Immigration Policy, Assimilation of Immigrants and Natives' Sentiments towards Immigrants: Evidence from 12 OECD-Countries

Thomas Bauer (), Magnus Lofstrom and Klaus Zimmermann ()

No 187, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: As in the U.S. and Canada, migration is a controversial issue in Europe. This paper explores the possibility that immigration policy may affect the labor market assimilation of immigrants and hence natives’ sentiments towards immigrants. It first reviews the assimilation literature in economics and the policy approaches taken in Europe and among the traditional immigration countries. Second, a new analysis of individual data from the OECD countries studies sentiments concerning immigration and the determinants of these sentiments is presented. Natives in countries that receive predominantly refugee migrants are relatively more concerned with immigrations impact on social issues such as crime than on the employment effects. Natives in countries with mostly economic migrants are relatively more concerned about loosing jobs to immigrants. However, the results also suggest that natives may view immigration more favorably if immigrants are selected according to the needs of the labor markets. Possible benefits of such a policy are that it may moderate social tensions in regards to migration and contribute to a better economic performance of the respective countries.

Keywords: sentiments towards migrants; Assimilation of migrants; European migration policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2000-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (238)

Published - published in: Swedish Economic Policy Review, 2000, 7 (2), 11-53

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp187.pdf (application/pdf)

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:iza:izadps:dp187

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().