LSE Economic History undergraduate Eric DeVries studied the migration of people from Suriname to the Netherlands in the 1970s to better understand what motivates the decision to migrate. Between 1970 and 1976, tens of thousands of Surinamese people migrated from Suriname to the Netherlands. The influx of Surinamese migrants significantly impacted the Netherlands’s demographic composition, inaugurating a cultural shift towards multiculturalism. And the migration depressed Suriname’s population, posing a challenge to economic development as a young, independent nation. Yet why the migration happened in the first replace is relatively little studied. In this case, political institutions might have mattered more than global economic conditions.
The migration of tens of thousands of Surinamese people to the Netherlands offers an interesting case study of incentives to migrate. The migration occurred between two significant and concurrent events: Suriname’s independence from the Netherlands in 1975 and the global Oil Crisis of 1973. Suriname announced its intention to declare its independence in February 1974. It would become independent in November 1975. Meanwhile, from October 1973 the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) enforced an oil embargo against the Netherlands, Canada, UK, US, Japan, and, later, South Africa, Rhodesia, and Portugal because of Western support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War of 1973. The embargo ended in March 1974. Higher oil prices induced cost-push inflation (the increase of prices due to increasing costs of raw materials and wages), and the ensuing rise in unemployment induced a prolonged stagflationary period through the rest of the decade.
Why, then, did the Surinamese migrate when they did? How did the Oil Crisis of 1973 affect the migration of Surinamese to the Netherlands?
According to the economics literature on migration, migrants from Suriname should have been disincentivized to migrate by the uncertain and recessionary economic environment of the Netherlands. In this case, however, political institutions might have mattered more than global economic conditions. For the Dutch-speaking Surinamese the Netherlands was an ideal entry point to greater education and employment prospects. Once Suriname became independent, that door would close, and migration costs would increase. Hence the exodus from Suriname was so pronounced just before independence, as we can see in the chart below (independence marked by the dashed line).
To determine the effects of global economic conditions on the migration, I analyse the relationship between global oil prices and migration from Suriname to the Netherlands.
As a proxy for contemporary economic conditions, I use the World Bank’s ‘Monthly Crude Oil Prices ($/Barrel).’ The context of the Oil Crisis meant that oil prices increased drastically, a cause of global inflation and consequent economic downturn.
For statistics on migration to the Netherlands, I use the Maandschrift (Monthly Reviews) between 1970-1976 published by the CBS (Central Bureau of Statistics of the Netherlands). The monthly publications include various statistical data spanning the economy and society of the Netherlands. Suriname-specific monthly migration statistics, based on departure region, age group, and gender distribution were documented. The validity of the source, as government collected data, positions it as an unrivalled source for this research. However, these records do carry some limitations. Surinamese migration statistics were conjoined with data from the Netherlands Antilles prior to 1973. This is accounted for in the analysis with backwards extrapolation, constructing realistic estimates for the long-run trend.
The time series is narrowed to the historically relevant period of economic impact, between October 1973 (the start of the Oil Crisis) and November 1975, when independence commenced. A dummy variable for independence has been implemented to account for the effect of independence. Both the independence dummy and oil prices have been lagged by two months, accounting for information delays.
Through using this specific pool of 26 monthly observations, I calculate only a slight negative relationship between global oil prices and migration from Suriname. This coefficient, however, is statistically insignificant in the model. The economic effect, using oil prices as a proxy, on migration is low. The migration impact is miniscule in comparison to the average monthly rates of one to seven thousand migrants over the middle years of the decade.
The dummy for independence, however, yielded a large and statistically significant coefficient, portraying the overwhelming effect of the independence announcement, compared to the rising oil prices.
The regression results indicate that global oil prices might have slightly suppressed migration. The migration trend can be explained as initial uncertainty in both the independence impacts and upcoming economic conditions. This was followed by urgency in making a decision by the independence deadline, resulting in a large spike of migration.
Concretely quantifying the effect of independence and isolating the economic considerations remains a challenge. Why migrants to choose to migrate could be further explored through analysing and comparing other cases of migration from colonies approaching independence, and how economic conditions weighed on migration decisions.
