Abstract
The importance of repeat and circular migration starts receiving rising recognition. The paper studies this behavior by analyzing the number of exits and the total number of years away from the host country using count data models and panel data from the German guestworker experience. Beyond the myth, more than 60% of migrants in the sample from the guestworker countries living in Germany are indeed repeat or circular migrants. Migrants from European Union member countries, those not owning a dwelling in Germany, the younger and the older (excluding the middle-aged), are significantly more likely to engage in repeat migration and to stay out for longer. Males and those migrants with German passports exit more frequently, while those with higher education exit less; there are no differences with time spent out. Migrants with family in the home country remain out longer, and those closely attached to the labor market remain less; they are not leaving the country more frequently.
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Notes
The European guestworker model refers to the temporary recruitment of workers who are needed to alleviate labor shortages in the host country. While the German model was not enforcing return migration, the Swiss model, in fact, was designed to follow the “rotationsprinzip” or rotation principle, where temporary migrants were replaced after some time. Both systems are different from a circular labor migration scheme where workers freely move: workers are hired by the host country’s employers as needed, they return back to their origin countries when they are not needed and come back to the host country again in the future if there is excess demand of labor that cannot be satisfied by the native population.
Rendtel (2002) shows that the attrition rate is 5.6%.
While these three countries are part of the original five guestworker sending countries, they have joined the EU in 1958, 1981 and 1986 respectively.
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Acknowledgements
Financial support from Volkswagen Foundation for the IZA project on “The Economics and Persistence of Migrant Ethnicity” is gratefully acknowledged. We wish to thank the IZA-Volkswagen Ethnicity Research Team, and Adam Lederer, Rainer Winkelmann, a referee and the editor for encouragements and helpful comments and suggestions. The GSOEP data used in this study are available upon request from the German Socio-Economic Panel at DIW Berlin (www.diw.de/gsoep).
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Constant, A.F., Zimmermann, K.F. Circular and Repeat Migration: Counts of Exits and Years Away from the Host Country. Popul Res Policy Rev 30, 495–515 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-010-9198-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-010-9198-6