Emigration intentions of Roma: evidence from Central and South-East Europe

Laetitia Duval (1) , François-Charles Wolff (2, 3)

1 Imperial College London
2 INED - Institut national d'études démographiques
3 LEMNA - Laboratoire d'économie et de management de Nantes Atlantique

The Roma constitute the largest, poorest and youngest ethnic minority group in Europe. Over the last few years, they have attracted unprecedented attention with the fear of massive waves of emigrants to Western European countries. Using unique comparative data from 12 Central and SouthEast European countries, we study the pattern and determinants of Roma emigration intentions. We find that plans to go abroad are more frequent among Roma compared to non-Roma, but the ethnic gap in emigration intentions is not explained by the more disadvantaged characteristics of Roma compared to non-Roma. Among the Roma population, potential emigrants are more educated and wealthier on average. Finally, ethnic discrimination is a very influential factor that explains the intentions to emigrate within the Roma population.

Mots clés: Emigration intention; Roma; ethnic discrimination; Central and South-East Europe; Emigration intention

Domaines: Économie et finance quantitative [q-fin]

Laetitia Duval, François-Charles Wolff. Emigration intentions of Roma: evidence from Central and South-East Europe. 2016. ⟨hal-01280578v2⟩