Top Research Papers on Immigration

The third edition of this major work provides a systematic, comparative assessment of the efforts of a selection of major countries, including the U.S., to deal with immigration and immigrant issues— paying particular attention to the ever-widening gap between their migration policy goals and outcomes. Retaining its comprehensive coverage of nations built by immigrants and those with a more recent history of immigration, the new edition pays particular attention to the tensions created by post-colonial immigration, and explores how countries have attempted to control the entry and employment o...

Colonial Immigrants in a British City (1979) analyses the relationship between West Indian and Asian immigrants and the class structure of a British city. Based on a four-year research project in the Handsworth area of Birmingham, the book is a study of race and community relations – political, social, economic and personal – in a major centre of immigrant settlement. It considers the relationship between housing class and class formations and consciousness in other sectors of allocation, such as employment and education. It includes a consideration of the changing political climate on race re...

This article reviews and organizes the existing literature on the determinants and nature of prejudice and discrimination toward immigrants, summarizing what to date and the challenges in attributing effects to immigrant status per se.

The article examines the politicisation of immigration in Europe during the so-called migration crisis. Based on original media data, it traces politicisation during national election campaigns in 15 countries from the 2000s up to 2018. The study covers Northwestern (Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Switzerland), Central-Eastern (Hungary, Poland, Latvia, and Romania), and Southern Europe (Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain). We proceed in three interrelated steps. First, we show that the migration crisis has accentuated long-term trends in the politicisation of ...

It is found that considerably lower felony arrest rates among undocumented immigrants compared to legal immigrants and native-born US citizens and no evidence that undocumented criminality has increased in recent years is found.

Do labor market concerns affect support for immigration? Using a large, representative sample of the US population, we first elicit beliefs about the labor market impact of immigration. To generate exogenous variation in beliefs, we then provide respondents in the treatment group with research evidence showing no adverse labor market impacts of immigration. Treated respondents update their beliefs and become more supportive of immigration, as measured by self-reported policy views and petition signatures. Treatment effects also persist in an obfuscated follow-up study. Our results demonstrate ...

Undocumented U.S. Immigrants and Covid-19 Years of anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric will be difficult to reverse, but it is essential that the Trump administration address the needs of undocumen...

Do voters have stable immigration views? While any account of immigration politics must make an assumption about whether underlying attitudes are stable, the literature has been ambiguous regarding the issue. To remedy this omission, we provide the first comprehensive assessment of the stability and change of immigration attitudes. Theoretically, we develop a framework to explicate the temporal assumptions in previous research and find that most studies assume attitudes are flexible. Empirically, we draw on nine panel data sets to test the stability question and use multiple approaches to acco...

Immigrant entrepreneurship has become a phenomenon of global interest. This paper reviews existing immigrant entrepreneurship literature in order to map out the major streams of research and identify widely used theories, methods, and contexts. To do this, the authors have reviewed 514 articles from academic journals. This paper highlights the need for interdisciplinary approaches that transcend boundaries. The development and adoption of different theoretical frameworks, the use of multi-level methods, and the consideration of unexplored country contexts are among the authors’ recommendations...

Abstract Given the rising rate of migration across the globe, immigrant entrepreneurship is more than ever a topic of high theoretical and practical relevance. Immigrant entrepreneurship can offer host societies a win-win situation, generating incomes for immigrant entrepreneurs and contributing to knowledge transfer, innovativeness, and economic growth within the host economy. However, studies reveal that immigrant entrepreneurship is primarily male dominated and our understanding of the drivers and contextual factors that explain the gender gap is limited. Based on the mixed embeddedness app...

In 2012, Home Secretary Theresa May told a newspaper that she wanted to create a ‘really hostile environment’ for irregular migrants in the UK. Although the phrase has since mutated to refer to generalised state-led marginalisation of immigrants, this article argues that the hostile environment is a specific policy approach, and one with profound significance for the UK’s border practices. We trace the ‘hostile environment’ phrase, exposing its origins in other policy realms, charting its evolution into immigration, identifying the key components and critically reviewing the corresponding legi...

