Drivers of mixed migration: analysing the determinants and the role of development and security policies in the MENA region with a special focus on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Eritrea and Syria.

Analyses of mixed migration flows suffer from at least two limitations: the first limitation is grouping origins, destinations or both, into homogenous groups. This limits our understanding of the drivers of mixed migration flows, the role of country-specific factors (like development or security policies) and insights into why crises spike in the first place and, in turn, how they fade away. The second limitation refers to endogeneity issues (e.g. selection effects) inherent to studying migration but often inadequately dealt within the migration literature. Our project will overcome these issues through the creation of a novel 3D panel data set where we measure annual bilateral movements for each origin-destination country pair. This helps us to assess the impact of time-varying, policy-related “push” and “pull” factors that are specific to each pair (while controlling for country-pair factors that are constant over time). We will focus on two episodes: the “Balkan” crisis and the current “European Migrant Crisis”. This will be the first project that applies 3D panel data to analyse mixed migration flows. In addition, the project will generate important policy recommendations on the impact of development programs, on policies in destination countries, and on how the current crisis could evolve.