Eliciting Illegal Migration Rates through List Randomization
Most migration surveys do not ask about the legal status of migrants due to concerns about the sensitivity of this question. List randomization is a technique that has been used in a number of other social science applications to elicit sensitive i...
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2013
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/04/17644585/eliciting-illegal-migration-rates-through-list-randomization http://hdl.handle.net/10986/15557 |
| Summary: | Most migration surveys do not ask about
the legal status of migrants due to concerns about the
sensitivity of this question. List randomization is a
technique that has been used in a number of other social
science applications to elicit sensitive information. This
paper trials this technique by adding it to surveys
conducted in Ethiopia, Mexico, Morocco, and the Philippines.
It shows how, in principal, this can be used both to give an
estimate of the overall rate of illegal migration in the
population being surveyed, as well as to determine illegal
migration rates for subgroups such as more or less educated
households. The results suggest that there is some useful
information in this method: higher rates of illegal
migration in countries where illegal migration is thought to
be more prevalent and households who say they have a migrant
are more likely to report having an illegal migrant.
Nevertheless, some of the other findings also suggest some
possible inconsistencies or noise in the conclusions
obtained using this method. The authors suggest directions
for future attempts to implement this approach in migration surveys. |
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