As wages in migrant-sending countries catch up with those in destinations, migrants adjust on several margins, including their duration of stay, the number of migrations they undertake, and the amount saved while abroad. This paper combines Mexican and US data to estimate a dynamic model of consumption, emigration, and remigration, accounting for financial constraints. An increase in Mexican household earnings shortens migration duration but raises the number of trips per migrant. For lower-income migrants, a rise in Mexican wages leads to a more than proportional effect on consumption expenditure in Mexico, arising from repatriated savings.

Many migrations are temporary—a fact that has often been ignored in the economic literature on migration. Such omission may be serious in that expected migration temporariness can impart a distinct dynamic element to immigrants' economic behavior, generating possible consequences for nonmigrants in both home and host countries. In this paper, we provide a thorough examination of the various aspects of temporary migrations that matter for the analysis of economic phenomena. We demonstrate the extent of temporary migrations in population movements. We show how temporariness can affect the various economic choices and how better data have improved both the measurement of nonpermanent migrations and the analyses of various aspects of migrant behavior. We propose a general theoretical framework for modeling temporary migration decisions, based on which we outline the various motives for temporariness while simultaneously reviewing related literature and available data sources. We discuss the possible consequences of migration temporariness for nonmigrants in both home and host countries.

This article develops and estimates a dynamic model where individuals differ in ability and location preference to evaluate the mechanisms that affect the evolution of immigrants’ careers in conjunction with their re-migration plans. Our analysis highlights a novel form of selective return migration where those who plan to stay longer invest more into skill acquisition, with important implications for the assessment of immigrants’ career paths and the estimation of their earnings profiles. Our study also explains the willingness of immigrants to accept jobs at wages that seem unacceptable to natives. Finally, our model provides important insight for the design of migration policies, showing that policies that initially restrict residence or condition residence on achievement shape not only immigrants’ career profiles through their impact on human capital investment but also determine the selection of arrivals and leavers.