Come and go
The Effects of U.S. Immigration on the Career Trajectories of Native Workers, 1979–2004
Jeremy Pais
American Journal of Sociology, July 2013, Pages 35-74
Abstract:
While earlier work primarily examines the point-in-time effects of immigration on the earnings of native workers, this article focuses more broadly on the effects of immigration on native workers’ career trajectories. Cross-classified multilevel growth-curve models are applied to 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and U.S. Census Bureau data to demonstrate how people adjust to changing local labor market conditions throughout their careers. The key findings indicate that substitution and complementary effects depend on the stage of the worker’s career. At entry into the labor market, high levels of immigration have a positive effect on the career paths of young native-born adults. However, negative contemporaneous effects to natives’ earnings tend to offset positive point-of-entry effects, a finding that suggests job competition among natives is greater in areas of high immigrant population concentration. These results raise questions about whether foreign-born workers need to be in direct competition with natives for there to be substitution effects.
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The Effect of Birthright Citizenship on Parental Integration Outcomes
Ciro Avitabile, Irma Clots-Figueras & Paolo Masella
Journal of Law and Economics, August 2013, Pages 777-810
Abstract:
The integration of immigrants is the subject of ongoing public debate, and devising measures to enable the assimilation of newcomers ranks high on the political agendas of many countries. This paper focuses on the legal institution of citizenship and analyzes the consequences of birthright citizenship introduced in Germany. We use the exogenous variation provided by the 1999 reform of the German nationality law to study the effect of children’s legal status on the integration of immigrant parents. We find that foreign-born parents are most likely to interact with the local community and use the German language if their children are entitled to German citizenship at birth.
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Enforcement and Immigrant Location Choice
Tara Watson
NBER Working Paper, November 2013
Abstract:
This paper investigates the effect of local immigration enforcement regimes on the migration decisions of the foreign born. Specifically, the analysis uses individual level American Community Survey data to examine the effect of recent 287(g) agreements which allow state and local law enforcement agencies to enforce Federal immigration law. The results suggest that one type of 287(g) agreement – the controversial local “task force” model emphasizing street enforcement – nearly doubles the propensity for the foreign-born to relocate within the United States. The largest effects are observed among non-citizens with college education, suggesting that aggressive enforcement policies may be missing their intended targets. No similar effect is found for the native born. After the extreme case of Maricopa County is excluded, there is no evidence that local enforcement causes the foreign-born to exit the United States or deters their entry from abroad. Rather, 287(g) task force agreements encourage the foreign born to move to a new Census division or region within the United States.
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Aaron Chalfin
American Law and Economics Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper identifies a causal effect of Mexican immigration on crime using an instrument that leverages temporal variation in rainfall in different regions in Mexico as well as persistence in regional Mexico–U.S. migration networks. The intuition behind the instrument is that deviations in Mexican weather patterns isolate quasi-random variation in the assignment of Mexican immigrants to U.S. cities. My findings indicate that Mexican immigration is associated with no appreciable change in the rates of either violent or property crimes in U.S. cities.
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America's Deadly Export: Evidence From Cross-Country Panel Data Of Deportation And Homicide Rates
Garfield Blake
International Review of Law and Economics, March 2014, Pages 156–168
Abstract:
Changes in US Immigration laws between the mid-1980s to the late 1990s led to a sharp increase in criminal deportations. During the same years many poor countries, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, experienced a sharp increase in homicides. Using panel data for a sample of 38 developed and developing countries, I find a statistically significantly positive relationship between an increase in the number of criminal deportees received by a country and a corresponding increase in that country's homicide rate, and I establish causality through instrumental variables. My analysis suggests that about 23 percent of the increase in the homicide rate in developing countries between 1985 and 1996 can be attributed to the increase in the inflow of criminal deportees from the United States.
