Location Choices Of Immigrants Research Articles

Where to live? English proficiency and residential location of UK migrants

This study aims to identify the causal effects of English proficiency on residential location choices of immigrants. Based on the ideas that (i) immigrants whose mother tongue is linguistically close to English learn the language more easily, and that (ii) young children learn a new language more easily than older children, we construct an instrument for English proficiency, exploiting linguistic distance from English, and age at arrival in the United Kingdom for childhood migrants. Using a unique dataset, we construct various measures of residential clustering aimed at capturing different types of immigrant enclave, and find a negative impact of better English skills on residency in a language enclave, but a positive impact on residency in an ethnic enclave. We also find strong evidence of an impact of poorer English proficiency on living in a neighbourhood of lower quality.

Immigration and Entrepreneurship: The Role of Enclaves

Immigration has proven to be a major force driving entrepreneurial dynamics. In this paper I investigate how the geographical distribution of immigrants within a given country, and in particular the presence of “enclaves,” affects the relationship between immigration and entrepreneurship. I examine the impact of Polish immigration to Great Britain following the unprecedented migration wave caused by the European Union enlargement in 2004. I address omitted variable concerns by using information on the location of historical Polish military settlements and the occupational composition and growth of Polish immigration in Ireland to construct instruments for enclaves and location choices of immigrants. The econometric results indicate, on the one hand, that immigration does increase immigrant entrepreneurship, but not in existing immigrant enclaves. On the other hand, immigrant entrepreneurs outside enclaves tend to achieve worse growth outcomes than those in enclaves. Further analyses provide an explanation to these findings due to blocked labor markets and to the higher prevalence of “necessity entrepreneurship” outside of enclaves. These results offer new insights to understand the influence of geography on entrepreneurship in the presence of immigration. This paper was accepted by Toby Stuart, entrepreneurship and innovation. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4776 .

The role of visa class in the location choices of immigrants in Australia at the regional and neighbourhood scales

Australia’s pro-immigration policies have played a vital role in national population growth, serving to address what would otherwise be chronic labour shortages and population ageing. While migrants to Australian have shown a clear preference for cities and tend to locate with co-ethnics, variations by visa class—employment, family reunification, and asylum—have yet to be fully explored. This paper aims to identify variations in settlement patterns of immigrants in Australia by visa types and the factors underpinning these choices, paying particular attention to ethnic networks and employment opportunities. We apply a series of negative binomial regressions to aggregate census data linked to visa status. At the suburb level, our results show the importance of the presence of compatriots in shaping the location choices of family migrants, with the exception of skilled and humanitarian immigrants from China, Malaysia and Thailand. At the regional level, skilled migrants, including skilled regional migrants, respond to employment opportunities to a greater extent than family and humanitarian migrants.

Re-evaluating the impact of immigration on the U.S. rental housing market

Previous studies provide evidence that immigration increases housing prices and rents. To deal with endogenous location choices of immigrants, these studies often use a shift-share instrumental variable approach. This approach, however, fails to adequately account for the natural attraction of immigrants to cities with thriving economies. High-immigration cities provide more economic opportunities and thus exhibit persistently rising housing prices and rents. This paper improves upon the traditional empirical approach by explicitly controlling for initial city characteristics that lead to both increases in immigration and the evolution of rents. Results suggest that after controlling for endogenous sorting of immigrants, the positive effect of immigration on rents is attenuated. While the impact of immigrant inflows is smaller, an extension of the main results suggests the effects of immigration on rents remains larger than that of native inflows.

Immigration, Ethnic Diversity, and Political Outcomes: Evidence from Denmark

AbstractI study the impact of immigration and increasing ethnic diversity on political outcomes in immigrant‐receiving countries, focusing on immigration and election outcomes in Danish municipalities between 1981 and 2001. A novel instrumental variable strategy based on historical housing stock data addresses issues of endogenous location choices of immigrants and a rich set of control variables is employed to isolate ethnic diversity effects from those of other immigrant characteristics. Increases in local ethnic diversity lead to rightward shifts in election outcomes by shifting electoral support away from traditional “big government” left‐wing parties and towards anti‐immigrant nationalist parties. This holds for both local and national elections.