It is concluded that people with negative views on immigration before the intervention can become more supportive of immigration if their misperceptions about the characteristics of the foreign-born population are corrected.

Social work practice with refugees and immigrants requires specialized knowledge of these populations and specialized adaptations and applications of mainstream services and interventions. Because they are often confronted with cultural, linguistic, political, and socioeconomic barriers, these groups are especially vulnerable to psychological problems such as anxiety, depression, alienation, grief, and post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as concerns arising from inadequate health care. Institutionalized discrimination and anti-immigrant policies and attitudes only exacerbate these challeng...

This work builds on and synthesizes the work of prior scholars to advance how society codifies structural disadvantages for racialized immigrants into governmental and institutional policies and how that affects health via three key pathways that emerged from the review of the literature.

This paper studies the impact of immigration to the United States on the vote share for the Republican Party using county-level data from 1990 to 2016. Our main contribution is to show that an increase in high-skilled immigrants decreases the share of Republican votes, while an inflow of low-skilled immigrants increases it. These effects are mainly due to the indirect impact on existing citizens’ votes, and this is independent of the origin country and race of immigrants. We find that the political effect of immigration is heterogeneous across counties and depends on their skill level, public ...

We characterize the contribution of immigrants to US innovation, both through their direct productivity as well as through their indirect spillover effects on their native collaborators. To do so, we link patent records to a database containing the first five digits of more than 230 million of Social Security Numbers (SSN). By combining this part of the SSN together with year of birth, we identify whether individuals are immigrants based on the age at which their Social Security Number is assigned. We find immigrants represent 16 percent of all US inventors, but produced 23 percent of total in...

Do negative shocks in origin countries encourage or inhibit international migration? What roles do networks play in modifying out-migration responses? The answers to these questions are not theoretically obvious, and past empirical findings are equivocal. We examine the impact of hurricanes on a quarter century of international migration to the United States. Hurricanes increase migration to the United States, with the effect’s magnitude increasing in the size of prior migrant stocks. We provide new insights into how networks facilitate legal, permanent US immigration in response to origin cou...

Both the experience from previous economic crises and first indications on labour market and social outcomes during the current pandemic suggest that the COVID‑19 crisis is likely to have a disproportionate impact on immigrants and their children. This policy brief provides first evidence on how the pandemic has affected immigrants and their children in terms of health, jobs, education, language training and other integration measures, and public opinion, and describes host countries' policy responses. It complements a previous brief on the impact of the pandemic on migration management.

This paper uses social psychological and sociological theories to explore the anticipated effects on xenophobia and anti-immigrant attitudes worldwide and discusses recommendations for further research required during the ups and downs of the pandemic, as well as during recovery.

Parsa Erfani, BA; Nishant Uppal, BS; Caroline H. Lee, BA; Ranit Mishori, MD, MHS; Katherine R. Peeler, MD

Abstract The authors review research conducted during the past decade on immigrant families, focusing primarily on the United States and the sending countries with close connections to the United States. They note several major advances. First, researchers have focused extensively on immigrant families that are physically separated but socially and economically linked across origin and destination communities and explored what these family arrangements mean for family structure and functions. Second, family scholars have explored how contexts of reception shape families and family relationship...

Abstract How does the arrival of a new minority group affect the social acceptance and outcomes of existing minorities? We study this question in the context of the First Great Migration. Between 1915 and 1930, 1.5 million African Americans moved from the U.S. South to Northern urban centres, which were home to millions of European immigrants arrived in previous decades. We formalize and empirically test the hypothesis that the inflows of Black Americans changed perceptions of outgroup distance among native-born whites, reducing the barriers to the social integration of European immigrants. Pr...

Using millions of historical census records and modern birth certificates, it is documented that immigrants assimilated into US society at similar rates in the past and present and substantial cultural assimilation for immigrants of all education levels.

