Birthright
Birthplace Diversity and Economic Prosperity
Alberto Alesina, Johann Harnoss & Hillel Rapoport
NBER Working Paper, January 2013
Abstract:
The diversity of people has economic costs and benefits. Using recent immigration data from 195 countries, we propose an index of diversity based on people's birthplaces. This new index is decomposed in a "size" (share of foreign born) and a variety (diversity of immigrants) component and is available for 1990 and 2000 and for the overall as well as for the high (workers with college education) and low-skill fractions of the workforce. We show that birthplace diversity is largely uncorrelated with ethnic and linguistic fractionalization and that - unlike fractionalization - it is positively related to economic development even after controlling for education, institutions, ethnic and linguistic fractionalization, trade openness, geography, market size and origin-effects. This positive association appears particularly strong for the diversity of skilled immigrants in richer countries. We make progress towards addressing endogeneity by specifying a gravity model to predict the diversity of immigration based on exogenous bilateral variables. The results are robust across various OLS and 2SLS specifications.
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Political Inclusion of Latino Immigrants: Becoming a Citizen and Political Participation
Ines Levin
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does becoming a citizen represent a major step toward the inclusion of Latino immigrants in the American polity? I study this question by comparing the behavior of immigrants who have acquired citizenship with that of immigrants who are not willing or not eligible to become citizens, focusing on nonelectoral political activities such as contacting government officials and working to solve problems with others informally or through existing groups and organizations. The data analysis is based on recent survey data from the 2006 Latino National Survey. I use matching methods to control for the nonrandom selection of respondents into citizenship status, and perform a sensitivity analysis to evaluate the robustness of findings to hidden bias. Results suggest that granting citizenship to nonnaturalized immigrants is a measure that, by itself, is unlikely to achieve full inclusion of Latino immigrants in the broader democratic process.
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Maria Cristina Morales, Aurelia Lorena Murga & Marisa Sanchez
Sociological Inquiry, February 2013, Pages 32-54
Abstract:
In spring 2006, the United States witnessed immigrant marches throughout the nation. Although Latina/os are often depicted as the "face" of the immigrant marches, we know little about how racial and citizenship statuses shaped Latina/os' perceptions of how the marches influenced public perceptions of undocumented immigrants. Using logistic regression on data from the 2006 National Survey of Latinos, we find that Latina/os identifying as white are less likely to be supportive of the immigrant marches than those who defied standard racial classifications, and instead identified as "Latina/o." Moreover, Latina/os who are born in the United States are not as supportive of the immigrant marches in comparison with naturalized citizens and non-citizen Latina/os, accounting for demographic and human capital factors. This study suggests there is a "racial- and citizenship divide" among Latina/os that fragments perceptions on the immigrant mobilizations in the United States.
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Are Immigrants the Best and Brightest U.S. Engineers?
Jennifer Hunt
NBER Working Paper, January 2013
Abstract:
Using the American Community Surveys of 2009 and 2010, I examine the wages of immigrants compared to natives among engineering workers. Among workers in engineering occupations, immigrants are the best and brightest thanks to their high education level, enjoying a wage distribution shifted to the right of the native distribution. Among workers with an engineering degree, however, immigrants underperform natives, despite somewhat higher education. The gap is particularly large in the lower tail, where immigrants work in occupations not commensurate with their education. In the upper tail, immigrants fail to be promoted out of technical occupations to management, handicapped by imperfect English and their underrepresentation among older age groups. In both samples, immigrants from the highest income countries are the best and brightest workers.
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Does emigration benefit the stayers? Evidence from EU enlargement
Benjamin Elsner
Journal of Population Economics, April 2013, Pages 531-553
Abstract:
Around 9% of the Lithuanian workforce emigrated to Western Europe after the enlargement of the European Union in 2004. I exploit this emigration wave to study the effect of emigration on wages in the sending country. Using household data from Lithuania and work permit and census data from the UK and Ireland, I demonstrate that emigration had a significant positive effect on the wages of stayers. A one-percentage-point increase in the emigration rate predicts a 0.67% increase in real wages. This effect, however, is only statistically significant for men.
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Lars Leszczensky
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research has repeatedly found a positive association between immigrants' identification with the receiving society and their share of interethnic friends. That is, immigrants with a low level of national identification have relatively little contact with natives, and vice versa. Earlier cross-sectional studies, however, were not able to draw firm causal conclusions about the direction of causality. Theoretically, four different scenarios exist: The causal arrow might run from identification to friends (A), but also from friends to identification (B) or in both directions (C). Finally, the relationship might be spurious, caused by unobserved joint determinants (D). Using three-wave panel data for adolescents of Turkish origin in Germany, I examine these four scenarios. First-difference models with lagged independent variables that account for both time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity and potential reverse causality provide no evidence for reciprocal effects between national identification and interethnic friendships. This finding contradicts common interpretations of cross-sectional studies.
