The new development and institutional economics have renewed the study of economic behaviour in Third World countries. The main point of this article is to incorporate these new theoretical insights to analyse certain migration patterns as a inter-temporal contract linking actors and various local organizations in the developing world. Through a process of gradual self-reinforcement, these contracts lead to the "institutionalization" of migration which generates its own operating rules. This approach suggests to adopt a new perspective to examine the economic rationale of social processes linked to migrations.