The effect of far right parties on the location choice of immigrants: Evidence from Lega Nord Mayors

Immigration has increasingly taken centre-stage in the political landscape. Part of this has been a rise in far-right, anti-immigration parties in a range of countries. Existing evidence suggests that the presence of immigrants generates an advantage for parties with anti-immigration or nationalist platforms. This paper explores a closely related but overlooked issue: how immigrant behaviour is influenced by these parties. We focus on immigrant location decisions in Northern Italy, an area that has seen the rise of the anti-immigration party Lega Nord. We construct a dataset of mayoral elections in Italy for the years 2002–2014 and estimate the effect of electing a mayor belonging to, or supported by, Lega Nord. Exploiting close elections in a regression discontinuity framework we demonstrate that the election of a Lega Nord mayor discourages immigrants from moving into the municipality. We also provide suggestive evidence that the effect is driven primarily by the anti-immigration politics of Lega Nord insofar as it is absent in the period before their adoption of an explicitly anti-immigration platform and is concentrated in smaller, less educated, municipalities.

Regional distribution and location choices of immigrants in Germany

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates initial and subsequent location choices of recent European Union immigrants in Germany at the county level (NUTS-3). Using federal employment register data, the evidence suggests heterogeneous preferences among individuals regarding regional characteristics. For the first location choice, good labour market conditions seem to attract immigrants strongly, while the presence of co-nationals appears to be less important. However, regarding subsequent location choices, ethnic concentration apparently increases its impact on regional attractiveness. The primary conclusion of this paper is that assimilation in the sense of a more equal distribution of immigrants across regions seems to fail.

Immigration and the Labor Market Outcomes of Natives in Developing Countries: A Case Study of South Africa

AbstractUsing South African census data from 2001, 2007, and 2011, I examine the effect that immigration had on labor market outcomes of native-born black South Africans. Using instrumental variables to control for the potential endogenous location choices of immigrants to South Africa, the results show that immigrant inflows decreased the employment-to-population ratios and total annual income of black native-born South Africans. Additionally, results suggest a negative effect of immigrant inflows on the employment ratio and total annual income of black native-born South Africans employed in the formal sector. Results show that immigration caused an intersectoral employment shift. For black male South Africans, the composition of the employed labor force shifted to the formal sector, and for black female South Africans, the composition of the employed labor force shifted to the informal sector.

The Effect of Far Right Parties on the Location Choice of Immigrants: Evidence from Lega Nord Mayors

The Effect of Far Right Parties on the Location Choice of Immigrants: Evidence from Lega Nord Mayors

Immigrants’ location choice in Belgium

This paper analyses migratory streams to Belgian municipalities between 1994-2007. The Belgian population register constitutes a rich and unique database of yearly migrant inflows and stocks broken down by nationality, which allows us to empirically explain the location choice of immigrants at municipality level. Speci cally, we aim at separating the network ef- fect, captured by the number of previous arrivals, from other location-speci c characteristics such as local labor or housing market conditions and the presence of public amenities. We expect labor and housing market variables to operate at diff erent levels and develop a fixed eff ects nested model of location choice in which an immigrant fi rst chooses a broad area, roughly corresponding to a labor market, and subsequently chooses a municipality within this area. We fi nd that the spatial repartition of immigrants in Belgium is determined by both network eff ects and local characteristics. The determinants of local attractiveness vary by nationality, as expected, but for all nationalities, they seem to dominate the impact of network eff ects.

Ethnic networks and location choice of immigrants

Immigrants can initially face significant difficulties integrating into the economy of the host country, due to information gaps about the local labor market, limited language proficiency, and unfamiliarity with the local culture. Settlement in a region where economic and social networks based on familiar cultural or language factors (“ethnic capital”) exist provides an effective strategy for economic integration. As international migration into culturally diverse countries increases, ethnic networks will be important considerations in managing immigration selection, language proficiency requirements, and regional economic policies.

Beyond the Average: Peer Heterogeneity and Intergenerational Transmission of Education

Estimating the effect of ‘ethnic capital’ on human capital investment decisions is complicated by the endogeneity of location choice of immigrants and the reflection problem. We exploit a rare immigrant settlement policy in Germany to identify the causal impact of parental peer-heterogeneity on the educational outcomes of their children. To identify the direction of peer effect we restrict to no-child-adult-peers who completed their education much before the children in our sample of interest. We find that children of low-educated parents benefit significantly from the presence of high-educated neighbors, with more pronounced effects in more polarized neighborhoods and significant gender heterogeneity. In contrast, we do not find any negative influence coming from the low-educated neighbors. Our estimates are robust to a range of flexible peer definitions. Overall, the findings suggest an increase in parental aspirations as the possible mechanism rather than a direct child-to-child peer effect.

Social housing and location choices of immigrants in France

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the empirical links between social housing policy and location choices of immigrants in France.