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Neil Malhotra, Yotam Margalit & Cecilia Hyunjung Mo
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
What explains variation in individuals' opposition to immigration? While scholars have consistently shown cultural concerns to be strong predictors of opposition, findings regarding the labor-market competition hypothesis are highly contested. To help understand these divergent results, we distinguish between the prevalence and conditional impact of determinants of immigration attitudes. Leveraging a targeted sampling strategy of high-technology counties, we conduct a study of Americans' attitudes toward H-1B visas. The plurality of these visas are occupied by Indian immigrants, who are skilled but ethnically distinct, enabling us to measure a specific skill set (high technology) that is threatened by a particular type of immigrant (H-1B visa holders). Unlike recent aggregate studies, our targeted approach reveals that the conditional impact of the relationship in the high-technology sector between economic threat and immigration attitudes is sizable. However, labor-market competition is not a prevalent source of threat and therefore is generally not detected in aggregate analyses.
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Educational Attitudes, School Peer Context, and the "Immigrant Paradox" in Education
Emily Greenman
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research has been unable to explain declines in educational outcomes across immigrant generations. This study uses data on Mexican and Asian-origin youth from Add Health to test educational attitudes and behaviors as mechanisms linking immigrant generation to four educational outcomes. First, it assesses whether generational changes in attitudes and behaviors correspond to generational differences in educational outcomes. Second, it tests whether generational changes in immigrant children's attitudes depend on the school peer context in which they acculturate. Findings show that educational attitudes and behaviors do decline across immigrant generations, but that these changes in attitudes account for little of the generational variation in educational outcomes. The relationship between immigrant generation and attitudes is strongest in schools with more negative peer cultures.
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Francine Blau et al.
Journal of Population Economics, April 2013, Pages 405-435
Abstract:
Using the 1995-2011 March Current Population Survey and 1970-2000 Census data, we find that the fertility, education, and labor supply of second-generation women (US-born women with at least one foreign-born parent) are significantly positively affected by the immigrant generation's levels of these variables, with the effect of the fertility and labor supply of women from the mother's source country generally larger than that of women from the father's source country and the effect of the education of men from the father's source country larger than that of women from the mother's source country. We present some evidence that suggests our findings for fertility and labor supply are due at least in part to intergenerational transmission of gender roles. Transmission rates for immigrant fertility and labor supply between generations are higher than for education, but there is considerable intergenerational assimilation toward native levels for all three of these outcomes.
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Jamie Longazel
Punishment & Society, January 2013, Pages 96-119
Abstract:
State- and local-level ordinances attempting to ‘crack down' on undocumented immigration have been proliferating across the United States. Hazleton, Pennsylvania's Illegal Immigration Relief Act (IIRA), passed in 2006, was one of the most visible of these laws. Using the events leading up to the passage of the IIRA as a case study and integrating racial stratification and moral panic theories, I conceptualize passage of this punitive law as a racial degradation ceremony performed in the wake of allegations of a Latino-on-white homicide and amid local demographic shifts and economic decline. Specifically, by comparing local media coverage of two homicides committed in Hazleton (one that led to the passage of the IIRA, a second that was far less impactful) and studying official discourse at city council meetings where the ordinance was introduced and passed, I find that officials relied heavily on the racialized tropes of the war on crime in constructing an ‘illegal' immigration ‘problem', thus degrading the city's new immigrants, symbolically uplifting the white majority, and in turn reaffirming the racial order.
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Mathias Kauff et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, March 2013, Pages 305-320
Abstract:
We studied the influence of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) on the relationship between a multicultural ideology and attitudes about ethnic diversity and immigrants. We hypothesized that a multicultural ideology poses a threat to authoritarian individuals, which leads to a decrease in positive diversity beliefs and an increase in prejudice toward immigrants. On the basis of representative survey-data from 23 European countries, we showed that the negative relationship between RWA and positive diversity beliefs was stronger the more a country engages in multiculturalism (Study 1). In addition, in two experiments we demonstrated that RWA moderated the relationship between a video promoting multiculturalism (Study 2) or a picture showing a multicultural group (Study 3) and attitudes toward immigrants and diversity. As expected, for high-RWAs, both stimuli led to an increase in prejudice. In Study 3, perceived threat mediated the relationship between a multicultural norm and prejudice for people high in RWA.
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Jan Pieter van Oudenhoven & Colleen Ward
Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, March/April 2013, Pages 81-97
Abstract:
Processes of globalisation, migration, and increasing cultural diversity within nations have resulted in a growing need to understand intercultural relations in plural societies. Accordingly, this paper highlights the relations between immigrants and members of host societies and considers how social and demographic changes may affect acculturation and intercultural relations and shape future psychological theory and research in these areas. Based on a combination of empirical data and informed speculation, we discuss three significant changes. First is the growing importance of transnational relations due to a large degree of faster and cheaper forms of communication and traveling. A second important factor is changing demographics characterised by the growth of mega-cities and the increasing proportion of first and second generation of immigrants in contemporary immigration nations and - consequently - the diminishing size of native majority groups. Third is the greater acceptance of a global culture, which is shaped by globalisation and coloured by local multi-ethnic characteristics and creolisation processes in each country of settlement.
