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We exploit a unique event in human history, the exodus of the Vietnamese Boat People to the US, to provide evidence for the causal pro-trade effect of migrants. This episode represents an ideal natural experiment as the large immigration shock, the first wave of which comprised refugees exogenously allocated across the US, occurred over a 20-year period during which time the US imposed a complete trade embargo on Vietnam. Following the lifting of trade restrictions in 1994, US exports to Vietnam grew most in US states with larger Vietnamese populations, themselves the result of larger refugee inflows 20 years earlier.

Do negative shocks in origin countries encourage or inhibit international migration? What roles do networks play in modifying out-migration responses? The answers to these questions are not theoretically obvious, and past empirical findings are equivocal. We examine the impact of hurricanes on a quarter century of international migration to the United States. Hurricanes increase migration to the United States, with the effect’s magnitude increasing in the size of prior migrant stocks. We provide new insights into how networks facilitate legal, permanent US immigration in response to origin country shocks, a matter of growing importance as climate change increases natural disaster impacts.

This paper studies how birth town migration networks affected long-run location decisions during historical US migration episodes. We develop a new method to estimate the strength of migration networks for each receiving and sending location. Our estimates imply that when one randomly chosen African American moved from a Southern birth town to a destination county, then 1.9 additional Black migrants made the same move on average. For White migrants from the Great Plains, the average is only 0.4. Networks were particularly important in connecting Black migrants with attractive employment opportunities and played a larger role in less costly moves.

New Chinese migration is a recent development that has just entered an initial phase. An overarching theme and conclusion across the sixteen chapters in this volume is that China's policy towards Chinese migrants has changed from period to period, and it is still too early for us to determine if Beijing will continue to pursue the policy of luoye guigen (return to original roots) or will revert to one of luodi shenggen (sink into local roots). The various chapters also show that the profile, motivations and outlooks of xin yimin (new Chinese migrants) have become more diverse, while local reactions to these new migrants have become less accommodating with increasing nationalism.

This book powerfully demonstrates that some of the most resourceful entrepreneurs in the South African informal economy are migrants and refugees. Yet far from being lauded, they take their life into their hands when they trade on South Africa's 'mean streets'. The book draws attention to what they bring to their adopted country through research into previously unexamined areas of migrant entrepreneurship. Ranging from studies of how migrants have created agglomeration economies in Jeppe and Ivory Park in Johannesburg, to guanxi networks of Chinese entrepreneurs, to competition and cooperation among Somali shop owners, to cross-border informal traders, to the informal transport operators between South Africa and Zimbabwe, the chapters in this book reveal the positive economic contributions of migrants. these include generating employment, paying rents, providing cheaper goods to poor consumers, and supporting formal sector wholesalers and retailers. As well, Mean Streets highlights the xenophobic responses to migrant and refugee entrepreneurs and the challenges they face in running a successful business on the streets.

This paper investigates how the size of co-ethnic networks at arrival affected the economic success of immigrants in Germany. Applying panel analysis with a large set of fixed effects and controls, we isolate the association between initial network size and long-run immigrant outcomes. Focusing on refugees - assigned to an initial location independently of their choice - allows a causal interpretation of the estimated coefficient. We find that immigrants initially located in places with larger co-ethnic networks are more likely to be employed at first, but have a lower probability of investing in human capital. In the long run they are more likely to be mis-matched in their job and to earn a lower wage.