Intended versus unintended consequences of migration restriction policies: evidence from a natural experiment in Indonesia

Mattia Makovec, Ririn S Purnamasari, Matteo Sandi and Astrid R Savitri

Journal of Economic Geography, 2018, vol. 18, issue 4, 915-950

Abstract: This article studies the consequences of restrictions to migration at the origin on labor market outcomes and school enrolment in origin communities. Our difference-in-differences specification exploits the differential impact across districts in Indonesia of a reform that restricted the migration of Indonesian female domestic workers towards Saudi Arabia in 2011. Our results suggest that this reform did not lead to higher unemployment in Indonesia, but it increased the proportion of workers employed in informal jobs and in agriculture. No detectable change in the consumption patterns of Indonesian households appears from our analysis, suggesting that rural areas in Indonesia could absorb the sudden increase in the availability of workforce. Our findings also show an increase in junior secondary school enrolment of both males and females, arguably reflecting the importance of the maternal presence in the household for the investment in human capital of children.

Keywords: Labor migration; migration policy; female migrants; migration restrictions; local labor markets; Indonesia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeg/lby029 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Intended versus unintended consequences of migration restriction policies: evidence from a natural experiment in Indonesia (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jecgeo:v:18:y:2018:i:4:p:915-950.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Geography is currently edited by Jorge De la Roca, Stephen Gibbons, Simona Iammarino, Amanda Ross and James Faulconbridge

More articles in Journal of Economic Geography from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().