What do we know about the impact of social protection programmes on the decision to migrate?
Dr Jessica Hagen-Zanker, ODI
Migration and social protection are tightly linked issues in many ways. The first part of this presentation will discuss the theoretical links, interesting questions and empirical evidence around these issues. The second part will focus on one question in more detail and will present the state of the evidence on the impact of social protection coverage on migration flows. The recent literature review by Hagen-Zanker & Leon (2013) shows that access to social protection can affect the propensity to migrate in a number of ways, with half of the studies showing that migration increased and the other half showing that migration decreased. The relationship is clearly not linear and the presentation will finish by discussing future research.
About the speaker
Dr. Jessica Hagen-Zanker is Research Officer of Social Protection at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in the UK. Her research interests revolve around quantitative analysis of Social Protection, in particular social protection and migration, financing social protection and impact evaluation. Jessica work has been published, including on the Journal of Development Effectiveness, Development Policy Review and Eastern European Economics. Jessica’s previous PhD work at the MGSoG focused on the analysis of causes and effects of migration on migrant-sending households in countries of origin, with a particular focus on Albania and Moldova. Since completing her PhD Jessica has been working on the links between migration and social protection. Jessica has also worked on a number of systematic reviews, including one for DFID about the benefits of work guarantee schemes compared with cash transfers and recently co-authored a briefing paper on making systematic reviews work for development and developing a systematic review ‘lite’ methodology. Jessica’s work on impact evaluation includes a project on the effectiveness and relevance of social protection in tackling social exclusion and promoting social inclusion in Asia, amongst others. For more see: http://www.odi.org.uk/about/staff/635-jessica-hagen-zanker
Venue: Conference Room
Date: 10 October 2013
Time: 12:30 - 13:30 CEST
