First time around: Local conditions and multi-dimensional integration of refugees

Cevat Giray Aksoy, Panu Poutvaara and Felicitas Schikora

Journal of Urban Economics, 2023, vol. 137, issue C

Abstract: We study the effect of local unemployment and attitudes towards immigrants at the time of arrival on refugees’ multi-dimensional integration outcomes. We leverage a centralized allocation policy in Germany where refugees were centrally assigned to live in specific counties. To measure sentiments of native residents towards immigrants, we use geo-coded Twitter data, which provides our “negative sentiment index”. Our results show that attitudes towards immigrants are as important as local unemployment rates in shaping refugees’ integration outcomes. A one standard deviation increase in unemployment or in the negative sentiment index predicts five percentage points lower probability of refugees being employed in 2016 to 2018. In additional robustness check, we present an analysis that uses far-right vote share as an alternative measure of sentiments of native residents.

Keywords: International migration; Refugees; Integration; Allocation policy; Far-right voting; Negative sentiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J15 J24 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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Related works:
Working Paper: First Time Around: Local Conditions and Multi-dimensional Integration of Refugees (2021)
Working Paper: First Time Around: Local Conditions and Multi-Dimensional Integration of Refugees (2020)
Working Paper: First Time Around: Local Conditions and Multi-dimensional Integration of Refugees (2020)
Working Paper: First Time Around: Local Conditions and Multi-dimensional Integration of Refugees (2020)
Working Paper: First Time around: Local Conditions and Multi-Dimensional Integration of Refugees (2020)
Working Paper: First Time Around: Local Conditions and Multi-dimensional Integration of Refugees (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:juecon:v:137:y:2023:i:c:s009411902300058x

DOI: 10.1016/j.jue.2023.103588

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