A reluctance to assimilate

Oded Stark and C. Simon Fan

EconStor Preprints from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Abstract: Quite often, migrants appear to exert little effort to absorb the mainstream culture and to learn the language of their host society, even though the economic returns (increased productivity and enhanced earnings) to assimilation are high. We show that when interpersonal comparisons affect individuals' wellbeing and when a more intensive assimilation results in migrants' comparing themselves more with the richer natives and less with fellow migrants, then the effort extended to assimilate will be muted.

Keywords: Migrants' behavior; The effort to assimilate; Income gains; Social proximity; Interpersonal comparisons; Deprivation losses (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J15 J24 J61 O15 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/140795/1/573713065.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: A Reluctance to Assimilate (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:esprep:140795

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