Migrant peers in the classroom: Is the academic performance of local students negatively affected?

This paper provides the first causal estimates of the impact of internal migrant peers on the academic performance of local students in developing countries. By exploiting the random assignment of students to classes within a school, I find that migrant peers have large and negative effects on the academic performance of local students in China and the negative spillover effects are concentrated among male students and among local students in large cities. The investigation of the underlying mechanisms suggests that the negative migrant spillover effects may come from the worsened learning environment or from the adjustment of teachers' pedagogical practices in response to the migrant composition in the classroom.