Cynthia van der Werf

Over the past decade, Latin America and the Caribbean have experienced a sharp rise in intraregional migration, accompanied by widespread situations of migrants residing without regular status. In response, governments across the region have implemented an unprecedented number of regularization initiatives70 programs comprising 88 phases between 2010 and 2025to expand regular stay, improve access to rights, and reduce administrative and social vulnerability. This monograph provides the first systematic mapping of these regularization efforts, documenting their legal foundations, eligibility criteria, registration mechanisms, and the benefits conferred. It also synthesizes evidence on the labor market and fiscal implications of regularization, addressing one of the most contested dimensions of migration policy: whether granting regular status affects employment outcomes for native-born workers. The findings indicate that regularization can enhance migrants access to formal employment, strengthen institutional capacity, and expand tax and social security contributions, with limited or no adverse effects on native workers. By distinguishing between the decision to regularize and the design of regularization schemes, the analysis offers a structured framework for governments to evaluate when and how regularization can serve as a viable and sustainable migration policy tool in contexts of large-scale mobility and constrained legal pathways.

This paper examines whether language classes raise refugees’ language proficiency and improve their socio-economic integration. Our identification strategy leverages the opening, closing, and gradual expansion of local language training centers in Denmark, as well as the quasi-random assignment of the refugees to locations with varying proximity to a language training center. First, we show that refugees’ distance from the assigned language training center is as good as random conditional on initial placement. Second, we show that a one-hour decrease in commuting time increases the total hours of class attended by 46 to 71 hours. Third, we use this novel identification strategy to show that 100 additional hours of language class increases fluency in the Danish language by 8–9 percent, post-language training human capital acquisition by 11–13 percent and improve the integration of the refugees in the communities where they were initially placed, as measured by the lower exit rates from those same communities and an almost 70 percent reduction in mobility to the largest, most immigrant-dense cities in Denmark.

It is well documented that individuals do not spend the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits smoothly over the month after receipt. Rather, recipients spend a disproportionate share of benefits at the beginning of the benefit month. This has costs for recipients and stores. There is also evidence that other income streams, such as Social Security and paychecks, are not spent smoothly. The presence of these other income streams may bias estimates of the effects of this SNAP cycle on consumption for working SNAP beneficiaries and those who receive other government benefits. We use data from United States Department of Agriculture’s National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey to explore how the SNAP cycle is affected by accounting for these other income streams. We find suggestive evidence that the cycle is more pronounced for workers who are paid on a weekly or monthly basis, but little evidence that cycles in other income streams mitigate or exacerbate the SNAP cycle.

Este informe ofrece el primer levantamiento sistemático de información sobre personas retornadas en Honduras, a partir de una encuesta aplicada a 1.230 individuos entre uno y cuatro meses después de su regreso. Elaborado en conjunto con el Observatorio de Desarrollo Social (ODS), el estudio constituye una línea de base inédita para comprender los perfiles y trayectorias de esta población, así como los desafíos iniciales de su reintegración. La evidencia generada busca orientar políticas públicas nacionales y aportar insumos para estrategias regionales en un contexto de creciente migración de retorno en América Latina y el Caribe.

Over the past decade, migration flows in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have grown significantly, characterized by complex patterns of origin, transit, destination, and return migration. This has deeply impacted families, particularly young children (aged 0 to 5). Parental migration has mixed effects on children left behind: while increased family income can provide benefits, the absence of parents may harm their emotional and cognitive development. For children who migrate, evidence indicates poorer cognitive and socio-emotional development, often due to a lack of stimulation and the stress associated with both the journey and the adjustment process. Children born in destination countries face a mix of opportunities and challenges, such as limited access to healthcare and education, and the stress of living under the threat of deportation. This paper reviews global evidence on the relationship between migration and early childhood, with a specific focus on the LAC region. It highlights the challenges faced by these children and offers policy recommendations tailored to their varied needs. Among the most promising interventions discussed in the literature are family-centered approaches, center-based services, and mental health support for caregiversall aimed at improving the cognitive and socio-emotional development of migrant children.

This document reviews the evidence on the impact of labor market integration of migrants, both for the migrants themselves as well as for their recipient countries. It summarizes indicators of migrants current levels of integration and examines empirical studies from across the LAC region and around the world, identifying common challenges and obstacles to integration, as well as policies that can help to overcome them. The document acknowledges the difficulties countries may face when promoting the labor integration of migrants, goes over some examples of how the IADB supports countries through those challenges, and provides policy recommendations to support the labor market integration of migrants in the region.

Understanding the characteristics of Venezuelan refugees and migrants in the Dominican Republic (DR) is key to informing appropriate policy responses, such as the most recent regularization program (Plan de Normalización de Migrantes Venezolanos). This profile aims to fill a fundamental information gap by providing a detailed review of Venezuelans characteristics to inform a larger project that will assess the impact of the normalization program. It is based on a sample, built using the Respondent Driven Sampling Approach, conducted between December 2021 and January 2022.