Corruption as a Driver of Migration Aspirations: the Case of Ukraine

This paper explores the corruptionmigration aspirations nexus in Ukraine. The article demonstrates that corruption continues to pervade all levels of Ukraine's political and socio-economic system, and provides evidence from the findings of EUMAGINE project. The study reveals robust evidence that apart from the traditional migration driver -income differentials between source and destination countries -corruption is also a driver of migration aspirations. In summary, our analysis draws attention to the fact that Ukraine does not only suffer from a broad variety of negative externalities, diverse institutional inefficiencies and structural problems, but may also lose -as a consequence of the negative socioeconomic and political effects of corruption -the human capital necessary for sustainable economic development.