Barriers to humanitarian migration, victimisation and integration outcomes: evidence from Germany

Teresa Freitas-Monteiro and Lars Ludolph

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: In this paper, we link the peril of asylum seekers’ migratory journey to economically quantifiable outcomes in the destination country using refugee survey data from Germany collected in the aftermath of the 2015 refugee crisis. We start by showing that, accounting for selection effects, physical victimisation during the journey to Germany is strongly associated with significantly lower mental well-being and general health upon arrival in the destination. The physical victimisation experience severely distorts the human capital investment decision by leading affected refugees to favour joining the labour force and engaging in part-time and marginal employment over pursuing host-country education. We place our findings into both the psychiatric and experimental economic literature, which suggest that experiencing physical trauma in vulnerable situations results in a "loss of future directedness" or "impatience" among the victimised, leading them to discount future payoffs more heavily.

Keywords: refugees; victimisation; labour market integration; education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J15 J21 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 61 pages
Date: 2021-05-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:110500

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