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Latino Immigration, Interaction, and Homicide Victimization
Raymond Barranco
Sociological Spectrum, November/December 2013, Pages 534-553
Abstract:
As Latinos spread across the United States, many Americans have begun to fear that their arrival will spark an increase in crime. Unfortunately, early explanations of the immigration-crime link, which found that immigrants disorganized communities, focused on the experience of Eastern European immigrants. This article updates previous literature by focusing on the experience of Latino immigrants. I find that (1) Latino immigration is linked to crime only in new Latino destinations, (2) this link is mitigated by increased interaction among Latinos, and (3) Latino interaction lowers victimization regardless of destination.
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Jacob Stowell et al.
Law & Society Review, December 2013, Pages 909–942
Abstract:
Contemporary criminological research on immigration has focused largely on one aspect of the immigration process, namely, the impact of in-migration (i.e., presence or arrival) of foreign-born individuals on crime. A related but understudied aspect of the immigration process is the impact that the removal of certain segments of the foreign-born population, and specifically undocumented or deportable aliens, has on aggregate levels of criminal violence. In an effort to cast new light on the association between forced out-flows of immigrants and crime, we begin with descriptive analyses of patterns of deportation activity across the continental United States over an eleven-year period (1994–2004). We then examine the relationship between deportation activity and violent crime rates in a multilevel framework wherein Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) are situated within border patrol sectors. The results of dynamic regression modeling indicate that changing levels of deportation activity are unrelated to changing levels of criminal violence for the sample of MSAs for the national at large. However, we also detect significant interactions by geographic location for selected violent offenses. For MSAs within sectors along the Mexican border, the deportation measure exhibits a significant negative effect on one indicator of criminal violence — the aggravated assault rate. For MSAs within non-border sectors, the effect of the deportation measures is significantly positive for the violence crime index and the aggravated assault rate. Overall, our analyses indicate that the relationship between deportation and criminal violence is complex and dependent on local context.
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Who Crossed the Border? Self-Selection of Mexican Migrants in the Early 20th Century
Edward Kosack & Zachary Ward
University of Colorado Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
We explore the self-selection of Mexican migrants to the United States in 1920. We hand-collect data for migrants from manifest lists for towns along the United States-Mexico border. Officials recorded the heights of migrants, a measure that we use to proxy migrant quality and measure self-selection into migration. Migrants, despite being relatively more unskilled than stayers, came from the middle to upper portion of the height distribution in Mexico, and so were positively selected. The result holds within skill group, suggesting that the United States received the best unskilled, skilled and professional workers.
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Freddy Siahaan, Daniel Lee & David Kalist
Economics of Education Review, February 2014, Pages 1–8
Abstract:
This study investigates the educational attainment of children of immigrants in the United States. By employing a more detailed classification of children of immigrants,we examine whether a foreign place of birth for either parent or child affects the child's educational attainment. Our results indicate that the full-second generation (U.S.-born children with both foreign-born parents) achieves the highest educational attainment, while the full-first generation (foreign-born children with both foreign-born parents) achieves the second highest educational attainment compared to other groups of children of immigrants and native children. Full-first and full-second generation females also achieve higher educational attainment than their native female peers. The results support the optimism theory of assimilation in which the educational attainment of children of immigrants relies on the combination of their foreign-born parents’ strong values on education and the children's English proficiency.
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Immigrant Economic Assimilation: Evidence from UK Longitudinal Data between 1978 and 2006
Sara Lemos
Labour Economics, October 2013, Pages 339–353
Abstract:
Using the underexplored, sizeable and long Lifetime Labour Market Database (LLMDB) we estimate the immigrant-native earnings gap at entry and over time for the UK between 1978 and 2006. That is, we attempt to separately estimate cohort and assimilation effects. We also estimate the associated immigrant earnings growth rate and immigrant-native earnings convergence rate. Our estimates suggest that immigrants from more recent cohorts fare better than earlier ones at entry. Furthermore, the earnings of immigrants from more recent cohorts catch up faster with natives' earnings. While the convergence took over 30 years for those entering in the post-war, it only took half as long for those entering in the early 2000s. This earnings growth is fastest in the first 10 years, and it considerably slows down after 30 years.
