Research
Publications
Trafficking as Choice? Evidence from Nigeria
The discourse on human trafficking often depicts migrants as deceived victims, while alternative accounts view trafficking as a constrained migration strategy. We contribute to this debate using original survey data from two cross-sectional waves (2021 and 2023) covering more than 2700 respondents in Edo State, Nigeria. A substantial share of respondents reports a willingness to migrate via traffickers despite awareness of the risks of forced labor. A list experiment provides suggestive evidence of underreporting of trafficking approval, particularly among women, likely reflecting stigma surrounding sex work. We examine the determinants of trafficking approval through an aspirations–capabilities framework. Willingness to migrate via traffickers is highest among individuals with strong migration aspirations but limited capabilities. In contrast, exposure to anti-trafficking campaigns has little effect. Respondents are generally well-informed about the potential risks and returns associated with trafficking and do not exhibit cognitive biases such as motivated reasoning. Overall, our findings suggest that trafficking is not primarily driven by ignorance, but instead reflects a constrained choice shaped by limited legal migration options and structural barriers.
Guiltily Indebted? How a Word is Linked to Individual Borrowing
Using data from the World Values Survey, we show that individuals who speak a language in which the same word is used for both (financial) debt and (moral) guilt have a statistically significant and economically meaningful lower likelihood of borrowing money. This relationship holds even after controlling for a range of covariates, fixed effects, grammatical future tense reference, and the Germanic language family. Our results suggest that the synonymity of debt and guilt may be a hitherto overlooked aspect in explaining borrowing behaviour.
Disease and Prejudice. Risk Attribution to Ethno-racial Groups over the Course of a Pandemic
Past research suggests that disease outbreaks drive prejudice towards minorities as they increase economic and disease threats. Based on an open-ended survey question distributed to 7,902 German residents over the course of one year of the Covid-19 pandemic (April 2020 to April 2021), we investigate the link between life-threatening events and ethno-racial prejudice. We find that pandemic-related threats only drive respondents’ tendency to scapegoat ethno-racial groups if they hold left and center leaning ideologies. However, for far-right supporters who are the most likely to attribute the spread of Covid-19 to ethno-racial groups, pandemic-related threats do not affect that attribution. We further find that threat theories are of limited relevance for explaining which ethno-racial groups are targeted: respondents held Chinese accountable at the beginning of the pandemic but quickly shifted their attention to immigrants – a salient figure in pre-Covid-19 rightist rhetoric. We show that ideology, more than pandemic-induced threat, continues to drive prejudice and demonstrate the under-utilized advantages of using open-ended survey questions for understanding the dynamics of intergroup prejudice.
Work in Progress
From Colonial Soldiers to Contemporary Migrants: Intergenerational Remittances from Historic Military Migration
During World War II, France conscripted tens of thousands of young men from Senegal and other West African colonies to fight as soldiers, deploying many to Europe. Using original survey data collected in Senegal and among West Africans living in Germany, I study whether exposure to ancestral military service abroad continues to affect migration intentions, plans, and behaviour today. Exploiting the exogenous selection into recruitment via universal conscription, cross-validated with historic local recruitment intensity, I show that descendants of conscripted soldiers exhibit significantly higher emigration aspirations, plans, and behaviour. Importantly, the effect does not operate through persistent gains in education or wealth, but through networks and the intergenerational transmission of values and moral narratives of colonial sacrifice. The results highlight that colonial military recruitment, an early, large-scale episode of enforced transcontinental migration, left a durable imprint on contemporary migration patterns.
Where You Lead I Will Follow: Cultural Differences in Migration Sorting Through Networks
Diasporas shape migrant sorting, but their precise role is unclear. I argue that socially interdependent societies generate more community-specific social capital, increasing migration costs and network value. Analysis of bilateral migration to OECD countries shows a 70 % stronger network effect for migrants from embedded cultures compared to autonomous ones. This heterogeneity is robust to measures of social interdependence with exhaustive fixed effects and is not driven by wealth, cultural distance, mobility restrictions, or feedback from past migration flows. Lower out-group trust in embedded societies emerges as a key channel, with cultural background shaping network effects beyond information and financial flows.