🔍 What Was Asked

Most forced migrants are displaced within the Global South. Prior work from the Global North finds migrants gravitate toward liberal policy environments, while conventional wisdom expects de jure policies to matter little in developing countries because enforcement is weak and policy knowledge is low. This study asks whether—and under what conditions—de jure displacement policies shape where forced migrants flee in the developing world.

🧭 How This Was Studied

• Original dataset on de jure displacement policies covering 92 developing countries.
• 126 semi-structured interviews with refugees and policy makers to capture how policy knowledge and social ties operate on the ground.
• Combined cross-country policy data with qualitative evidence to assess associations between legal provisions and migrant flows.

📊 Key Findings

• A robust association exists between more liberal de jure displacement policies and larger forced-migrant inflows across the Global South.
• Attraction to liberal legal environments is conditional: it strengthens when mechanisms that spread policy knowledge exist, especially transnational ethnic kin networks.
• Specific policy domains matter most: provisions for free movement, access to services, and livelihood opportunities are especially attractive to forced migrants.
• These patterns contradict expectations that legal provisions are irrelevant in the developing world solely because of weak enforcement or limited information.

💡 Why It Matters

• De jure policy provisions influence migrant destination choices in developing countries when information about those provisions can diffuse.
• Models of migrant decision making that assume only de facto enforcement or labor markets matter should be revised to include legal entitlements as utilities that migrants evaluate.
• Implications follow for policymakers: designing and publicizing inclusive legal provisions can affect inflows, especially for states connected to transnational kin networks.