Abstract
Abstract This paper uses queuing theory to examine the linkages between legal and illegal immigration. This approach is particularly appropriate for periods of mass migration and can be used to look at how the magnitude of people trying to migrate affects the choice between legal and illegal channels. An empirical illustration shows how origin-country conflict and past migration differently affect current legal and illegal flows. With data for Schengen countries from Eurostat for documented immigration and the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union (Frontex) for illegal border crossings (IBCs), I implement a generalized method of moments (GMM) strategy using different estimates of conflict-related deaths and lagged flows of immigration as external and internal instruments, respectively. Violent conflict has a positive and significant effect on IBCs but not on documented migration flows. I find evidence of positive spillovers from the legal channel of immigration into the illegal channel but not vice versa.
Highlights
In 2015, 1.83 million irregular migrants arrived at Europe’s external borders.1 They came primarily from countries facing political unrest in the Middle East and Northern Africa
Results using pooled Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and within-estimators are given in Tables 2 and 3
The significance of the positive conflict coefficient remains for illegal border crossings (IBCs) after introducing controls and fixed effects but not for legal inflows
Summary
In 2015, 1.83 million irregular migrants arrived at Europe’s external borders. They came primarily from countries facing political unrest in the Middle East and Northern Africa. In 2015, 1.83 million irregular migrants arrived at Europe’s external borders.1 They came primarily from countries facing political unrest in the Middle East and Northern Africa. The spate of revolutions known as the Arab Spring began around December 2010 but immigration from the region peaked much later in 2015. With this context of the highest migration flows since World War II, my paper applies an alternative framework to understand the dynamics of legal and illegal immigration and looks at the effect of violent conflict on both channels. The canonical models of migration are not suited for crises of the sort recently witnessed and those that may arise in future due to political instability or climate change
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