Do asylum-seekers feel more welcome in regions with more foreign-born residents?

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

In the framework of the EUI Political Behaviour Colloquium, this seminar features a paper presentation by Max Weber Fellow, Eroll Kuhn.

European countries are struggling with the largest wave of asylum-seekers since World War II, with ongoing debates about how to best promote asylum-seeker integration. In this paper, we engage the conflicting evidence about whether larger pre-existing foreign-born communities help or hinder the integration of newcomers. We leverage the as-if random assignment of asylum-seekers to German counties, which permits credible inferences about contextual effects. Our central finding is that asylum seekers feel more welcome in counties with more foreign-born residents and the effect is stronger when asylum-seekers and foreign-born residents have similar origins. For Syrian refugees, who represent the largest national origin-group in Europe, proximity to co-nationals appears to be uniquely important. Our findings have implications for our understanding of asylum-seeker integration and contextual effects more broadly.

Co-authored with Rahsaan Maxwell, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The speaker will be presenting in person. Participants can follow the talk from Emeroteca, although space is restricted on a first-come, first-served basis to a maximum of 28 people. The talk will also be live-streamed and participants will receive the zoom link once registered.