SERM: Socioeconomic Effects of Return Migration: Evidence from a large shock

SERM项目旨在使用经济学和机器学习中最先进的方法来识别和量化返回移民的短期和长期影响。我们依靠一个巨大的，意想不到的，独特的历史冲击，详细的微观层面的人口普查，行政数据和数字化来源进行分析，揭示了一系列的社会经济结果和本地人和返回移民之间的行为边缘。1974年，在结束西欧最长的独裁统治和持续十多年的殖民战争的军事政变之后，葡萄牙承认其前非洲殖民地的自决权。这些领土不久爆发的内战迫使近50万生活在非洲的葡萄牙人返回当时只有900多万居民的国家，虽然被遣返者是被迫返回，但他们在葡萄牙领土上的位置可能是由观察到的和未观察到的因素决定的。我们将采用几种计量经济学方法来处理这些问题，审查公共财政压力增加的程度以及政府旨在吸收人口冲击的政策的效力。这些政策包括为遣返者提供住房和提供福利金。更具体地说，我们将利用遣返的城市部分，以了解冲击的政治和经济影响。此外，我们还将确定文化和社会态度（包括性别规范）是否以及如何因如此大规模的人口流动而发生变化。最后，我们将利用文本分析方法的最新进展，从数字化报纸中提取关于归国人员和当地人情绪演变的数据。SERM将有助于借鉴如何制定政府政策和管理其他环境中的移民过程。

SERM project aims at identifying and quantifying the short and the long-term effects of return migration using state of the art methods in Economics and Machine Learning. We rely on a large, unexpected, and unique historical shock, analysed with detailed micro-level census, administrative data, and digitized sources, to shed light on a series of socioeconomic outcomes and margins of behaviour among natives and return migrants. In 1974, following a military coup that put an end to Western Europe's longest dictatorship and to a Colonial War that lasted more than a decade, Portugal recognized the right to self-determination of its former African colonies. The civil wars that soon erupted in these territories induced close to half a million ethnic Portuguese living in Africa to return to a country that had, at the time, little more than 9 million inhabitants.Whereas repatriates were forced to return, their location in the Portuguese territory may be driven by observed and unobserved factors. We will employ several econometric techniques to deal with these concerns, examining the magnitude of the increased pressure on public finance as well as the efficacy of Government policies aimed at absorbing the population shock. These policies included securing housing for the repatriates and providing welfare payments. More specifically, we will exploit the municipal fraction of repatriates to understand the political and economic effects of the shock. In addition, we will identify if and how cultural and social attitudes (including gender norms) change as result of such large population movements. Finally, we will take advantage of the recent advances in text analysis approaches to extract data from digitized newspapers on the evolution of sentiments of both repatriates and natives.SERM will contribute to draw lessons on how to develop government policy and manage the immigration process in other settings.