A total of 3,640 households were interviewed, corresponding to a nationally representative sample of 17,302 individuals, 63 percent (9,742) of which are in working age (i.e. 16-64 years old). Included in our analysis are all working-age men and women who are not in school, in retirement and in the military service.<sup>11</sup> Identification of paid and unpaid workers is derived from answers to the ‘job status’ question (no. 07- mod. 4C) according to which paid employment and self-employment refer to selfreported wage and salary work (as employee, paid worker, employer, worker on own account) either on- or off-farm, whereas unpaid work refers to work performed outside the home (either on- or offfarm) without a corresponding salary.<sup>12</sup> Concerning migration, we can distinguish between ‘current’ and ‘past’ international migration exposure, where current migrants are all those former household members no longer living in the household and currently abroad. Conversely, past migrants are household members who self-report their emigration episodes (for a duration of at least one month since they turned 16 years old), and they have now returned to live in the household (although they may be migrating again in the future). We restrict our sample to individuals who left later than 1990 (even though those reporting their first migration episode before 1990 are only a handful as, prior to that year, migration was legally banned).<sup>13</sup> We distinguish between these two forms of migration experience, as there are important differences to highlight. As past migrants are concerned, it should be noted that migration from Albania (particularly the flow to neighboring Greece<sup>14</sup> ) has been traditionally temporary in nature, whether seasonal or circular. This entails that migrants move more than once in their life cycle, especially to neighboring countries. In our sample households, temporary migrants are mostly men returning from nearby Greece and Italy, where agriculture or construction sectors appears to be the main forms of occupation for these individuals. In Figure 2 we plot sample migration levels by gender, namely the incidence of selfreported most recent migration episode by year of migration in 1990-2003, and the male-dominated nature of migration waves is striking.<sup>15</sup> Most of these sample migrants did not migrate with spouse in the last migration episode (nor with children) (only around 15% do so) and when asked about their intention to migrate again, almost 40 percent give a positive answer while 16 percent is uncertainsupporting the trend of individual multiple migration episodes<sup>16</sup> . Female migration rate is much lower

> 11 We do so as to isolate the labor market effect of migration from the effect on human capital accumulation. The main sample restriction is to include only working age population available for work and not in the position to provide ‘voluntary’ work in their spare time from their main occupation. Yet, in order to account for the potential interaction between migration and individual age, we also performed robustness checks using workers in different age ranges (see below).

> 12 We defined unemployed as the working age population without a work and _seeking work_ , or _not seeking work_ due to the following reasons: (a) tired/believe no work available (i.e, discouraged workers); (b) awaiting results of previous job applications; (c) temporary absent from a permanent job (illness, bad weather etc.); and (e) waiting for rehire/job recall.

> 13 Due to data limitations, we are not able to perfectly match wives and migrant husbands or sons.

> 14 Compared to Italy, the process of obtaining legal status in Greece is more difficult for Albanian migrants, as family reunification has been discouraged and migrant regularization has been slower (Baldwin-Edwards, 2002). In this respect, it should not be surprising that particularly the flow to Greece has been more temporary in nature.

> 15 The same gender migration pattern (i.e. male domination) is evident when plotting the self-reported _first_ episodes of international migration. As people in Albania are likely to migrate more than once in their life course, the actual survey questions on (the timing of) migration are: “In what year and month did you _most recently_ migrate abroad for at least one month?” and “In what year was the _first time_ you ever migrated abroad, after having turned 15?”. In both cases migrants are almost exclusively male, and the fact that the overtime trend is not changing much is even more relevant for our analysis.

> 16 This is consistent with the IOM and Eurobarometer evidence reported by de Coulon and Piracha (2003) that migrants from Albania fall into the category of temporary workers (see also Papapanagos and Sanfey, 1998). Furthermore, using same Albanian data Kilic at al. (2007) show that among past migrants, most recent returnees with fewer migration episodes are those most likely to migrate again, supporting the idea of the ‘migration cylcle’.

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