Ethnicity, Political Violence and Internal Migration in Guatamala, 1975-1994: A Multilevel Backward Recurrence Time Model

David P. Lindstrom, Brown University
Manuel Ángel Castillo, El Colegio de México
Afra R. Chowdhury, Brown University

This paper provides the first, systematic analysis of internal migration in Guatemala using nation-wide data. It examines the impact of political violence and ethnicity on the risk of out-migration at the municipal-level, controlling for individual background and place characteristics. The study is based on a 5% sample of individual records from the 1994 Guatemala Population Census. Questions on the number of years in the current place of residence, and the place of prior residence, are used to construct a person years file. Multilevel discrete-time hazard regression is used to estimate the risk of out-migration from this backward recurrence time data. Results show strong interactions between ethnicity and the ethnic composition of the place of origin, and ethnicity and political violence at the local level on the risk of out-migration.