Ethnic Spatial Dispersion and Immigrant Identity

Amelie Constant, Simone Schüller and Klaus Zimmermann ()

No 7868, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Ethnic groups tend to agglomerate and assemble, mostly in urban areas. While ethnic clustering is critically debated in societies and the consequences for economic outcomes are under debate in research, the process is not yet well understood. A separate literature has also examined the cultural and ethnic identity of immigrants and how these affect their economic performance and societal integration. However, an unexplored channel connects ethnic clustering with ethnic identity formation. Therefore this paper examines the role of ethnic geographic clustering in the sociocultural integration of immigrants. It employs survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, combined with disaggregated information at a low geographical level from the unexploited German full census of 1970 and 1987. We employ the exogenous placement of immigrants during their recruitment in the 1960s and 1970s and find that local co-ethnic concentration affects immigrants' cultural integration. Residential ethnic clustering strengthens immigrants' retention of an affiliation with their respective country of origin and weakens identification with the host society. The effects are nonlinear and only become significant at relatively high levels of co-ethnic concentration for the minority identity and at very low levels of local concentration for the majority identity. Our findings are robust to the use of an instrumental variable approach.

Keywords: spatial dispersion; ethnic identity; residential segregation; ethnic minorities; ethnic enclaves (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 R23 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2013-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-geo, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Published - revised version published in: Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies , 2024, 22 (2), 205 - 230

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7868.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Ethnic spatial dispersion and immigrant identity* (2024)
Working Paper: Ethnic Spatial Dispersion and Immigrant Identity (2023)
Working Paper: Ethnic spatial dispersion and immigrant identity (2023)
Working Paper: Ethnic spatial dispersion and immigrant identity (2023)
Working Paper: Ethnic Spatial Dispersion and Immigrant Identity (2014)
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:dp7868

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 ().