[PRELIMINARY DRAFT, COMMENTS WELCOME]

Abstract: Bilateral flows of international migrants exhibit tremendous variance both across destination countries and over time. Studies of international migration tend to (a) focus on economic determinants such as income differentials and (b) utilize data from a single destination country. We argue that migration is driven not solely by economic determinants; rather, the political environment across destinations plays a substantively large role in influencing bilateral migration flows. We test the importance of the political environment—citizenship rights and the prominence of right wing parties— using 27-year span of migration flows from 178 origin into 18 destination countries. And we find, even after controlling for a variety of economic, social, policy and international variables, that variation in political rights across time and destination plays a key role in observed patterns of international migration. History abounds with stories and images of migration. Consider the following: Moses and the Israelites journey from Egypt to the Promised Land; the Celts leave Central Europe and settle in Gaul; the Pilgrims sail from England to the New World; Italians, Irish and Eastern European travel through Ellis Island in the late 19th century; and the residents of East Germany move west when the Berlin Wall comes down. While these images differ historically, socially, politically, economically and geographically, they all illustrate the important role that migration—the act of leaving one’s native land to settle elsewhere