Do Ethnic Enclaves Impede Immigrants' Integration?: Evidence from a Quasi-Experimental Social-Interaction Approach

Alexander Danzer and Firat Yaman

No 519, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: It is widely debated whether immigrants who live among co-ethnics are less willing to integrate into the host society. Exploiting the quasi-experimental guest worker placement across German regions during the 1960/70s as well as information on immigrants' inter-ethnic contact networks and social activities, we are able to identify the causal effect of ethnic concentration on social integration. The exogenous placement of immigrants "switches off" observable and unobservable differences in the willingness or ability to integrate which have confounded previous studies. Evidence suggests that the presence of co-ethnics increases migrants' interaction cost with natives and thus reduces the likelihood of integration.

Keywords: immigrants; integration; enclaves; political participation; culture; social interaction; guest workers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J61 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 p.
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-mig, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.413311.de/diw_sp0519.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Do Ethnic Enclaves Impede Immigrants' Integration? Evidence from a Quasi-experimental Social-interaction Approach (2013)
Working Paper: Do ethnic enclaves impede immigrants’ integration? Evidence from a quasi-experimental social-interaction approach (2013)
Working Paper: Do Ethnic Enclaves Impede Immigrants' Integration? Evidence from a Quasi-Experimental Social-Interaction Approach (2012)
Working Paper: Do Ethnic Enclaves Impede Immigrants' Integration? Evidence from a Quasi-Experimental Social-Interaction Approach (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp519

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek ().