SOUTH–NORTH REFUGEE MIGRATION 99 © Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1997 © Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1997, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. Review of Development Economics 1(1), 99–115, 1997 South–North Refugee Migration: Lessons for Development Cooperation Ralph Rotte, Michael Vogler, and Klaus F. Zimmermann* Abstract Migration has become a major concern of European development policies. By improving socio-economic and political conditions through development cooperation, a reduction of South–North migration flows is envisaged. This new approach is examined by analyzing the causes of asylum migration from developing countries to Germany. The econometric findings suggest that support of democracy, economic development and trade will not reduce migration, at least not in the medium-run. However, restrictive legal measures work. Migration control by international development cooperation therefore seems to need a long-term perspective. 1. Introduction During the Cold War, European development policies were mainly characterized by humanitarian and strategic objectives, and were basically targeted at securing raw materials and resources, and containing communist influence in less developed coun- tries (LDCs) (Nigoul and Torelli, 1984). Since the end of the 1980s, however, and especially after the demise of the Soviet Union, international migration has become a major concern of European governments. The large increase in the number of asylum seekers from all regions of the world was perceived by the public as an abuse of asylum rights by economic migrants. The policy response to the growing influx of immigrants from the South was two- fold. First, there were attempts to reduce immigration by legal means, tightening asylum laws and cracking down on illegal migrants. Second, the migration issue led to a reorientation of development policies towards a broader perspective of development, including economic, social and political elements. This switch of strategy is laid down in the Maastricht Treaty on European Union of 1992. It is binding for the European institutions as well as for national governments that still provide about 85% of all European public development aid. By enhancing socio-economic conditions in the developing countries through development cooperation, the European Union (EU) member states aim at reducing South–North migration flows. The success of any such political strategy depends on the validity of certain assump- tions about the actual causes of emigration from LDCs. In this paper, we examine how socio-economic and political factors drive migration from the less developed world to Europe. Since there is no legal channel for economic migrants to enter into Europe, we see asylum migration as a proxy of the migration pressure in general. This view is supported by the fact that only a small fraction of refugees are actually granted asylum status. Since most refugees in western Europe have entered Germany (more than 50% in the last decade) our econometric analysis relies on immigration from the LDCs into * Rotte: University of Munich, 80539 Munich, Germany, and Institute for International Relations, Univer- sity of the Federal Armed Forces, Munich. Tel: 49-89-2180-3460, Email: Ralph.Rotte@selapo.vwl.uni- muenchen.de. Vogler: University of Munich, 80539 Munich, Germany. Tel: 49-89-2180-2891, Email: Michael.Vogler@selapo.vwl.uni-muenchen.de. Zimmermann: University of Munich, 80539 Munich, Ger- many, and CEPR, London. Tel: 49-89-2180-2126, Email: Zimmermann@selapo.vwl.uni-muenchen.de.