How are natives' attitudes towards migrants affected in times of economic crisis? Natives could show more solidarity towards migrants as everyone faces a common threat, but prejudice against migrants may also increase due to the overall scarcity of economic opportunities. We conduct an online survey of 3,400 Colombian citizens and randomly prime half of them to think about the COVID-19 crisis before eliciting their prosocial behaviors and attitudes towards Venezuelan forced migrants. Our results suggest that natives' attitudes towards migrants are substantially worse in times of economic crisis, however, individuals ages 18 to 25 years respond by showing more altruism. READ MORE >>

Can repatriation inflows impact firm behavior in origin countries? This paper examines this question in the context of repatriation inflows from the United States and Mexico to El Salvador. The paper combines a rich longitudinal data set covering all formal firms in El Salvador with individual-level data on all registered repatriations from 2010 to 2017. The empirical strategy combines variation in the municipality of birth of individuals repatriated over 1995–2002—before a significant change in deportation policies—with annual variation in aggregate inflows of repatriations to El Salvador. The findings show that repatriations have large negative effects on the average wages of formal workers. This is mainly driven by formal firms in sectors that face more intense competition from the informal sector, which deportees are more likely to join. Repatriation inflows also reduce total employment among formal firms in those sectors. Given that most deportees spend less than a month abroad, these findings suggest that the experience of being detained and deported can have strong negative effects not only on the deportees, but also on their receiving communities. READ MORE >>

How can the regularization of approximately half a million migrant's impact crime reports in hosting areas? To identify the effects of this large amnesty, we match confidential administrative data on the location of undocumented migrants with department-monthly data from crime reports and compare crime outcomes in departments that were granted different average time windows to register for the amnesty online, before and after the amnesty roll-out. We document that the regularization caused a reduction of domestic crime and an increment on sexual crime reports. Both results are in line with qualitative evidence suggesting that the regularization empowered migrants to report crimes against them and also improved their mental health. READ MORE >>