Limited access Past event
Applied Microeconomics Group Seminar The Impact of Violence during the Mexican Revolution on Migration to the United States
Speaker: David Escamillo-Guerrero, University of St Andrews
Abstract: The number of individuals forcibly displaced, for reasons such as conflict and violence, has more than doubled from around forty million in 2011 to nearly ninety million in 2021, and the trend is expected to continue to increase in the coming year. Temporary conflicts might fundamentally shape migration flows depending on the magnitude and persistence of the migration response. In this paper, we examine the migration response to violence during The Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), one the deadliest conflicts in world history: it is estimated that 1.4 million died–about 10% of the population–and another 350,000 fled north across the border. To do so, we collect two novel data sources that are unique in terms of frequency and completeness. First, we collect monthly data on migration flows between 1910 and 1920 from individual border crossings registered at 24 entry points along the US-Mexico border. Second, we digitize daily data on insurgency events from military reports compiled in the “Military History of the Mexican Revolution.” We link these two sources together at the municipality level (roughly equivalent to a county in the United States) and construct a month-by-municipality panel spanning from November 1910 to December 1915.
To examine the impact of violence on migration, we use a fully flexible event-study design that estimates differences in monthly migration rates between units (municipalities) that experienced a violent event and those that had not yet experienced or never experienced violence. We find that violence led to a significant, but temporary, increase in migration: in the first and second month after the event, migration increased by 60% relative to pre-event levels. This finding, however, masks heterogeneity in treatment effects. We find evidence that there were permanent increases in response to the most violent events and that migrant networks facilitated the escape from violence. Specifically, the increase in migration rates is significantly larger for municipalities where historical and recent migrant networks were present. Our main contribution is to more precisely identify the dynamics and timing of the migration response to generalized violence. Most historical studies on forced migration or displaced people examine conflicts characterized by persecution, where the group that is displaced is also persecuted.