Working Paper: NBER ID: w29925
Authors: Michael Bailey; Drew M. Johnston; Martin Koenen; Theresa Kuchler; Dominic Russel; Johannes Stroebel
Abstract: We use de-identified data from Facebook to study the social integration of Syrian migrants in Germany, a country that received a large influx of refugees during the Syrian Civil War. We construct measures of migrants' social integration based on Syrians' friendship links to Germans, their use of the German language, and their participation in local social groups. We find large variation in Syrians' social integration across German counties, and use a movers' research design to document that these differences are largely due to causal effects of place. Regional differences in the social integration of Syrians are shaped both by the rate at which German natives befriend other locals in general (general friendliness) and the relative rate at which they befriend local Syrian migrants versus German natives (relative friending). We follow the friending behavior of Germans that move across locations to show that both general friendliness and relative friending are more strongly affected by place-based effects such as local institutions than by persistent individual characteristics of natives (e.g., attitudes toward neighbors or migrants). Relative friending is higher in areas with lower unemployment and more completed government-sponsored integration courses. Using variation in teacher availability as an instrument, we find that integration courses had a substantial causal effect on the social integration of Syrian migrants. We also use fluctuations in the presence of Syrian migrants across high school cohorts to show that natives with quasi-random exposure to Syrians in school are more likely to befriend other Syrian migrants in other settings, suggesting that contact between groups can shape subsequent attitudes towards migrants.
Keywords: social integration; Syrian migrants; Germany; Facebook data; integration courses
JEL Codes: D85; F22; J15; K37
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| exposure to Syrian migrants during high school (F22) | likelihood of befriending Syrian migrants later in life (C92) |
| Syrian migrants moving across counties (F22) | social integration patterns (Z13) |
| place-based effects (R11) | social integration of Syrian migrants (F55) |
| teacher availability (I21) | completion rates of integration courses (I24) |
| completion rates of integration courses (I24) | relative friending among natives (Z13) |
| completion rates of integration courses (I24) | overall integration (F15) |