Destination Choices among Senegalese Migrants in Europe. The Role of Immigration and Labor Market Policies

Amparo Gonzalez-Ferrer, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Pau Baizán, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

The main goal of this paper is to analyze the role of labor market and immigration policies in shaping migrants’ destination choices, after controlling for other determinants of migration at the individual and household level. The MAFE-Senegal dataset we use in this paper is particularly well-suited to address this issue, since it collects retrospective life-course information from Senegalese (both migrants and non-migrants), along with their households, living in Senegal and three destination countries: France, Italy and Spain. Our three destinations offer a variegated scenario concerning both their approach to manage immigration (type, efficacy and timing of policy measures) and the structure of their labor markets. After collecting detailed information on the extent and frequency of regularizations, changes in family reunification policies, the annual number of expulsions, etc., we will try to find out whether differences along these dimensions provide us with a better understanding of the migrants' destination choices.