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Abstract
The current economic crisis in Europe is negatively affecting the working and living conditions of migrants and might change the lives and migration aspirations of non-migrants in regions of origin. In times of recession, previously involuntary non-migrants [Carling, J. 2002. “Migration in the Age of Involuntary Immobility: Theoretical Reflections and Cape Verdean Experiences.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 28 (1): 5–42] may become voluntary non-migrants when they start considering immobility as a better alternative to migrating to Europe under uncertain working and living conditions. This paper investigates to what extent perceptions of the economic crisis and the changing opportunities for migrants in Europe might change migration aspirations of non-migrants in Morocco. It draws on the results of a survey of 2000 non-migrants and of 80 in-depth interviews collected in 2010 and 2011 in 4 Moroccan regions for the EUMAGINE project. This case study also provides an opportunity to analyse, from the perspective of the sending regions, how ideas and information about migration can have different direct and indirect effects in various regions depending on people's micro- and macro-level circumstances – in other words, according to people's living conditions and capabilities and the migration history and opportunities available to them locally and abroad. Beyond explaining the process of these migration feedback loops, the paper points out that besides migration-facilitating and migration-undermining effects, feedback mechanisms can also have a self-correcting effect on migration aspirations.
Acknowledgements
The information and views set out in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Communities. Neither the European Communities' institutions and bodies nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The data set used for this analysis is the EUMAGINE Individual questionnaire with reference ‘STUM 20120628 – incl hh and mgcount’.
2. The dependent variables are dummies coded 1 if the respondent considered that life is good or very good, and 0 if they considered that life is bad, very bad or neither good nor bad. The use of logistic regressions instead of OLS is based on the observation of significant non-linear relationships between dependent and independent variables in some research areas.
3. The dependent dummy variable accounts for a survey question asking for migration aspirations ‘if somebody gave [the respondent] the necessary papers for going to live or work in Europe’, coded 1 if the respondents answered ‘go to Europe’.
4. The survey question asking to what extent respondents agreed with the statement ‘People from Morocco who live in Europe are treated badly’ can be used to measure the perceived non-economic outcomes of Moroccan migrants in Europe. Similarly, respondents’ opinions on the statement ‘Most people from Morocco who go to live or work in Europe become rich’ can be used to measure their perceptions of the economic outcomes of migration. In both questions, respondents were asked on a scale from 1 to 5 whether they strongly agreed, agreed, neither agreed nor disagreed, disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statements. For the analysis in this paper, the scale measuring the economic outcomes was reversed. Therefore, for economic and non-economic outcomes, the higher the score, the more positive the view of migrants’ life in Europe.
5. To measure the positive value of migration beyond its economic aspects, I created four dummies based on survey questions asking how strongly respondents agreed with the ideas that going to live or work in Europe can be a good experience for women and for men, that most Moroccan people become rich there and that they gain valuable skills. A Cronbach's alpha test provides evidence that the items measure an underlying construct with a scale reliability coefficient of 0.66. The dummies are coded 1 when the respondent agreed or strongly agreed with the statements. I subsequently created a new variable coded from 0 to 4 according to the sum of scores of the four dummies.