Remittances and Chain Migration: Longitudinal Evidence from Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

Most of the literature on remittances focuses on their implications for the welfare of family members in the country of origin and disregards their role as facilitator of chain migration. We address this issue with the use of longitudinal data from Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the primary exporters of migrants and recipients of remittances in the world. We find that remittances have a significant positive impact on the migration prospects of their recipients. Better-endowed people are most likely to migrate, which highlights a potential negative implication of migration and remittances.     

Whose legitimacy? The EU and Russia in contest for the eastern neighbourhood

The impact of external actors on political change in the European neighbourhood has mostly been examined through the prism of elite empowerment through externally offered incentives. The legitimacy of external policies has received less scrutiny, both with regard to liberal powers promoting democracy and illiberal powers preventing democracy. This article investigates the conflicting notions of legitimate political governance that underpin the contest between the European Union (EU) and Russia in the Eastern neighbourhood. It proposes four mechanisms of external soft influence that take into account the EU’s and Russia’s actorness and the structural power of their norms of political governance, and consider their effects on domestic actors and societal understandings of appropriate forms of political authority. It finally traces the EU’s and Russia’s soft influence on political governance in Ukraine. It maintains that through shaping the domestic understandings of legitimate political authority and reinforcing the domestic political competition, the EU and Russia have both left a durable imprint on Ukraine’s uneven political path.     

Does Access to Formal Finance Matter for Welfare and Inequality? Micro Level Evidence from Nigeria

Using a treatment effects model, decomposition techniques and representative household data from Nigeria, we study the welfare and inequality implications of access to formal finance. While improving household welfare, formal access to finance increases inter-household inequalities, despite ameliorating the inequality enhancing effect of urban residence and enhancing the inequality ameliorating effect of greater educational attainment. The positive effect of access to formal finance on inequality is smaller than the effect of unobserved household characteristics, indicating that welfare and equality enhancing strategies should follow a holistic approach as opposed to one focusing on one isolated policy variable at a time.     

Research on organized crime in Western Europe — 4th research conference “OC research in Western European states” in Wiesbaden

The 4th Research Conference ??OC research in Western European States?? took place in November 2011 in Wiesbaden. The conference was organized by the Bundeskriminalamt and is part of the project ??International Research Network on Organized Crime??, funded by the European Commission in the framework of the ISEC programme. This article provides an insight into the current state of research on organized crime in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.