1 October 2025, 13:30 CET
Seminar Room 1.204
Sarah Langlotz
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
This paper investigates how civil sea rescue operations affect irregular migration flows to Europe. We study this topic from two complementary perspectives in an integrated observational and experimental research design. First, we examine how the presence of civil sea rescue in vessels in the Central Mediterranean Sea affects departure attempts of migrants from North Africa to Europe. To do this, we combine geo-referenced data on vessel positions based on satellite tracking with information about crossing attempts. Our identification strategy exploits postponements of NGO rescue missions due to port blockades, distant port assignments, and quarantine restrictions as plausibly exogenous shocks in the number of civil sea rescue vessels present close to departure locations in North Africa. We also use event studies that leverage policy-induced displacement of NGO vessels away from North African shores to study the effects of sea rescue on irregular migration behavior. Preliminary findings show that the policy led to a sharp drop in departures from Libya. Second, we analyze how the provision of sea rescue affects the decision-making of potential migrants in origin countries. Using an original online survey experiment in Nigeria, we show that potential migrants have very limited knowledge about migration risks in general and sea rescue activities in particular. Beliefs about the risks of crossing the Mediterranean by exogenously shifting sea rescue perceptions does not affect respondents’ stated intentions to migrate irregularly to Europe.
Thomas Ginn
Center for Global Development
Constraints that inhibit small business growth are potentially amplified for groups with limited access to existing business networks like refugees and women. Programs that facilitate intergroup contact, in addition to capital, could potentially raise welfare, especially if incentives are aligned for participants to share information and invest effort in each other’s outcomes. In a randomized trial with microentrepreneurs, we vary business grants, inclusion in a mentorship group, the gender and nationality composition of groups, and a “shared fate” component that compensates group members for the success of other members’ businesses. We find that grants substantially improve business outcomes for men, women, refugees, and hosts. Combining mentorship with cash has an additional positive effect for refugee men, but a marginally negative effect relative to cash alone for women who run higher-profit firms. Mentors with higher baseline profits significantly improve mentees’ business outcomes, while differences across group gender and nationality compositions are small. The shared fate addition worsens early outcomes in aligned groups but does not affect mixed groups.
Yashodhan Ghorpade
The World Bank
We examine the relationship between violent conflict and the willingness of potential migrants to accept lower skilled work (occupational downgrading). We develop a theoretical model of migration decisions, which we test using an innovative survey module administered to highskilled youth in Myanmar. Consistent with the predictions of the model, we show that insecurity induced by conflict reduces the additional wage premium that individuals would typically demand for taking on lower-skilled work, indicating greater amenability to occupational downgrading. These effects are particularly pronounced for women and disadvantaged groups, such as ethnic minorities, and those with weaker labor market networks or English language skills. The results are driven by respondents from areas under territorial contestation, and those interviewed after the sudden activation of a conscription law during the survey. This further confirms how security considerations may override the preference for skill-appropriate job matching, suggesting that conflict may worsen labor market outcomes and reduce potential gains from migration, especially for women and disadvantaged groups.