13:15 - 15:30
Thursday-Panel
Chair/s:
Ilona Erzsebet Lahdelma
Discussant/s:
Moritz Marbach
Meeting Room J

Denis Cohen, Sergi Pardos-Prado
Regional labor markets and the politics of resentment

Samuel Schmid
Open borders versus inclusive membership? Explaining the association between immigration and citizenship regimes

Eman Abboud
The Exit Option: an analysis of how ethnopolitical exclusion motivates emigration desires from sub-Saharan Africa

Théoda Woeffray
Implementation Leeway in the Dublin System: How Efficiency Considerations Influence Dublin Procedures in Switzerland

Ilona Lahdelma, Spyros Kosmidis
Does learning about the economic benefits of immigration update people's policy preferences?
The Exit Option: an analysis of how ethnopolitical exclusion motivates emigration desires from sub-Saharan Africa
Eman Abboud
Dublin University, Trinity College Dublin

What are the political drivers of migration from sub-Saharan Africa and what role does ethnopolitical exclusion play in shaping migration decisions? Commonly cited explanations of voluntary migration focus on economic conditions in the home country as push-factors, whereby individuals emigrate in search of economic opportunity (Borjas, 2016). However, despite decreasing levels of poverty since the 1990s (Fosu, 2014), sub-Saharan Africa has some of the fastest growing levels of voluntary emigration (AfCSS, 2017). Thus, conventional explanations cannot sufficiently explain existing patterns of migration. Ethnicity is the main political and social cleavage in nearly all African states and creates limitations to opportunity because resources and job opportunities are patrimonially distributed. This paper explores the relationship between ethnopolitical exclusion and emigration desires by first testing the direct relationship and then by employing a causal mediation analysis to test how grievance participates as a mediator in the relationship. To test this, I use Afrobarometer Round 7 data and Harkness (2019)’s Ethnic Stacking database. The results show that there is no statistically significant relationship between ethnopolitical exclusion and emigration desire; however, there is a positive and statistically significant causal mediation effect when accounting for the role of grievance. The results indicate that grievance fully mediates the relationship between ethnopolitical exclusion and emigration desires, suggesting ethnopolitical exclusion may invoke emigration desires when accounting for the role of grievance.