The Economic Analysis of Cross-Border Migration: A Case Study of Lahore, Pakistan

Abstract

The migrant entrepreneurs’ activities increasingly spread beyond national borders as they travel and move goods between countries. Yet, research still portrays a static and homogeneous picture of the phenomenon, which disregards complex biographies, evolving along multiple places over time, and cross-border activities beyond the origin and destination country. In response, this article uses a time-geographic and biographic approach, which allows for a more dynamic investigation of the different localities involved in migrants’ entrepreneurial projects and the evolution of cross-border resources throughout their history of migration. The presented study is based on quantitative research data collection through the distribution of 186 questionnaires among the educated faculty of the University of Management and Technology, Lahore. Because most research participants have multiple migration experiences and are female, it provides insights into understudied groups within the field. This article concludes that the lack of resource, poverty, and unemployment in Pakistan is the reason for the migration of educated people from Pakistan to abroad. In contrast to the classic literature, it highlights that the cross-border engagement of migrants often exceeds the origin–destination binary. Knowledge of economic and institutional environments, professional and intimate contacts, as well as other competencies that interviewees have developed within different localities and episodes of their mobile biographies, become important resources in this regard. Moreover, the study offers a nuanced view of the constraints experienced and strategies employed by different groups of migrants according to their position in society.