The factors of investment at home among African migrants: a comparative event-history analysis on Senegalese and Congolese migration

Cris Beauchemin, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Cora Mezger, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Fofo Ametepe, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

The objective of this paper is to study the investments of Senegalese and Congolese migrants at home, as a way to better understand under what circumstances international migrants can contribute to the development of their origin country. Our analyses firstly describe investment patterns of African migrants bringing quantitative answers to the following questions: To what extent do African migrants invest in their home country? Do they invest in their home village/town or in cities? In what domain do they invest (land, housing or business)? And, when do they invest? Secondly, multivariate and longitudinal analyses (discrete time models) allow to studying the determinants of investment during the life course. The quantitative data for this study comes from the international MAFE-Project (Migration between Africa and Europe). It mainly consists in life histories collected both in origin (Senegal and Congo) and European destination countries (France, Spain, Italy, UK, Belgium).