Impact of weather factors and socio-political instability on irregular immigration

Oualy Jean Michel Roy

Abstract

*I analyse the impact of weather factors (precipitation and temperature) and socio-political instability on irregular immigration from West Africa to Europe. To do so, I use a dynamic panel model where the dependent variable is the irregular immigration and the main explain variables are the weather variable, socio-political instability variable and lag of irregular immigration. I use the country-quarter fixed effects regressions with robust standard errors because the panel (T=44) is long enough. I carry out the analysis in the short and in the long run. After using weather factors (precipitation and temperature) in the regressions, I use the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) for the robustness checks. I find that precipitation and drought a year before and socio-political instability increased irregular immigration in the short run and more in the long run. Irregular immigration in the previous quarter also increases irregular immigration. Precipitation and irregular immigration are non-linear. Democratisation could be the solution to reduce irregular migration from West Africa to Europe.