nep-mig New Economics Papers
on Economics of Human Migration
Issue of 2022‒09‒26
four papers chosen by
Yuji Tamura
La Trobe University

  1. What Divides the First and Second Generations? Family Time of Arrival and Educational Outcomes for Immigrant Youth By Hull, Marie C.
  2. Everybody’s Talkin’ at Me: Levels of Majority Language Acquisition by Minority Language Speakers By William Brock; Bo Chen; Steven N. Durlauf; Shlomo Weber
  3. The political consequences of mass repatriation By Edoardo Cefalà
  4. Economic Preferences and the Self-selection of Immigrants By Zhan, Crystal; Deole, Sumit

  1. By: Hull, Marie C. (University of North Carolina, Greensboro)
    Abstract: In this paper, I develop a measure of host country experience, which I call "relative time of arrival," to explore differences between first- and second-generation immigrants. This measure is finer than immigrant generation and expands on the widely used measures of years since migration and age at migration. It is scaled so that zero indicates that a child was born in the same year that the family migrated. I then use this measure to study the dividing line between the first and second generations, specifically, whether there are differences in educational outcomes between early-arriving first-generation immigrants and second-generation immigrants whose parents arrived shortly before birth. For most outcomes considered, I find that the transition between the first and second generations is relatively smooth, indicating that these groups are not as distinct as often thought. I also use the measure assess whether parents' host country experience before a child's birth matters and generally find that it does not. Consistent with prior work, I show that outcomes measuring English knowledge are negatively related to age at arrival. Thus, observed differences between the first and second generations are driven by the lower performance of late-arriving first-generation children.
    Keywords: children of immigrants, immigrant generation, age at arrival, educational attainment, achievement, parental inputs
    JEL: I24 J13 J15
    Date: 2022–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15527&r=
  2. By: William Brock; Bo Chen; Steven N. Durlauf; Shlomo Weber
    Abstract: Immigrants in economies with a dominant native language exhibit substantial heterogeneities in language acquisition of the majority language. We model partial equilibrium language acquisition as an equilibrium phenomenon. We consider an environment where heterogeneous agents from various minority groups choose whether to acquire a majority language fully, partially, or not at all. Different acquisition decisions confer different communicative benefits and incur different costs. We offer an equilibrium characterization of language acquisition strategies and find that partial acquisition can arise as an equilibrium behavior. We also show that a language equilibrium may exhibit insufficient learning relative to the social optimum. In addition, we provide a local stability analysis of steady state language equilibria. Finally, we discuss econometric implementation of the language acquisition model and establish identification conditions.
    JEL: C72 D61 J15 Z13
    Date: 2022–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30410&r=
  3. By: Edoardo Cefalà
    Abstract: What happens when the electorate of a country is suddenly increased by hundreds of thousands of new potential voters? How do parties adjust their strategies in response to such an event? To address these questions I exploit a quasi-experiment represented by the arrival in France of about 1 million repatriates from Algeria, the so-called pieds noirs, which happened in 1962. To study the causal impact of the pieds noirs on voting, I instrument their location choice based on the average temperature by department. I find that the arrival of the pieds noirs increased turnout and the vote share of far-right parties while it decreased the vote share of center-right parties in both legislative and presidential elections between 1962 and 1974. I then analyse how this shock affected the political strategies of the different French parties by looking at more than 10,000 political manifestos issued by candidates in the legislative elections during the same period. I show that far-right parties behaved as a political entrepreneur and started to discuss issues associated with the pieds noirs already in 1962. The other parties subsequently adapted their manifestos using the same words of the far-right. These findings shed light on how radical parties can affect mainstream ones by pushing new issues in their agenda.
    Keywords: mass repatriation; pieds noirs; vote share
    Date: 2022
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notgep:2022-05&r=
  4. By: Zhan, Crystal; Deole, Sumit
    Abstract: Classical theories hypothesize individual economic preferences, including preferences toward risk, time, and trust, as determinants for migration intention. In the paper, we combine data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, European Social Survey, and World Values Survey to investigate how immigrants to Germany are self-selected from the origin population based on their preferences. We find a higher migration propensity among individuals who are more altruistic, patient, and trusting, conditional on age, gender, education, and a series of origin country's economic and political factors. However, individuals are positively selected on risk appetite in low-risk countries but adversely selected in high-risk countries. The degree of selectivity regarding preferences is also heterogeneous across demographics and origin-country characteristics.
    Keywords: self-selection,economic preferences,refugees,reasons for migration,origin country
    JEL: F22 J15 J6 O15 Z1
    Date: 2022
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1156&r=

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