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The mover’s advantage: The superior performance of migrant scientists
Chiara Franzoni, Giuseppe Scellato & Paula Stephan
Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
Migrant scientists outperform domestic scientists. The result persists after instrumenting migration for reasons of work or study with migration in childhood to minimize the effect of selection. The results are consistent with theories of knowledge recombination and specialty matching.
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Right-Wing Extremism and the Well-Being of Immigrants
Andreas Knabe, Steffen Rätzel & Stephan Thomsen
Kyklos, November 2013, Pages 567–590
Abstract:
This study analyzes the effects of right-wing extremism on the well-being of immigrants based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the years 1984 to 2006 merged with state-level information on election outcomes. The results show that the life satisfaction of immigrants is significantly reduced if right-wing extremism in the native-born population increases. Moreover, the life satisfaction of highly educated immigrants is affected more strongly than that of low-skilled immigrants. This supports the view that policies aimed at making immigration more attractive to the high-skilled have to include measures that reduce xenophobic attitudes in the native-born population.
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Xenophobia and immigrant contact: French public attitudes toward immigration
Seth Jolly & Gerald DiGiusto
Social Science Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
How does the presence of immigrants in a local community affect xenophobic attitudes? Does contact with immigrants ameliorate or exacerbate anti-immigrant attitudes among citizens? Synthesizing public opinion, economic, and demographic data from France, we test hypotheses concerning the relationship between the presence of immigrant populations and xenophobic sentiments. Supportive of the contact theory, we find that larger immigrant populations decrease xenophobic attitudes. This finding challenges much of the country-level research on immigrant concentration and xenophobia and offers some hope for those who are concerned about the rise of xenophobia and the radical right in the midst of diverse European polities.
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Migration to the US and Marital Mobility
Rebekka Christopoulou & Dean Lillard
NBER Working Paper, October 2013
Abstract:
We combine survey data on British and German immigrants in the US with data on natives in Britain and Germany to estimate the causal effect of migration on educational mobility through cross-national marriage. To control for selective mating, we instrument educational attainment using government spending on education in the years each person was of school-age. To control for selective migration, we instrument the migration decision using inflows of immigrants to the US during puberty and early adulthood. We find that migration causes women to marry up and men to marry down, in line with cross-country differences in the availability of educated spouses and migrant-native differentials in the timing of marriage and financial maturity. However, the way migrants self-select into migration and marriage dampens down these effects.
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Matthew Sanderson
Global Networks, forthcoming
Abstract:
While economic globalization has altered the geography of international migration and introduced an array of new sources and destinations, our understanding of the specific mechanisms that link economic globalization to migration remains limited. In this article, I attempt to extend previous research by undertaking an empirical case study of Mexican migration to the USA. Using a unique dataset, I construct multivariate models to test whether, in the context of economic integration, occupations channel migration between similar sectors of the Mexican and US economies. I focus on the food-processing sector because of its role in the geographic dispersal of Mexican immigration. The results show a strong channelling of Mexican immigration along an occupational line linking the Mexican and US food-processing sectors. The implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which ushered in a period of intensive political and economic integration, strengthened this occupational channel. By seeing the changing geography of Mexico—US migration in the context of economic globalization, this study casts light on the microlevel foundations of the globalization—migration nexus.
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Does Residence in an Ethnic Community Help Immigrants in a Recession?
Pengyu Zhu, Cathy Yang Liu & Gary Painter
Regional Science and Urban Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research on how the residential segregation of immigrant populations has impacted their labor market outcomes presents many challenges because of the fact that immigrants often choose to locate near co-ethnics to share resources and cultural amenities. Because not all immigrants choose to live in these ethnic communities, identification of a causal effect on living in an ethnic community is problematic. The estimation of the effect of living in these ethnic communities is also difficult because it is ambiguous whether such residence will help or harm the labor market outcomes of immigrants. This study implements a number of approaches to help identify a causal effect, including using sample of adults whose residential location is plausibly exogenous with respect to their labor market outcomes and using the current recession as a source of exogenous variation. Results suggest that residence in an ethnic community after the recession increases the likelihood of working, albeit with longer commutes.
