Return migrants and the wage premium: does the legal status of migrants matter?
Return migrants and the wage premium: does the legal status of migrants matter?
This paper examines the impact of the legal status of overseas migrants on their wages upon return to the home country. Using unique data from Egypt, which allows us to distinguish between return migrants according to whether their international migration was documented or undocumented, we examine the impact of illegal status on wages upon return. Relying on a conditional mixed process model, which takes into account the selection into emigration, into return, and into the legal status of temporary migration, we find that, upon return, undocumented migrants experience a wage penalty compared with documented migrants, as well as relative to non-migrants. Our results are the first to show the impact of undocumented migration on the migrant upon return to the country of origin.
Egypt, Illegality, Return migration, Undocumented migration, Wages
1631–1685
Elmallakh, Nelly
f8651a26-caf9-4135-aae2-0f7e8bf8b0fd
Wahba, Jackline
03ae9304-c329-40c6-9bfc-d91cfa9e7164
7 October 2021
Elmallakh, Nelly
f8651a26-caf9-4135-aae2-0f7e8bf8b0fd
Wahba, Jackline
03ae9304-c329-40c6-9bfc-d91cfa9e7164
Elmallakh, Nelly and Wahba, Jackline
(2021)
Return migrants and the wage premium: does the legal status of migrants matter?
Journal of Population Economics, 35 (4), .
(doi:10.1007/s00148-021-00872-z).
Abstract
This paper examines the impact of the legal status of overseas migrants on their wages upon return to the home country. Using unique data from Egypt, which allows us to distinguish between return migrants according to whether their international migration was documented or undocumented, we examine the impact of illegal status on wages upon return. Relying on a conditional mixed process model, which takes into account the selection into emigration, into return, and into the legal status of temporary migration, we find that, upon return, undocumented migrants experience a wage penalty compared with documented migrants, as well as relative to non-migrants. Our results are the first to show the impact of undocumented migration on the migrant upon return to the country of origin.
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Elmallakh-Wahba2021_Article_ReturnMigrantsAndTheWagePremiu
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Accepted/In Press date: 9 July 2021
e-pub ahead of print date: 7 October 2021
Published date: 7 October 2021
Additional Information:
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).
Keywords:
Egypt, Illegality, Return migration, Undocumented migration, Wages
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 451911
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/451911
ISSN: 0933-1433
PURE UUID: b79ec7a9-f7a8-4afb-921a-6f8beb9c2905
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Date deposited: 03 Nov 2021 17:31
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 02:42
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Author:
Nelly Elmallakh
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