Testing Threshold Criteria for Return Migration: A Survey with Forcibly Displaced Venezuelans

Standard economic models treat migration as a human-capital investment driven mainly by economic returns. Migration under forced displacement is a different decision problem, often governed by whether conditions in the home country cross a minimum threshold of improvement rather than by compensatory tradeoffs across attributes. This project develops and tests a threshold model of return migration, combining classic migration theory with behavioral heuristics of threshold decision-making. Building on qualitative fieldwork with Venezuelan refugees in Colombia, it fields a conjoint survey in which respondents evaluate hypothetical country-condition profiles that vary across political, economic, and social features. The survey measures individual-level thresholds, formalizes a threshold migration framework in the context of the Roy model, and estimates the elasticity of return. The study is pre-registered, with data collection ongoing.

Keywords: return migration; forced displacement; threshold decision-making; lexicographic preferences; conjoint survey experiment; Venezuelan refugees; Colombia; Roy model; elasticity of return.