Migrants and the Economy: Realities and Representations

Immigrant franchise and immigration policy: Evidence from the Progressive Era

Costanza Biavaschi, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

In her study “Immigrant franchise and immigration policy: Evidence from the Progressive Era” (co-authored with Giovanni Facchini) Costanza explores the link between restrictions to the electoral franchise enacted in the progressive era and voting behaviour of U.S. Representatives on immigration policy. They put particular attention on exploring the role played by naturalized U.S. citizens in explaining congressional support for restrictive immigration policy measures. To this end, they construct a unique dataset combining roll call votes on immigration policy cast between 1897 and 1924, with a wealth of congressional district level economic and demographic characteristics.

Numbers, narratives, neither, both? How different kinds of message evidence impact public perceptions about immigration in Great Britain

William L. Allen, University of Oxford

In his study “Numbers, narratives, neither, both? How different kinds of message evidence impact public perceptions about immigration in Great Britain”, Will explores how different types of evidence influence attitudes towards immigrants. Prior research into the determinants of public opinion about immigration identifies how different kinds of threats (economic or sociocultural) influence levels of concern. Moreover, framing the issue in ways that emphasize either immigrants’ vulnerability or humanitarian needs, as opposed to criminality or illegal behavior, also impacts what people think. But less attention has been given to understanding how different types of information—the vehicles through which informational frames are often conveyed—also potentially shape what people think about immigration.

Is it ethnicity or religion? Evidence from a cross-national field experiment on labour market discrimination

Mariña Fernández-Reino, University of Oxford

In her study “Is it ethnicity or religion? Evidence from a cross-national field experiment on labour market discrimination”, she explores ethnic penalties in the labour market based on her research in five European countries. The literature on ethnic penalties has repeatedly shown that, in Europe, Muslim minorities of Turkish, Moroccan, Pakistani or Bangladeshi descent are amongst the most disadvantaged minority groups in the labour market. Their religious identity - and not their ethnicity or immigrant background- has sometimes been seen as the main factor driving employers’ negative bias towards these minorities. Prior studies based on observational data have not been directly able to measure labour market discrimination nor to disentangle the drivers of employers’ discriminatory behaviour. The research design of this project not only makes it possible to measure the penalty associated to being religious (vs being secular), but also whether employers’ discriminatory behaviour varies across candidates with different religious affiliations.

Immigration and well-being: A neighbourhood-level analysis

Corrado Giulietti, University of Southampton

Selective emigration after Germany’s failed 1848 revolutions and the rise of the Nazi party

Toman Barsbai, University of St. Andrews

In this study they explore the impact of the failed revolutions of 1848, which sparked a wave of emigration out of Germany, on the rise of the Nazi Party. They show that the intensity of emigration during the period 1849-54 significantly affected electoral preferences eighty years later. Their estimates suggest that emigration during this period accounts for 10 to 20 percent of the votes received by the Nazis in 1928. Their results suggest that the well-known contribution of the so-called Fortyeighters to democracy building in the US came at the price of less democracy in Germany.

Immigration Enforcement, Police Trust and Domestic Violence

Esther Arenas-Arroyo, University of Oxford

Domestic violence is a serious under-reported crime in the United States. Undocumented women are particularly prone to this type of violence given their low socio-economic status and frequent dependence on their partners’ income. While immigrant survivors still qualify for protections under the 1994 Violence against Women Act (VAWA), intensified enforcement has exacerbated their reluctance to seek assistance for fear of deportation. Recently, localities across the country have limited the scope of cooperation between law enforcement and Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) with the intent of increasing community trust and cooperation with the police. We use data on VAWA self-petitions, along with information on immigration enforcement and the limited cooperation of law enforcement departments with ICE, to identify the impact of both types of policies on the share of VAWA-self petitions between 2000 and 2016. We find that a one standard deviation increase in immigration enforcement lowers the share of VAWA self-petitions by approximately 10 percent, whereas a one standard deviation increase in the adoption of practices limiting the cooperation of law enforcement personnel with ICE raises the share of VAWA self-petitions by 2 percent. Learning about these impacts is crucial at a time of growing police mistrust by minorities and heightened immigrant vulnerability to crime given migrants’ reluctance to contact law enforcement in the midst of intensified enforcement.