In this paper we show that highly skilled undocumented migrants are more likely to return home than migrants with low or no skills when illegality causes skill wasteʺ, i.e. when illegality reduces the rate of return of individual capabilities (i.e. skills and human capital) in both the labor...

In this paper we show that highly skilled undocumented migrants are more likely to return home than migrants with low or no skills when illegality causes quot;skill waste,quot; i.e., when illegality reduces the rate of return of individual capabilities (i.e., skills and human capital) in both...

The existing economic literature focuses on the benefits that return migrants offer to their home country in terms of entrepreneurship, human and financial capital accumulation. However, return migration can have modest or even some detrimental effects if the migration experience was...

In this paper we show that highly skilled illegal migrants may be more likely to return home than migrants with low or no skills when illegality causes "skill waste," i.e. reduced ability of making use of individual capabilities both in the labor and the financial markets. This result is in...