 Hi everyone and welcome to this knowledge clip on theories of international migration and this time I will introduce behaviouralist approaches to international migration. So if you watched maybe the knowledge clip or if you read about neoclassical theory then you know that many migration theories start from the idea that individuals act rationally, right? That they make an economic decision as to why to move to a certain location because they can have a job somewhere in another country because they have higher wages available in that country but behaviouralist approaches do take a different approach. So they indicate okay true this focus on individuals is very interesting and is what explains international migration because it's an individual that decides to move away to a country and makes that decision but they actually say that it's not only economy or economic considerations that people make when they move so they make many different things that they throw together in the mix to move. For example they might move to another country because they have relatives over there because they like the weather for example so there's many different things that can come together and so in that sense it is very different because they do focus more instead of economic rationality on the psychological reasons of people to move to a certain location and they also focus on why people choose a particular location and why do they move let's say from the Netherlands towards Denmark and not from the Netherlands towards Finland that could be one of the things that behaviouralists focus upon this so why that specific particular destination what explains the decision-making process and so what they say basically is that instead of considering international migration decisions as something very rational guided by economic considerations it's the irrationality in many migration decisions if you look from it from this economic perspective that makes it very interesting to study right so people very often if you think from an economic viewpoint make irrational decisions think about if I would move from Belgium where I live towards Greece for example from an economic perspective that might be considered rather irrational compared to moving from Belgium to Norway where the salaries very likely are much higher so that is what behaviouralists are interesting why do people then choose these destinations where apparently from an economic viewpoint there's not a lot to gain and then we have Julian Wolpert specifically who worked a lot on this behaviouralist approach to international migration and he indicated that people can experience certain degrees of stress in an immigration country that can be because of the economic situation that can be because of the family situation that can be because of your minority for example that is being discriminated or because of your sexual orientation so there's many different things that can play a role here and there's a certain degree of stress that everybody experiences but there's a certain threshold in this stress and if you pass that threshold then you make the decision to move abroad but then people do not generally move to whatever location no Julian Wolpert indicated that people attempt to go to a place where they can have highest utility so he introduced the concept of place utility which simply means that people move to a place where they can satisfy their needs imagine that you move away from the Netherlands because you think well it's horribly raining the whole time in the Netherlands so I moved to Spain then probably Spain or also Italy or any southern European country around the Mediterranean Sea might be a very interesting option right because then the place utility is higher compared to where you would think about Bergen the city in Europe where we have most rain on a yearly basis that would not be very logical the place utility of Bergen is very low place utility of Valencia Malaga or Calabria for example would be much higher and so what they indicate generally the behavior list is that people are not economic maximizers people do not tend to move only for economic reasons that's not to say that economic considerations do not play a role but they generally do not aim to move to the place where they can earn most money no they search for a place where they can have highest satisfaction so they are satisfisers rather than maximizers so that is in a very nutshell what behavior list approaches on international migration tell us about the decision-making process so they move away from this economic determinism brooding up a little bit the picture of potential reasons why people move thank you very much for watching this knowledge clip