Policy-Induced Push Migration: Measuring Cross-Border Mobility with Meta Data
Nations often assume that their own internal national migration policies are the primary levers to control migration. Using novel high-frequency digital mobility data from Meta combined with a causal BACI (Before-After-Control-Impact) design, we demonstrate how migration flows into countries that have not changed migration policy can unintentionally be triggered by migration policy reforms in another country. Introducing this policy-induced push migration framework, we test whether host/transit-country rules in Chile (2021) and Turkey (2021–22) generated measurable onward migration movements along the Chile (CL) to United States (US) and Turkey (TR) to Germany (DE) corridors, respectively.
By Wenlan Zhang, Douglas Leasure, Daniel Valdenegro, Xiang Ao, Melinda C. Mills
Policy-induced migration
Host country reforms export pressures along specific corridors rather than suppress overall movement.
Origin-driven push effect
Post-treatment flows vs. synthetic control: CL→US ≈ +240% (~57k); TR→DE ≈ +122% (~54k).
Measures beyond the border
Use digital trace data corridor metrics to coordinate regionally so reforms do not merely shift pressure elsewhere.