아프리카인 해외이주의 사회⋅경제적 결정요인 분석 -기간별 초기 조건이 그 후 5년간의 이주에 미친 영향을 중심으로-

Abstract

Recognizing that the migration flow over a period is greatly affected by the initial conditions that make it possible, this paper tried to analyze the relationship between the initial conditions and the migration flow over the next five years. This kind of method can reflect the reality of migration, especially in case of emigration, which requires considerable decision-making steps and relatively long-term preparation, from the occurrence of the intention of emigration to the actual execution of the migration. This paper used panel data from African countries to analyze the impact of per capita GDP, population and overseas migration stock on overseas migration flows over the next five years. To implement the analysis, we used a fixed effect least squares regression model. The estimates were found to explain about 55% of the variation of migration flow of Africans. According to this analysis, population and overseas migrants stock have small positive and negative effects on overseas migration flows, respectively. On the other hand, per capita GDP has been found to bring about 24 migration increases for every dollar increase. This means that an increase in per capita GDP works significantly to increase overseas migration by strengthen the capacity to raise resources for overseas migration than by forcing Africans to be complacent and give up their overseas migration. These results give us a similar outlook as the Gallup Survey and the analysis of the gravity models. In other words, it is unlikely that African people would stop moving abroad in the near future because socio-economic development, improvement of education, job creation, and improvement of income opportunities of African countries help African people to obtain the resources to migrate. Rather, they are expected to move more in the short and mid-term run. It will still take a long time for the majority of African countries to reach a turning point of a per capita GDP ranging between 7,000 and 13,000 dollars above which emigration becomes less likely. Today, only 11 of the 53 African countries have a per capita GDP above this threshold, and at least three of these are still emigration countries.