hal-03429941, HAL.
    16. Andries de Grip & Didier Fouarge & Jan Sauermann, 2010. "What affects international migration of European science and engineering graduates?," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(5), pages 407-421.
    17. Alícia Adserà & Mariola Pytliková, 2015. "The Role of Language in Shaping International Migration," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 125(586), pages 49-81, August.
    18. Rosalind S. Hunter & Andrew J. Oswald & Bruce G. Charlton, 2009. "The Elite Brain Drain," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(538), pages 231-251, June.
    19. Kahanec, Martin & Fabo, Brian, 2013. "Migration Strategies of the Crisis-Stricken Youth in an Enlarged European Union," IZA Discussion Papers 7285, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Abdeslam Marfouk, 2007. "Brain Drain in Developing Countries," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 21(2), pages 193-218, June.
    21. Ron Boschma & Simona Iammarino & Raffaele Paci & Jordy Suriñach & Raul Ramos & Jordi Suriñach, 2017. "A Gravity Model of Migration Between the ENC and the EU," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 108(1), pages 21-35, February.
    22. Amelie F. Constant & Klaus F. Zimmermann (ed.), 2013. "International Handbook on the Economics of Migration," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 4026.
    23. Grogger, Jeffrey & Hanson, Gordon H., 2011. "Income maximization and the selection and sorting of international migrants," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 42-57, May.
    24. Lall, Somik V. & Selod, Harris & Shalizi, Zmarak, 2006. "Rural-urban migration in developing countries : a survey of theoretical predictions and empirical findings," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3915, The World Bank.
    25. Marco Manacorda & Furio Camillo Rosati & Marco Ranzani & Giuseppe Dachille, 2017. "Pathways from school to work in the developing world," IZA Journal of Labor & Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 6(1), pages 1-40, December.
    26. Rosalind S Hunter, 2009. "The Elite Brain Drain," Working Papers id:2048, eSocialSciences.
    27. Rémi Bazillier & Cristina Boboc, 2016. "Labour migration as a way to escape from employment vulnerability? Evidence from the European Union," Post-Print hal-03530146, HAL.
    28. Sandra Nieto & Alessia Matano & Raúl Ramos, 2015. "Educational mismatches in the EU: immigrants vs natives," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 36(4), pages 540-561, July.
    29. Glenda Quintini & Sébastien Martin, 2014. "Same Same but Different: School-to-work Transitions in Emerging and Advanced Economies," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 154, OECD Publishing.
    30. Francesco Pastore, 2018. "Why is youth unemployment so high and different across countries?," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 420-420, January.
    31. Anda David & Joachim Jarreau, 2016. "Determinants of Emigration: Evidence from Egypt," Working Papers 987, Economic Research Forum, revised Apr 2016.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anupam Nanda & Olayiwola Oladiran, 2022. "Examining regional asymmetries in drivers of international migration flows," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 90(6), pages 648-667, December.
    2. Henrietta Nyamnjoh, 2021. "Ambitions of Bushfalling through Further Education: Insights from Students in Cameroonian Universities," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(1), pages 196-206.
    3. Milasi Santo, 2020. "What Drives Youth’s Intention to Migrate Abroad? Evidence from International Survey Data," IZA Journal of Development and Migration, Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 11(1), pages 1-30, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ramos, Raul, 2017. "Migration Aspirations among NEETs in Selected MENA Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 11146, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Amr Abdelwahed & Anne Goujon & Leiwen Jiang, 2020. "The Migration Intentions of Young Egyptians," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(23), pages 1-38, November.
    3. Dibeh, Ghassan & Fakih, Ali & Marrouch, Walid, 2017. "Decision to Emigrate Amongst the Youth in Lebanon," IZA Discussion Papers 10493, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Milasi Santo, 2020. "What Drives Youth’s Intention to Migrate Abroad? Evidence from International Survey Data," IZA Journal of Development and Migration, Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 11(1), pages 1-30, January.
    5. Fernandez-Zubieta, Ana & Geuna, Aldo & Lawson, Cornelia, 2015. "What do We Know of the Mobility of Research Scientists and of its Impact on Scientific Production," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201522, University of Turin.
    6. John Gibson & David McKenzie, 2012. "The Economic Consequences of ‘Brain Drain’ of the Best and Brightest: Microeconomic Evidence from Five Countries," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(560), pages 339-375, May.
    7. Frédéric Docquier & Hillel Rapoport, 2012. "Globalization, Brain Drain, and Development," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(3), pages 681-730, September.
    8. Yuret, Tolga, 2017. "An analysis of the foreign-educated elite academics in the United States," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 358-370.
    9. Tiwari, Smriti, 2021. "Do macroeconomic fluctuations at destination matter in determining migrants’ return decisions?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    10. Agarwal, Ruchir & Ganguli, Ina & Gaulé, Patrick & Smith, Geoff, 2023. "Why U.S. immigration matters for the global advancement of science," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(1).
    11. Pedro Albarrán & Raquel Carrasco & Javier Ruiz-Castillo, 2017. "Are Migrants More Productive Than Stayers? Some Evidence From A Set Of Highly Productive Academic Economists," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(3), pages 1308-1323, July.
    12. Francesco Pastore & Claudio Quintano & Antonella Rocca, 2020. "Stuck at a crossroads? The duration of the Italian school-to-work transition," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 42(3), pages 442-469, September.
    13. Antwi, James & Phillips, David C., 2013. "Wages and health worker retention: Evidence from public sector wage reforms in Ghana," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 101-115.
    14. Amelie F. Constant, 2019. "Return, Circular, and Onward Migration Decisions in a Knowledge Society," CESifo Working Paper Series 7913, CESifo.
    15. repec:hal:journl:hal-00779716 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Gibson, John & McKenzie, David, 2014. "Scientific mobility and knowledge networks in high emigration countries: Evidence from the Pacific," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(9), pages 1486-1495.
    17. Tani, Massimiliano, 2020. "The labour market for native and international PhD students: similarities, differences, and the role of (university) employers," GLO Discussion Paper Series 621, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    18. Éric Rougier & Nicolas Yol, 2019. "The volatility effect of diaspora's location," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(6), pages 1796-1827, June.
    19. Naiditch, Claire & Vranceanu, Radu, 2013. "A two-country model of high skill migration with public education," ESSEC Working Papers WP1301, ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School.
    20. Schmid, Lena & Renner, Laura, 2020. "The Decision to Flee: Analyzing Gender-Specific Determinants of International Refugee Migration," VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics 224596, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    21. Ward, Zachary, 2017. "Birds of passage: Return migration, self-selection and immigration quotas," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 37-52.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Intentions to migrate; Youth; NEETs; Unemployment; Inactivity; School-to-work transition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • J65 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant Closings
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jgeosy:v:21:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s10109-019-00306-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.