Abstract
This paper focuses on the impact of international migration on the transfer of political and social norms. Exploiting recent and unique data on Morocco, this paper explores whether households with return and current migrants bear different political preferences and behaviours than non-migrant families. Once controlling for the double selection into emigration and return migration, the findings suggest that having a returnee in the household increases the demand for political and social change. This result is driven by returnees mostly from Western European countries, who were exposed to more democratic norms in the destination. However, we find a negative impact of having a current migrant on the willingness of the left-behind households to change. This result is driven by migrants to non-Western countries, where the quality of political and social institutions is lower. Our results are robust to also controlling for destination selectivity.
Highlights
In the early 2010s, the Arab world saw a revolutionary wave of protests spreading throughout the region, sparked by dissatisfaction with the rule of governments, as well as human rights’ violations and political corruption
Does international migration act as a driver of political and social change? We look at the interesting case of Morocco, a North African country that has become a major emigration hub to Europe and where there have been calls for political change over the last few years
The findings provide evidence that return migration has a positive impact on the preference for political and social change after controlling for the double selectivity of emigration and return migration
Summary
In the early 2010s, the Arab world saw a revolutionary wave of protests spreading throughout the region, sparked by dissatisfaction with the rule of governments, as well as human rights’ violations and political corruption. It examines whether international migrants contribute to a change in preferences and behaviours by channelling modern political norms from destination countries to Morocco (a high emigration country). It investigates the importance of destinations in the transmission of social remittances, in particular, in the adoption of liberal values, since newly incorporated norms vary according to the level of democracy and political accountability in host countries. We address an additional source of selectivity that is self-sorting into destination countries This may be a remarkable source of bias in the previous literature on the migration-induced transfer of norms.
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