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

Alexander Danzer and Firat Yaman

No 6939, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

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: guest workers; immigrants; integration; enclaves; political participation; culture; social interaction; natural experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J61 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2012-10
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 (7)

Published - published in: Review of International Economics, 2013, 21 (2), 311–325

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp6939.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:iza:izadps:dp6939

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().