Social Networks and (Political) Assimilation in the Age of Mass Migration

Costanza Biavaschi, Corrado Giulietti and Yves Zenou

No 1049, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: This paper investigates the causal pathways through which ethnic social networks influence individual naturalization. Using the complete-count Census of 1930, we digitize information on the exact residence of newly arrived immigrants in New York City. This allows us to define networks with a granularity detail that was not used before for historical data - the Census block - and therefore to overcome issues of spatial sorting. By matching individual observations with the complete-count Census of 1940, we estimate the impact that the exogenous fraction of naturalized co-ethnics in the network observed in 1930 has on the probability of immigrants to acquire citizenship a decade later. Our results indicate that the concentration of naturalized co-ethnics in the network positively affects individual naturalization and that this relationship operates through one main channel: information dissemination. Indeed, immigrants who live among naturalized co-ethnics are more likely to naturalize because they have greater access to critical information about the benefits and procedures of naturalization.

Keywords: Social networks; assimilation; naturalization; migration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J61 J62 N32 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-his, nep-int, nep-mig, nep-net, nep-pay, nep-soc and nep-ure
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https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/249709/1/GLO-DP-1049.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Social Networks and (Political) Assimilation in the Age of Mass Migration (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:1049

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