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Alyssa Marie Shell, Kristen Peek & Karl Eschbach
Social Science & Medicine, December 2013, Pages 56–63
Abstract:
Substantial research shows that increased Hispanic neighborhood concentration is associated with several beneficial health outcomes including lower adult mortality, better self-rated health, and fewer respiratory problems. Literature on the relationship of Hispanic composition and depressive symptoms is more equivocal. In addition, few studies have directly investigated hypothesized mechanisms of this relationship. This study uses data from a probability sample of 1,238 Mexican-descent adults living in 48 neighborhoods in Texas City, Texas. Multilevel regression models investigate whether Hispanic neighborhood composition is associated with fewer depressive symptoms. This study also investigates whether social support, perceived discrimination, and perceived stress mediate or moderate the relationship, and whether results differ by primary language used at home. We find that individuals living in high Hispanic composition neighborhoods experience fewer depressive symptoms than individuals in low Hispanic composition neighborhoods. In addition, we find that these beneficial effects only apply to respondents who speak English. Social support, perceived discrimination, and perceived stress mediate the Hispanic composition-depressive symptoms relationship. In addition, discrimination and stress moderate the relationship between Hispanic composition and depressive symptoms. Our findings support theories linking higher neighborhood Hispanic composition and better mental health, and suggest that Spanish language use, social support, discrimination and stress may play important roles in the Hispanic composition-depressive symptoms relationship.
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Richard Cervantes et al.
Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, November 2013, Pages 451-468
Abstract:
Stress associated with acculturation and minority status among Hispanic youth is understudied. Using survey data from the Hispanic Stress Inventory–Adolescent Version (HSI-A), we examined psychosocial stress across eight domains including family economic stress and acculturation-gap stress in a national sample of three generations (first, second, and third or higher) of Hispanic adolescents (N = 1,263). Research questions addressed generation differences in frequency of stressor events (i.e., discrimination), appraisal of these events, and mental health symptoms. Results indicated that experiences of different categories of stress were significantly related to generation status. The first generation reported more stressors and greater stress appraisal than the third-generation adolescents. Similar levels of discrimination stress were reported by participants regardless of generation. The second-generation participants reported a greater number of Acculturation Gap Stressors than the third generation, and more delinquent and aggressor behaviors than first-generation participants. An acculturation paradox was found with greater stress exposure and stress appraisals in the first-generation youth, but with lower mental health symptoms than later generations. Family integrity and more traditional family values may buffer the negative impact of greater stressor exposure among immigrants and second-generation youth when compared with third-generation adolescents.
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Ethnic Segregation and Radical Right-Wing Voting in Dutch Cities
Jeroen van der Waal, Willem de Koster & Peter Achterberg
Urban Affairs Review, September 2013, Pages 748-777
Abstract:
Previous studies have linked anti-immigrant voting and other indications of ethnic animosities to ethnic segregation, yielding different results. In this study, we focus on the locally strongly diverging support for Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid [PVV]) in the Dutch national parliamentary elections of 2006 and 2010 to assess how it can be understood that the effect of ethnic segregation on anti-immigrant voting varies, and how this can be theoretically interpreted. Our analyses on 50 Dutch cities demonstrate that ethnic segregation leads to PVV voting, and that this positive effect is stronger in cities with a more tolerant cultural atmosphere and lower levels of unemployment. This positive effect is at odds with ethnic threat theory, and our contextualization informed by the cultural and economic conditions of cities enables empirically distinguishing between contact theory and concentration theory. Whereas both predict a positive effect, only contact theory is corroborated by our results.