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Social Indicators Research
Published in: Social Indicators Research 3/2016

21-01-2015

Socio-economic Determinants for the Portuguese Immigration: An Empirical Discussion

Author: Paulo Reis Mourao

Published in: Social Indicators Research | Issue 3/2016

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Abstract

This paper explores the determinants of immigration to Portugal. It is the first study to empirically evaluate an extended set of determinants to explain this new phenomenon in Portugal, a highly globalized economy and a 40-year-old democracy. This study finds evidence that the use of Portuguese as the mother tongue and prior Portuguese immigration are the main determinants of current immigration to Portugal from a given country. Depending on which subgroup is considered (refugees, students, or workers), more specific findings also arise. For refugees and foreign workers, human rights violations help explain increased immigration; for foreign students, low per capita income (in the home country) is a significant factor. Dividing the sample into Portuguese speakers and non-Portuguese speakers, we also identified the level of economic development as an important determinant for immigrants from non-lusophone countries. The military situations of the home countries were also important determinants for lusophone immigrants.
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Appendix
Available only for authorised users
Footnotes
1
These data can be checked at the official site of this institution: http://​sefstat.​sef.​pt/​distritos.​aspx.
 
2
According to the CNTSDA, the Weighted Conflict Index is calculated in the following manner: “Multiply the value of the number of Assassinations by 24, General Strikes by 43, Guerrilla Warfare by 46, Government Crises by 48, Purges by 86, Riots by 102, Revolutions by 148, Anti-Government Demonstrations by 200. Sum the 8 weighted values and divide by 9. The result is the value (with decimal) stored as the Weighted Conflict Index.
 
3
According to Mourao (2008), this index has evaluated Religious Freedom around the world for more than 200 territories since 1996. It uses 15 variables (for instance, the number of arrests due to religious causes, number of murders/assassinations due to religious causes, the number of arrests of journalists due to blasphemy, or the number of dismissals due to religious motivations) that have been normalized and studied through the multiway principal components analysis. The index ranges from 0 (full disrespect for religious freedom) to 1 (full respect for religious freedom).
 
4
Check, for instances, several comments on this topic provided by the Portuguese page of Wikipedia for Religious Freedom (http://​pt.​wikipedia.​org/​wiki/​Liberdade_​religiosa) or a comment provided by the religious institution (Kirche in Not): http://​fundacaoais.​wordpress.​com/​2010/​04/​18/​liberdade-religiosa-nos-paises-da-lingua-portuguesa/​.
 
6
We computed the values of the index for the years after 2006 following the original methodology (Mourao 2008).
 
7
For comparative purposes, check the following databases that also provide ‘Religious Freedom Indexes’: http://​www.​cardus.​ca/​policy/​article/​2985/​ or Norris and Inglehart (2011).
 
8
Besides this characteristic, we must also address the colonial tie that historically linked these countries (former Portuguese colonies) to Portugal. After the Carnation Revolution (1974) and the independence of most of these nations (1975), there was an intense flow from these former colonies to Portugal in two significant moments. The first moment (1974–1980) mainly involved Portuguese parents and their children born in these former colonies, primarily motivated by security concerns; the second moment (after 1990) involved citizens from these countries who came to Portugal motivated by the mix of reasons discussed in this work.
 
9
In previous estimations, not detailed here, we have used also other important variables traditionally included in international migration studies, such as unemployment rate differentials, public expenditures on education, geographical distances between the administrative capitals, the Gini index, and the share of the product in the sector of services on GDP. These variables, however, introduced serious problems of endogeneity and multicollinearity in the models, which motivated us not to include them in the final estimations. These final estimations do not suffer from problems of endogeneity or multicollinearity. Full details will be provided upon request.
 
10
Obviously, illegal immigrants and migrants who do not file residence applications are excluded from our sample. For these groups, there is a current and significant scarcity of data.
 
11
Observing the reported values (SEF, available online), we confirmed that the average proportion of immigrants submitting asylum applications was 0.3 % of all Portuguese immigrants; the average proportion of immigrants studying in Portugal was 5.2 % of all Portuguese immigrants; and the average proportion of active immigrants (other immigrants) comprised the remaining 94.5 %.
 
13
Another research technique often used in other social sciences is personal interviewing. This technique is more useful when the sample is relatively small and when the research team intends to focus on particular determinants of the phenomenon being studied (King 2012). In this case, we are more concerned with common determinants that may help explain why individuals choose to migrate to Portugal.
 
14
According to Mourao (2008), higher values of the Religious Freedom index mean that there were not significant cases of offenses to religious freedom in a given country observed in a certain year. Thus, high values of these index are associated with countries that are less likely to generate refugee flows toward Portugal. By a reverse interpretation, countries ranked low on the Religious Freedom Index have been identified by cases with serious offenses to religious freedom, increasing the probability of generating relevant numbers of refugees toward other countries.
 
16
We also computed the estimators suggested by Arulampalam and Stewart (2007) with very similar results. The results from the estimates of the Pooled Probit, the Heckman estimator, and the Orme estimator are available upon request. Prior to the present version of this paper, we also used simple cross-country analysis in different years (2000, 2002 and 2004) and obtained similar results to those shown in Tables 3, 4, and 5; these results are available upon request.
 
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Metadata
Title
Socio-economic Determinants for the Portuguese Immigration: An Empirical Discussion
Author
Paulo Reis Mourao
Publication date
21-01-2015
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Published in
Social Indicators Research / Issue 3/2016
Print ISSN: 0303-8300
Electronic ISSN: 1573-0921
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-015-0860-6

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