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The psychic costs of migration: Evidence from Irish return migrants
Alan Barrett & Irene Mosca
Journal of Population Economics, April 2013, Pages 483-506
Abstract:
Within the economics literature, the ‘psychic costs' of migration have been incorporated into theoretical models since Sjaastad (J Polit Econ 70:80-93, 1962). However, the existence of such costs has rarely been investigated in empirical papers. In this paper, we look at the psychic costs of migration by using alcohol problems as an indicator. Rather than comparing immigrants and natives, we look at the native-born in a single country and compare those who have lived away for a period of their lives and those who have not. We use data from the first wave of the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing which is a large, nationally representative sample of older Irish adults. We find that men who lived away are more likely to have suffered from alcohol problems than men who stayed. For women, we again see a higher incidence of alcohol problems for short-term migrants. However, long-term female migrants are less likely to have suffered from alcohol problems. For these women, it seems that migration provided psychic benefits, and this is consistent with findings from other research which showed how migration provided economic independence to this group. The results remain when we adjust for endogeneity and when we use propensity score matching methods.
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Understanding Different Migrant Selection Patterns in Rural and Urban Mexico
Jesús Fernández-Huertas Moraga
Journal of Development Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The productive characteristics of migrating individuals, emigrant selection, affect welfare. The empirical estimation of the degree of selection suffers from a lack of complete and nationally representative data. This paper uses a dataset that addresses both issues: the ENET (Mexican Labor Survey), which identifies emigrants right before they leave and allows a direct comparison to non-migrants. This dataset presents a relevant dichotomy: it shows negative selection for urban Mexican emigrants to the United States for the period 2000-2004 together with positive selection in Mexican emigration out of rural Mexico to the United States in the same period. Three theories that could explain this dichotomy are tested. Whereas higher skill prices in Mexico than in the US are enough to explain half of the negative selection result in urban Mexico, its combination with network effects and wealth constraints fully account for positive selection in rural Mexico.
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Border Enforcement and Selection of Mexican Immigrants in the United States
Fernando Lozano & Mary Lopez
Feminist Economics, Winter 2013, Pages 76-110
Abstract:
Since 1986, the United States has made considerable efforts to curb undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border, resulting in an increase in migration costs for undocumented immigrants from Mexico and placing a particularly heavy burden on undocumented immigrant women. Using data from the 1990, 2000 Decennial Census and the 2006-8 American Community Survey, this study finds three effects of rising migration costs for immigrants from Mexico: (1) A decrease in the relative flow of older and highly educated undocumented immigrant women relative to men; (2) An increase in the skill composition of immigrant women relative to men; and (3) An increase, due to stronger positive selection, in the average earnings of those groups most affected by increased migration costs, particularly women. This research has important implications in light of the barriers and increasing dangers that women across the globe may face when migrating.
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Migration background and educational tracking
Elke Lüdemann & Guido Schwerdt
Journal of Population Economics, April 2013, Pages 455-481
Abstract:
Research on immigrants' educational disadvantages documents substantial immigrant-native achievement gaps in standardized student assessments. Exploiting data from the German PIRLS extension, we find that second-generation immigrants also receive worse grades and teacher recommendations for secondary school tracks than natives, which cannot be explained by differences in student achievement tests and general intelligence. Second-generation immigrants' less favorable socioeconomic background largely accounts for this additional disadvantage, suggesting that immigrants are disproportionately affected by prevailing social inequalities at the transition to secondary school. We additionally show that differences in track attendance account for a substantial part of the immigrant-native wage gap in Germany.
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Crossing the Line of Legitimacy: The Impact of Cross-Deputization Policy on Crime Reporting
Phillip Atiba Goff, Liana Maris Epstein & Kavita Reddy
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, forthcoming
Abstract:
What might the effect of using law enforcement to target undocumented immigrants for deportation be on public safety and perceptions of law enforcement? This policy, known as cross-deputization, has recently gained national prominence in the United States in the form of Arizona's Senate Bill 1070 legislation and has gained significant momentum through copycat laws across the country (Lacayo, 2011). Whereas proponents argue that such policies will improve public safety and respect for law enforcement (Mulhausen, 2010), the vast majority of law enforcement executives fear the opposite (Amendola, Williams, Hamilton, & Puryear, 2008). To address these competing hypotheses, we surveyed civilians about how their perceptions of law enforcement and crime-reporting behaviors might change in response to the enactment of cross-deputization policy. Results are consistent with the fears of law enforcement and a procedural justice framework (Tyler & Huo, 2002) and suggest that enacting cross-deputization policy reduces perceptions of law enforcement's legitimacy and the desire to report crimes. Findings suggest that perceptions of law enforcement's legitimacy can be harmed by a policy even when police themselves oppose that policy. We discuss implications for the expansion of political psychology to Latino-related policy domains and for public safety in an era of heated immigration rhetoric.