Ethnic Enclaves and Cultural Assimilation, Job Market Paper
This paper studies whether growing up in an ethnic enclave slows down immigrants’ cultural assimilation. To identify neighbourhood influence, I exploit the random allocation of asylum seekers to government housing in the Netherlands between 1996 and 2012. To assess assimilation, I examine a culturally charged consumption: the usage of hormonal contraceptives by teenage women. Using individual level administrative data on drug usage, I find that cultural assimilation is slow and cannot be accelerated by limiting the formation of ethnic enclaves. Using machine learning techniques, I do not find evidence that this baseline result hides heterogeneous effects on a relevant sub-population.
This paper was presented at EALE (Uppsala), SOLE (Arlington), RES (Warwick), SMYE (Brussels), Winter Meetings of the E.S. (Rotterdam), World Congress of the E.S. (Bocconi), EUI Applied Micro Seminar and Tilburg Economics Workshop. This paper was scheduled for presentation at the 18th IZA Annual Migration Meeting (Bonn).
This paper was presented at EALE (Uppsala), SOLE (Arlington), RES (Warwick), SMYE (Brussels), Winter Meetings of the E.S. (Rotterdam), World Congress of the E.S. (Bocconi), EUI Applied Micro Seminar and Tilburg Economics Workshop. This paper was scheduled for presentation at the 18th IZA Annual Migration Meeting (Bonn).
The Intergenerational (Im)mobility of Immigrants
This paper studies the influence of pre-migration social background on the long-term economic assimilation of immigrants. I use unique French survey data to trace family histories over three generations, in both the origin and destination countries, before and after migration. While many immigrants experience an occupational downgrading at migration, their children strongly benefit from the high socio-economic status their family had in the origin country. As a result, characteristics of immigrant grandparents are more predictive of grandchildren's achievements than are characteristics of native grandparents. These findings are consistent with a model where immigrants cannot fully transfer their human capital between labour markets but transmit it across generations.
This paper was presented at EALE (Lyon), RES (Bristol), IZA Summer School, Macroeconomics Lunch Seminar (Louvain), OECD-CEPII Annual Conference (Paris), ESPE (Antwerpen), AIEL (Trento) and EUI Applied Micro Seminar.
This paper was presented at EALE (Lyon), RES (Bristol), IZA Summer School, Macroeconomics Lunch Seminar (Louvain), OECD-CEPII Annual Conference (Paris), ESPE (Antwerpen), AIEL (Trento) and EUI Applied Micro Seminar.
Who influences young immigrants? with Eva Johansen (Aarhus University)
Is teenagers decision to use contraceptives influenced by peers? To identify peer effects, we rely on cross-cohort variation in students usage in Danish high-schools. To address the reflection problem, we focus on the influence of older cohorts on younger ones. Contraception not being prevalent among young women with a non-Western background, its usage is a good measure of cultural adaptation. Looking at the effect of different peers group is indicative of which is influential. Immigrant teenagers adapt their behaviours to what other immigrants (but not what other natives) do. Their probability of using contraceptives and of having an abortion becomes lower, but not their likelihood of being treated for chlamydia.
This paper was presented at the EUI Applied Micro Seminar and EALE/SOLE (Berlin). It is scheduled for presentation at RES (Belfast).
This paper was presented at the EUI Applied Micro Seminar and EALE/SOLE (Berlin). It is scheduled for presentation at RES (Belfast).
Stranger Danger: Parental Attitudes, Child Development and the Fear of Kidnapping with Agnès Charpin (EUI)
This paper studies the long-term effects of growing up with more or less protective parents. To induce quasi-experimental variation in parental attitudes, we focus on rare but shocking events: nearby child kidnappings. Using geo-localized information from the PSID and a matching strategy (of U.S. counties), we find that the occurrence of a kidnapping causes a decrease in children's cognitive skills and lowers the probability of finishing high school. Turning to mechanisms, we find no evidence that kidnappings make parents or children more neurotic. However, they change parenting style, limiting the time children spend unsupervised and decreasing parental involvement.
This paper is scheduled for presentation at the SMYE (Bologna).
This paper is scheduled for presentation at the SMYE (Bologna).
Work in Progress:
The presence of ethnic minorities and voting in the Netherlands with Sabina Albrecht (Queensland), Riccardo Ghidoni (Bicocca) and Sigrid Suetens (Tilburg)
We use the opening of refugee centres between 2013 and 2016 in the Netherlands as an exogenous variation in exposure to ethnic minorities. Using a geo-referenced version of the LISS panel data (a yearly survey of a representative sample of the Dutch population), we study the effects of centre openings in the immediate neighbourhood on voting intentions (equivalent to a US census tract). Using individual fixed effects regressions (therefore focusing on within individual variation), we find that the opening of a refugee centre decreases the intention to vote for the far-right. This effect is limited to immediate environments, where contact is more likely and dies out when we zoom out of the neighbourhood to the municipal level. Votes for the far-right increased during our sample period in the Netherlands. In particular, many people who previously reported voting for the left switched to anti-immigrant parties. In the proximity of newly opened centers, this trend was slowed down. Our findings suggest that the decrease in voting intentions for the far right in neighborhoods close to new centers is not due to conservative voters who changed their minds. Rather, it is due to previously left leaning voters who did not change theirs. We find evidence that reported intentions match actual voting data.
Work flexibility, parent’s careers and children outcomes with Michèle Bélot (Cornell) and Arnaud Chevalier (RHUL)
This research examines whether flexible working arrangements have an impact on the career of parents, as well as the educational achievements and health of their children. To identify the causal effect of work flexibility, we propose to exploit a variation in work flexibility arrangements across firms, caused by different timings of implementation of such arrangements in Collective Labour Agreements (CLA). These agreements generally codify the family friendly policies of firms. We have created a dataset of CLA and plan to link it to employee/employer register data as well as to detailed information on children's educational records, prescriptions and medical record. We would then compare parents and children of parents who work in firms that introduced a more family friendly collective agreement to those who work in firms that did not introduce such agreement.