Immigrants, Natives and Crime: A Cross-sectional and Longitudinal Analysis

Luigi Maria Solivetti ()

No 8/15, Working Papers from Sapienza University of Rome, DISS

Abstract: This study purpose is to verify if there is an association between foreign immigration and crime. In doing this, the study investigates also some satellite questions revolving around this possible association: the range of offences affected by immigration, the relationship between immigrant and native crime, and whether the immigration impact on crime is direct or indirect. These issues have been addressed through both a cross-sectional and a cross-sectional/time analysis. This double approach intends to find out whether variations over time in immigration and in crime confirm the synchronic analysis results, which could be biased by non-observed factors. The research is based on data of the Italian provinces. Italy represents a critical case for studying the migration-crime relationship, because in this country the rise in foreign immigration has been sudden and its pace feverish. The cross-sectional analysis findings show that crime rates are related to time-invariant factors and only marginally to immigration. On the contrary, the cross-sectional/time analysis shows that variations in immigration have had a positive impact on both the most serious and the most common offences. There is no evidence of indirect effects of immigration on crime or of a link with native crime. In contrast to previous literature regarding the U.S., Canada, and Australia, these results suggest that a tumultuous rise in immigration can affect crime rates.

Keywords: Immigration; natives; crime; crime determinants; longitudinal analysis. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.diss.uniroma1.it/sites/default/files/al ... livetti_wp8_2015.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to www.diss.uniroma1.it:80 (A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.)

Related works:
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:saq:wpaper:8/15

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Sapienza University of Rome, DISS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Pierluigi Montalbano ().