Immigration, integration and terrorism: is there a clash of cultures?

Justina A. V. Fischer

No 182, CEIS Research Paper from Tor Vergata University, CEIS

Abstract: We test whether immigrants are more prone to support terror than natives because of lower opportunity costs, using the international World Values Survey data. We show that, in general, economically, politically and socially non-integrated persons are more likely to accept using violence for achieving political goals, consistent with the economic model of crime. We also find evidence for the destructive effects of a ‘clash of cultures’: Immigrants in OECD countries who originate from more culturally distanced countries in Africa and Asia appear more likely to view using violence for political goals as justified. Most importantly, we find no evidence that the clashof-cultures effect is driven by Islam religion, which appears irrelevant to terror support. As robustness test we relate individual attitude to real-life behavior: using country panels of transnational terrorist attacks in OECD countries, we show that the population attitudes towards violence and terror determine the occurrence of terror incidents, as does the share of immigrants in the population. A further analysis shows a positive association of immigrants from Africa and Asia with transnational terror, while the majority religion Islam of the sending country does not appear to play a role. Again, we find that culture defined by geographic proximity dominates culture defined by religion.

Keywords: terror; terrorism; violence; conflict; immigration; culture; integration; crime (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 H56 K42 O15 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 69 pages
Date: 2011-01-20, Revised 2011-01-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law, nep-mig, nep-pol and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: Immigration, integration and terrorism: is there a clash of cultures? (2010)
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