Political Uprisings and Skilled Migration: An Empirical Analysis of the Arab Spring

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: This study identifies the relationship between the Arab Spring-induced domestic conflict and interest in emigration among a country’s skilled workforce. I measure interest in emigration by the volume of United States Diversity Visa applications from each source country. Using differences in differences regression models, I find that the Arab Spring uprisings and subsequent transition periods motivated positive interest in migration to the United States among the skilled workforces (high school education or more) of several Arab countries. I find no differential effects between states that experienced the most combustive Arab Spring uprisings and those that experienced weaker shocks. This suggests that it was not necessarily the political violence induced by the uprisings that spurred greater interest in emigration. Rather, attitudes concerning the failures of the post-uprising transition processes to address the economic and political challenges that paved the way for the Arab Spring – such as disproportionately high unemployment especially affecting educated populations – are more likely determinants of this increased interest in skilled migration.

Type of resource	text
Date created	May 3, 2018

Author	Mahmoud, Salma
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Department of Economics
Primary advisor	Dupas, Pascaline

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/tv538yf3364

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred Citation: Mahmoud, Salma. (2018). Political Uprisings and Skilled Migration: An Empirical Analysis of the Arab Spring. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/tv538yf3364

Stanford University, Department of Economics, Honors Theses

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