AID AS AN EMIGRATION MITIGATION STRATEGY? An analysis of official developmental assistance’s impact on the emigration rates of aid receiving countries

Abstract: In the face of increasing pressure to slow immigration, policymakers in the United States and Europe have increasingly turned to the use of official developmental assistance (ODA) in an attempt to mitigate emigration from lesser developed countries. This strategy attempts to address the root causes of underdevelopment assumed to be motivating emigration and are billed as a more humane method of deterring immigration, standing in juxtaposition to border enforcement mechanisms. While the existing literature examines the relationship between ODA reception and migration via changes in economic indicators, I construct a theoretical framework in which ODA reception impacts migratory patterns via a mediating effect on country development. While previous quantitative analyses concerning ODA’s impact on emigration patterns have returned mixed results, the scope of these research endeavors have been limited to analyses of immigration solely to OECD countries. Making use of the 2020 International Migrant Stock dataset published by the United Nations Population Division, I conduct a quantitative analysis examining how total ODA and sector specific ODA reception impacts the total emigration rates of all countries that received ODA from 1990-2019, considering immigration to all destination countries. I find that reception of net ODA has a positive impact on the emigration rates of underdeveloped aid receiving states and a negative impact on the emigration rates of comparatively more developed countries. When disaggregated into subsectors, governance ODA, social ODA, and economic ODA have mixed impacts on emigration rates at different levels of country development.