Full Citation
Title: Measuring Sub-national Migration Networks using Matriculas Consulares
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2017
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Abstract: Migrant networks affect the probability of migration, migrants’ location decisions, and their economic outcomes in destination communities. Yet available data sources on migrant networks either i) cover only a small fraction of sending- or receiving-country locations or ii) provide very coarse geographic information. In this paper, we show how to use administrative data from the Matricula Consular de Alta Seguridad (MCAS) identification card program to measure migration networks with complete geographic coverage of both Mexico and the U.S. and detailed information on migrants’ sources and destinations. We first confirm the quality and representativeness of the MCAS data by comparing them with well-known household surveys in Mexico and the U.S., finding strong agreement on the migrant location distributions available across datasets. We then document substantial differences in the distribution of destinations among migrants from different municipios within the same source state, which implies that state-based network measures are at best a noisy measure of network connections based on place of birth. We conclude by demonstrating how these detailed migration network data can be used to study the effects of destination-specific conditions on migration patterns. We find that an Arizona law reducing employment opportunities for unauthorized migrants resulted in decreased emigration from and increased return migration to Mexican source regions with pre-existing strong network ties to that state.
Url: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/55ef/83e6095d71d88abc815901147bea1c934738.pdf
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Authors: Caballero, Maria, E; Cadena, Brian, C; Kovak, Brian, K
Publisher: Carnegie Mellon University
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Migration and Immigration
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