Abstract
When faced with political violence, why do some people choose to leave their homes while others stay? This article looks for motivations, particularly socioeconomic factors, behind decisions to stay or go. Drawing on new survey data from post-Saddam Baghdad, it confirms the general axiom that violent conflicts cause people to flee. However, the results are inconclusive in terms of the effect of socioeconomic circumstances as a major push or pull factor. Patriotism does not have an impact on migration intentions, and optimism about Iraq’s future does not suffice as a pull factor. Interestingly, people who intend to flee Iraq are better educated, contrary to the general far right media portrayal of refugees.
Highlights
Despite significant efforts to analyse the factors behind forced migration (Schmeidl 1997; Davenport et al 2003; Adhikari 2012), few studies have attempted to explain the intentions to escape conflict zones
We looked at odds ratios of the intention to migrate of both potential refugees and potential internally displaced people based on three models with socioeconomic, political violence and social capital related binary predictors and the intention to migrate as the binary dependent variable
While not all demographic variables play a significant role in the migration decision, the findings in the second and third model for potential refugees support the hypothesis that being permanently employed and having below national average income are significant predictors of the decision to migrate outside Iraq
Summary
Despite significant efforts to analyse the factors behind forced migration (Schmeidl 1997; Davenport et al 2003; Adhikari 2012), few studies have attempted to explain the intentions to escape conflict zones. van Dalen and Henkens (2008) track respondents to an immigration survey in the Netherlands and observe migration intention translating into behaviour; Bertoli and Ruyssen (2018) find a significant association between the annual number of intended migrants (provided by Gallup World Polls) and the actual migration flows to OECD destinations; Tjaden et al (2019) show a strong association between intentions and flows based on data of 160 countries. Our goal is to explore the drivers of those intentions but not to debate their robustness in forecasting actual migration behaviour
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