LAUSR

Are international migration flows racially biased? Despite widespread consensus that racism and xenophobia affect migration processes, no measure exists to provide systematic evidence on this score. In this research note, I construct such a measure—the migration deviation. Migration deviations are the difference between the observed migration between states, and the flow that we would predict based on a racially blind model that includes a wide variety of political and economic factors. Using this measure, I conduct a descriptive analysis and provide evidence that migrants from majority black states migrate far less than we would expect under a racially blind model. These results pave a new way for scholars to study international racial inequality.