The Long Shadow of Immigration Enforcement: Deportation Consequences in Migrants ́ Countries of Origin

• Applicant: Dr. Christian Ambrosius
• Subject Area: Political Science ; Economic Policy, Applied Economics
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 545682225

The forced return of significant numbers of migrants who are not being granted refugee status or residence permits is common practice in most destination countries. Almost everywhere, current migration debates include calls for scaling up forced returns. However, in spite of its relevance, the effects of deportations on households and communities in migrants´ countries of origin is largely a black box. The Central American country of El Salvador provides ideal conditions to study deportation externalities for a paradigmatic case that bears potentially important lessons for other countries and regions too. The country received more than 315,000 deportees from the US over the period 2000 to 2020, equivalent to almost 5% of its current population stock (US Department of Homeland Security Various Years). To better understand how forced returns affect families and communities at origin, surveys shall be applied to households connected to a close relative who had to return as the result or in anticipation of an order to leave, compared to a carefully matched control group of transnational households unaffected by deportation shocks but with similar average pre-treatment conditions. Households from pre-determined regions with a large inflow of deportees will be selected using a two-stage sampling approach of screening surveys, followed by in-depth questionnaires applied to households filtered into groups of treatment and control. Household surveys will study household responses to deportation shocks along three themes that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries: (1) Households’ coping strategies: How do households manage the economic costs of deportation shocks? How do they affect (re-) migration strategies? (2) Political discontent and demands for government support: Does the failure of exit strategies translate into political pressure and threats to governments? and (3) the reversal of social remittances: Do deportations undermine and reverse the transmission of values, norms and beliefs anchored in destination countries?

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: El Salvador, Spain, USA
• Cooperation Partners: Laura Andrade; Professorin Dr. Covadonga Meseguer; Professorin Andrea Velasquez, Ph.D.