Network Migration: Nicaraguans to Costa Rica and the United States

Juan Carlos Vargas, Universidad de Costa Rica
Leila Rodriguez, Pennsylvania State University

In this paper we examine the role the migration network plays in the decision-making of Nicaraguans to migrate to either Costa Rica or the United States. Nicaragua has a long migratory history with Costa Rica. Another important Nicaraguan destination is the United States, with a long historical record as well. The data for this study come from five Nicaraguan communities. In each one of them, we accomplish simple aleatory studies generated by the Centralamerican Population Center of the University of Costa Rica. This survey was done following the methodology developed by the Latin American Migration Project (LAMP) of the University or Pennsylvania, through the use of the Ethnosurvey. In this study we use the multinomial logit analysis, in order to predict three possible outcomes: (1) staying in Nicaragua, (2) going to Costa Rica, (3) going to the US.