Do they look for informal jobs? Migration of the working age in Indonesia

It is widely accepted assumption that migrants in developing countries who are not absorbed by the modern sector may enter informal sector as a transitional phase. The purpose of this study is to assess whether this assumption is valid for Indonesian case using the Indonesia Family Life Survey 2007 data. By taking advantage of the longitudinal data of employment and migration histories of 15 years and old individuals, multinomial regression with correlated random intercept is employed to study whether migrants are more likely to work informal sector than non migrants and to what extent can working in informal sector be linked with migration motives. The results show that migrants in Indonesia are more likely to work in formal sector than non migrants. In connection with migration motives, migrants with work-related motives are less likely to work in informal sector than migrants with motives related to family-related reasons. Among migrants with work-related motives, those who move due to being unemployed and who lack of employment opportunity in origin locations have higher likelihood to work in informal sector than formal sector compared with those who moved for other job-related reasons such as job transfers and closer to job.