The GLO Discussion Paper of the Month in March finds that girls living in localities with return migrants in Mali are less likely to be circumcised. This effect is driven mainly by the returnees from Côte d’Ivoire, suggesting that, in addition to punitive action against those who practice Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) or information campaigns, having lived in an African country where FGM practice is not customary is equally influential. This is evidence for the relevance of social remittances through return migration here by improving social norms.

GLO Discussion Papers are research and policy papers of the GLO Network which are widely circulated to encourage discussion. Provided in cooperation with EconStor, a service of the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, GLO Discussion Papers are among others listed in RePEc (see IDEAS, EconPapers). Complete list of all GLO DPs downloadable for free.

GLO Discussion Paper of the Month: March

GLO Discussion Paper No. 329, 2019.

Female genital mutilation and migration in Mali. Do return migrants transfer social norms? – Download PDF
by Diabate, Idrissa & Mesplé-Somps, Sandrine  

GLO Fellow Sandrine Mesplé-Somps, Paris School of Economics.

Abstract:   In this paper, we investigate the power of migration as a mechanism in the transmission of social norms, taking Mali and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as a case study. Mali has a strong FGM culture and a long-standing history of migration. We use an original household-level database coupled with census data to analyze the extent to which girls living in localities with high rates of return migrants are less prone to FGM. Malians migrate predominantly to other African countries where female circumcision is uncommon (e.g. Côte d’Ivoire) and to countries where FGM is totally banned (France and other developed countries) and where anti-FGM information campaigns frequently target African migrants. Taking a two-step instrumental variable approach to control for the endogeneity of migration and return decisions, we show that return migrants have a negative and significant influence on FGM practices. More precisely, we show that this result is primarily driven by the flow of returnees from Cote d’Ivoire. We also show that adults living in localities with return migrants are more informed about FGM and in favor of legislation. The impact of returnees may occur through several channels, including compositional effects, changes in return migrants’ attitudes toward FGM, and return migrants convincing stayers to change their FGM practices.

GLO Discussion Papers of March 2019

339 Monopsony Power and Guest Worker Programs – Download PDF
by Gibbons, Eric M. & Greenman, Allie & Norlander, Peter & Sørensen, Todd

338 Personality Traits and Performance in Online Labour Markets – Download PDF
by Mourelatos, Evangelos & Giannakopoulos, Nicholas & Tzagarakis, Manolis

337 Out-of-Partnership Births in East and West Germany – Download PDF
by Jirjahn, Uwe & Struewing, Cornelia

336 What Is the Value Added by Using Causal Machine Learning Methods in a Welfare Experiment Evaluation? – Download PDF
by Strittmatter, Anthony

335 Returns to Investment in Education: The Case of Turkey – Download PDF
by Patrinos, Harry Anthony & Psacharopoulos, George & Tansel, Aysit

334 Conflict Exposure and Economic Welfare in Nigeria – Download PDF
by Odozi, John Chiwuzulum & Oyelere, Ruth Uwaifo

333 Assessing the impact of off- and on-the-job training on employment outcomes. A counterfactual evaluation of the PIPOL program – Download PDF
by Pastore, Francesco & Pompili, Marco

332 Maternal Health, Children Education and Women Empowerment: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from India – Download PDF
by Chatterjee, Somdeep & Poddar, Prashant

331 Exchange rate, remittances and expenditure of foreign-born households: evidence from Australia – Download PDF
by Hasan, Syed & Ratna, Nazmun & Shakur, Shamim

330 Walls and Fences: A Journey Through History and Economics – Download PDF
by Vernon, Victoria & Zimmermann, Klaus F.

329 Female genital mutilation and migration in Mali. Do return migrants transfer social norms? – Download PDF
by Diabate, Idrissa & Mesplé-Somps, Sandrine

GLO DP Team
Senior Editors: Matloob Piracha (University of Kent) & GLO; Klaus F. Zimmermann (UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University and Bonn University).
Managing Editor: Magdalena Ulceluse, University of Groningen. DP@glabor.org  

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