The Internal Migration of Immigrants: Differences between One‐Time and Multiple Movers in Spain

ABSTRACTResearch on the mobility and residential patterns of immigrants within receiving countries is abundant. The selective nature of movers and the location of immigrants are issues that have received special attention. Most studies are premised on the supposition that immigrants move only once. However, for a number of immigrants, internal migration is a dynamic process in which more than one movement is involved. This article extends the literature by disaggregating immigrants according to their number of internal migrations. We use data from a new and rich retrospective survey to examine the determinants of migration trajectories and the effects of the location choices of immigrants. We elaborate a set of indicators to assess the importance of the spatial assimilation theory and other main theoretical frameworks. This article concentrates on Spain, a recent main migratory destination in Europe and worldwide. Results reveal the existence of significant differences between one‐time and multiple movers. The selective nature of multiple movers is explained in part by the spatial assimilation paradigm. Further results show that both one‐time and multiple movers tend to reside outside ethnic concentrations as a result of their mobility experience within Spain. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

There Goes the Neighborhood? – People‘s Attitudes and the Effects of Immigration to Australia

This paper compares the effects of immigration flows on economic outcomes and crime levels to the public opinion about these effects using individual and regional data for Australia. We employ an instrumental variables strategy to account for non-random location choices of immigrants and find that immigration has no adverse effects on regional unemployment rates, median incomes, or crime levels. This result is in line with the economic effects that people typically expect but does not confirm the public opinion about the contribution of immigration to higher crime levels, suggesting that Australians overestimate the effect of immigration on crime.

Social Housing and Location Choices of Immigrants in France

Our study examines the empirical links between social housing policy and location choices of immigrants in France. More specifically, we characterize the main individual and contextual determinants of the probability for immigrants to live in a HLM (habitations a loyer modere, dwelling with a moderate rent), which is the main public housing policy in France. For that purpose, we use individual information coming from large (one-fourth) extracts of the French population censuses conducted by INSEE (Paris) in 1982, 1990, and 1999. Our estimates show that, in general, migrants live more frequently in social housing than French natives, other observables being equal. In particular, this probability is higher for migrants from Turkey, Morocco, Southeast Asia, Algeria, Tunisia and Sub-Saharan Africa (in descending order). We find also that migrants of all origins live less often in a HLM when the city has plenty of social housing and when the fraction of natives is high.

There Goes the Neighborhood? People’s Attitudes and the Effects of Immigration to Australia

This paper compares the effects of immigration flows on economic outcomes and crime levels to the public opinion about these effects using individual and regional data for Australia. We employ an instrumental variables strategy to account for non-random location choices of immigrants and find that immigration has no adverse effects on regional unemployment rates, median incomes, or crime levels. This result is in line with the economic effects that people typically expect but does not confirm the public opinion about the contribution of immigration to higher crime levels, suggesting that Australians overestimate the effect of immigration on crime.

The Location of Immigrants in Italy: Disentangling Networks and Local Effects

This paper analyses the location choice of immigrants living in Italy in 2002-2007 and aims at separating the so called from other locality-specific characteristics. The network effect is identified by the number of previous arrivals in the same location, whereas other local, geographically-specific characteristics-such as the local labour-market conditions or the presence of higher-quality amenities-are assumed to be time invariant. Our econometric estimation takes into account the spatial correlation in our data. The results show that, if local characteristics are the main factor explaining the spatial repartition of immigrants in Italy, network effects also have a sizable effect, particularly in the largest cities of Northern Italy.

Location, Location, Location: Where Do Immigrants Reside in Australia?

Concentration of immigrants in a particular area has important implications for the provision of social services and the local labor market. This paper examines the location choice of immigrants in five major statistical regions in Australia using the 2001 Census of Population and Housing. The paper focuses on differences in location choice across birthplace groups and cohort arrivals. The results show that immigrants from the UK are less likely to reside in larger cities (e.g., Sydney, Melbourne) compared to immigrants from other birthplace groups, particularly those from non-English-speaking countries. Ethnic concentration has a positive effect on immigrants’ location choice, and this is consistent across arrival cohorts. Furthermore, all immigrants are attracted to a particular location with high concentration of poor English-speaking immigrants or concentration of young individuals. However, immigrants are not attracted to a particular location with concentration of individuals who have not completed high school.

