Immigrants' location choice in Belgium

This paper analyses migratory streams to Belgian municipalities between 1994-2007. The Belgian population register constitutes a rich and unique database of yearly migrant inflows and stocks broken down by nationality, which allows us to empirically explain the location choice of immigrants at municipality level. Speci cally, we aim at separating the network ef- fect, captured by the number of previous arrivals, from other location-speci c characteristics such as local labor or housing market conditions and the presence of public amenities. We expect labor and housing market variables to opera... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Jayet, Hubert
Rayp, Glenn
Ruyssen, Ilse
Ukrayinchuk, Nadiya
Dokumenttyp: preprint
Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
Verlag/Hrsg.: HAL CCSD
Schlagwörter: Migration / Location choice / Network e ffects / Nested logit / Immigrants / Belgium / [QFIN.PR]Quantitative Finance [q-fin]/Pricing of Securities [q-fin.PR] / [SHS.GESTION]Humanities and Social Sciences/Business administration
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-26981869
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://hal.univ-lille.fr/hal-01006864

This paper analyses migratory streams to Belgian municipalities between 1994-2007. The Belgian population register constitutes a rich and unique database of yearly migrant inflows and stocks broken down by nationality, which allows us to empirically explain the location choice of immigrants at municipality level. Speci cally, we aim at separating the network ef- fect, captured by the number of previous arrivals, from other location-speci c characteristics such as local labor or housing market conditions and the presence of public amenities. We expect labor and housing market variables to operate at diff erent levels and develop a fixed eff ects nested model of location choice in which an immigrant fi rst chooses a broad area, roughly corresponding to a labor market, and subsequently chooses a municipality within this area. We fi nd that the spatial repartition of immigrants in Belgium is determined by both network eff ects and local characteristics. The determinants of local attractiveness vary by nationality, as expected, but for all nationalities, they seem to dominate the impact of network eff ects.