Mardi 12 mai 2020 (séance annulée) — Séminaire DYNAMICS

INVITES :
  • Yannay Spitzer (Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem);
  • Sandrine Mesplé-Somps (IRD/​DIAL) et Björn Nilsson (Univ. Paris-Sud).
HORAIRES ET LIEU :
  • 16:30–19:00
  • PSE, 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris, Salle R1-09
RESUMES :

Yannay Spitzer (Hebrew Univer­sity of Jerusalem)
Like an Ink Blot on Paper : Testing the Diffu­sion Hypo­thesis of Mass Migra­tion, Italy 1876–1920 (travail conjoint avec Ariell Zimran)

Despite greater incen­tives for migra­tion due to lower real wages, coun­tries in southern and eastern Europe, such as Italy, were late­co­mers to the Age of Mass Migra­tion rela­tive to weal­thier western coun­tries such as Germany and Britain—a pheno­menon called the delayed migra­tion puzzle. We test the diffu­sion hypo­thesis, which argues that mass migra­tion from the poorer coun­tries was delayed until it was trig­gered by expo­sure to geogra­phi­cally expan­ding networks of indi­vi­duals with social links to previous migrants. Focu­sing on post-unifi­ca­tion Italy, we construct a compre­hen­sive annual commune-level panel of emigra­tion over four decades. First, we develop a new set of stylized facts on the Italian emigra­tion that are consistent with the four main predic­tions of the diffu­sion hypo­thesis. Most impor­tantly, we find that Italian mass migra­tion to North America began in a few sepa­rate “epicen­ters » and expanded from there in an orderly pattern of spatial expan­sion over time. We then show that this pattern was the product of a mecha­nism in which a commu­ne’s emigra­tion rate was affected by emigra­tion from its neighbors—the funda­mental buil­ding block of the diffu­sion hypo­thesis. These findings contri­bute to an impor­tant revi­sion to the economic history of the Age of Mass Migra­tion and advance the lite­ra­ture on the causes of mass migra­tion more generally.

Sandrine Mesplé-Somps (IRD/​DIAL) et Björn Nilsson (Univer­sité Paris-Sud)
Role models and migra­tion inten­tions, an expe­riment in Kita, Mali

Role models—those indi­vi­duals which resemble us but have achieved more than us— are thought to impact both our aspi­ra­tions and the degree to which such aspi­ra­tions are met. On the other hand, inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tions such as the Inter­na­tional Orga­ni­za­tion for Migra­tion (IOM) and the Euro­pean Commis­sion, as well as indi­vi­dual reci­pient coun­tries, have for years attempted to influence the percep­tions of migra­tion in Sub-Saharan Africa by infor­ma­tion campaigns. Whatever the objec­tives of said campaigns, their proli­fe­ra­tion suggests that evidence-based studies of what deter­mines the inten­tions to migrate are urgently needed. In this paper, we study the impact of role models on inten­tions to migrate, by conduc­ting a rando­mized control trial in rural areas of Kita district (Kayes region, Mali). Speci­fi­cally, we show docu­men­ta­ries in rural villages of Mali. The docu­men­ta­ries portray indi­vi­duals of the same sex, age group and geogra­phical origin as our study popu­la­tion, and were filmed by a Malian anthro­po­lo­gist specia­li­sing in visual commu­ni­ca­tion. Our aim is to test if such educa­tional enter­tain­ment changes people’s aspi­ra­tion to migrate by getting people to change their unders­tan­ding of facts and their vision of their own life.