Initial and Subsequent Location Choices of Immigrants to the Netherlands

Zorlu A. and Mulder C. H. Initial and subsequent location choices of immigrants to the Netherlands, Regional Studies 41, 1–20. The initial settlement behaviour and the subsequent mobility of immigrants who arrived in the Netherlands in 1999 are examined using rich administrative individual data. The study considers the settlement patterns of immigrants from various countries of origin who entered the country as labour, family or asylum migrants. The evidence suggests distinct settlement trajectories for asylum and other non-Western immigrants. The presence of co-ethnics and members of other ethnic minorities, but also socio-economic neighbourhood characteristics, appear to play an important role in determining location choice. Differences in the settlement and spatial mobility patterns of immigrants with various degrees of distance from the native Dutch in terms of human and financial capital, proficiency in the relevant language(s), and religion confirm the main predictions of spatial assimilation theory. Zorlu A. et Mulder C. H. Le choix d'emplacement initial et futur des immigrés aux Pays-Bas, Regional Studies 41, 1–20. A partir des données individuelles administratives, on examine le comportement initial de l'implantation et la mobilité future des immigrés qui sont arrivés aux Pays-Bas en 1999. L'étude considère la distribution de l'implantation des immigrés en provenance de divers pays d'origine qui sont entrés dans le pays pour demander du travail, rejoindre la famille ou chercher asile. Les preuves laissent supposer des trajectoires distinctes de l'implantation des demandeurs d'asile et des autres immigrés qui ne sont pas de l'Ouest. Il semble que la présence de membres coethniques et d'autres minorités ethniques, mais aussi des caractéristiques de voisinage socio-économiques, joue un rôle important dans la détermination du choix d'implantation. Des différences de la distribution de l'implantation et de la mobilité géographique des immigrés en fonction de la distance des Néerlandais autochtones en termes du capital humain et financier, de la compétence à parler la langue appropriée, et de la religion confirment les principales prédictions de la théorie d'assimilation géographique. Choix d'implantation Immigrés et segrégation résidentielle ethnique Zorlu A. und Mulder C. H. Erste und spätere Standortwahl von Einwanderern in den Niederlanden, Regional Studies 41, 1–20. Mit Hilfe reichhaltiger individueller Verwaltungsdaten untersuchten wir das Verhalten bei der ersten Ansiedelung und die spätere Mobilität von Einwanderern, die 1999 in den Niederlanden eintrafen. In der Studie werden die Verhaltensmuster bei der Ansiedelung von Einwanderern aus verschiedenen Herkunftsländern untersucht, die als Arbeits-, Familien- oder Asylmigranten ins Land kamen. Die Daten lassen darauf schließen, dass für Asyl- und andere nichtwestliche Einwanderer eigene Ansiedelungswerdegänge vorliegen. Die gleichzeitige Präsenz von mehreren Ethnien und von Mitgliedern anderer ethnischer Minderheiten, aber auch die sozioökonomischen Merkmale der Nachbarschaft spielen bei der Standortwahl offenbar eine wichtige Rolle. Die Unterschiede in der Ansiedelung und räumlichen Mobilität von Einwanderern mit verschiedenen Graden der Distanz von einheimischen Holländern hinsichtlich des humanen und finanziellen Kapitals, der Beherrschung der jeweiligen Sprache(n) und der Religion bestätigen die wichtigsten Prognosen der räumlichen Assimilationstheorie. Standortwahl Einwanderer Ethnische Trennung von Wohngebieten Zorlu A. y Mulder C. H. Las opciones iniciales y posteriores del lugar elegido por los inmigrantes en los Países Bajos, Regional Studies 41, 1–20. Con ayuda de amplios datos administrativos e individuales, examinamos los modelos de asentamiento inicial y la posterior movilidad de los inmigrantes que llegaron a los Países Bajos en 1999. En este estudio consideramos los modelos de asentamiento de inmigrantes de varios países de origen que entraron al país por motivos laborales, familiares o como inmigrantes en busca de asilo. La evidencia indica distintas trayectorias de asentamientos para los solicitantes de asilo y otros inmigrantes no occidentales. La presencia de la comunidad coétnica y miembros de otras minorías étnicas pero también las características socioeconómicas de los vecindarios parecen desempeñar un importante papel a la hora de determinar el lugar elegido. Las diferencias los modelos de asentamiento y movilidad espacial de los inmigrantes con varios grados de distancia de los holandeses autóctonos en cuanto a capital humano y financiero, conocimientos de los idiomas pertinentes, y la religión confirman las predicciones principales de la teoría de asimilación espacial. Elección del lugar Inmigrantes Segregación residencial de comunidades étnicas