REALM-funded study receives award from the Midwest Political Science Association

Columbia Professor Nikhar Gaikwad and co-authors Kolby Hanson (Dartmouth) and Aliz Toth (Stanford) have received the Midwest Political Science Association’s Robert H. Durr Award for their paper, "Do International Employment Opportunities Impact Individuals' Political Preferences and Behavior?" The Midwest Political Science Association gives the Durr award annually to authors of a paper presented at the prior year's annual conference that best applies quantitative methods to a substantive problem.

The paper—which comes out of the REALM-funded project, “The Consequences of South-South Migration”—addresses the question of how prospects of labor migration affect individuals’ economic policy preferences and political behavior. Partnering with local governmental and non-governmental organizations in Mizoram, India, the investigators conducted a field experiment connecting adults seeking overseas employment with lucrative hospitality-sector jobs in the Persian Gulf region. Prior to migrating abroad, selected individuals became more confident in their future economic prospects. Moreover, the prospect of upward mobility shifted both individuals’ economic policy preferences and their willingness to mobilize to achieve policy change. They became significantly less supportive of state-led redistribution and more active in local electoral politics. The experiment isolates the impact of prospective economic gains from overseas employment opportunities and demonstrates how labor migration can empower individuals belonging to disadvantaged communities in developing countries.