Across the world, over 281 million people live outside of their country of origin, representing 3.6% of the world’s population (Natarajan et al., 2022). While this percentage appears inconsequential, migration has shaped human history in significant ways and continues to impact global politics and economies. Migration sits at the intersection of a long-standing tension that exists in comparative politics between democratization and state capacity. Emigration can both enable states to become more democratic, as well as hinder democratization. This paper explores whether emigration helps or hinders democratization in migrant-sending countries, analyzing the impacts of various mechanisms associated with emigration and democratization. To answer how emigration influences democratization in migrant-sending countries, this paper incorporates a cross-country panel Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression as the basis for its analysis. This analysis found that worker remittances led to positive changes in the level of democracy in low- and high-income countries, whereas the results associated with international student flows were inconclusive.