The mechanisms of control, Grete Brochmann Germany's immigration policies and politics, Dietrich Thranhardt ideas, institutions and civil society - on the limits of French immigration control, James F. Hollifield immigration control without integration policy - an Austrian dilemma, Rainer Baubock migration control and minority policy - the case of the Netherlands, Hans van Amersfoort closing the doors to the Swedish welfare state, Tomas Hammar redrawing lines of control - the Norwegian welfare state dilemma, Grete Brochmann planning in the dark - the evolution of Italian control, Giuseppe Scio...

It is demonstrated that the current public health infrastructure has not improved health care access or linkages to necessary services, treatments, or culturally competent health care providers, and suggestions for how the Public Health 3.0 framework could advance this are provided.

Over the past two decades, a growing body of research has focused on immigrant selectivity and its effects on immigrant health, immigrant labor market outcomes, and children of immigrants’ educational outcomes. This review provides a theoretical overview of immigrant selectivity and its effects, and critically examines research on the effects of immigrant selectivity. Existing research suggests that positive immigrant selectivity helps explain paradoxical patterns of success among immigrants and their children in health, the labor market, and education. However, future research is needed that ...

Using millions of father-son pairs spanning more than 100 years of US history, we find that children of immigrants from nearly every sending country have higher rates of upward mobility than children of the US-born. Immigrants’ advantage is similar historically and today despite dramatic shifts in sending countries and US immigration policy. Immigrants achieve this advantage in part by choosing to settle in locations that offer better prospects for their children. (JEL J15, J18, J62, K37, N31, N32)

It is highlighted that to reduce bias and improve developmental science and practice with immigrants and with U.S.-born children of immigrants, there must be an inclusion of immigration-related threat and deprivation into the ACEs framework.

The corollary of the 'Digital Native'---young, technologically avid and literate---is the 'Digital Immigrant'---older, less familiar and comfortable with technology. The accompanying rhetoric posits that in the higher education sector, staff and students are ensconced firmly on either side of a 'digital divide', with critical implications and consequences for teaching and learning. This proposition was tested by surveying 108 staff and 2588 first-year undergraduate students across three Australian Universities about their use of a large selection of common and emerging technologies. These tech...

The fall armyworm (FAW), Spodoptera frugiperda is one of the most damaging crop pests, and it has become major threat to the food security of many countries. In order to monitor possible invasion of this pest into China, a searchlight trap was established in March 2018 in western Yunnan Province, China, where it has served as the “first station” for many pests that have migrated from Myanmar to China. A number of suspected FAW moths were captured and identified by DNA sequencing. The results showed that the FAW moth was first captured on December 11 and formed its first immigration peak in mid...

Recommendations for public health practice include investing in community health centers and organizations to ensure access to health and social services and advocating for federal-, state-, and local-level policy changes that reduce the negative health consequences associated with being undocumented.

Employment rates in the United States fell dramatically between February 2020 and April 2020 as the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic reverberated through the labor market.This paper uses data from the CPS Basic Monthly Files to document that the employment decline was particularly severe for immigrants.Historically, immigrant men were more likely to be employed than native men.The COVID-related labor market disruptions eliminated the immigrant employment advantage.By April 2020, immigrant men had lower employment rates than native men.Part of the relative increase in the immigrant rate o...

It is argued that given their social status, undocumented Latino/a and Indigenous immigrants are particularly vulnerable to disasters and require special consideration in disaster planning, and that understanding the differential impacts on undocumented immigrants can help improve disaster planning to protect the most vulnerable and stigmatized populations.

It was highlighted that this population exhibits a unique disease phenotype, such as male predominance and high frequency of perianal fistula in Crohn's disease, and a different disease phenotype including more complicated disease such asperianal complications was noted in Asian Americans and Asian Europeans.

We study a reform that granted European cross-border workers free access to the Swiss labor market and had a stronger effect on regions close to the border. The greater availability of cross-border workers increased foreign employment substantially. Although many cross-border workers were highly educated, wages of highly educated natives increased. The reason is a simultaneous increase in labor demand: the reform increased the size, productivity, and innovation performance of skill-intensive incumbent firms and attracted new firms, creating opportunities for natives to pursue managerial jobs. ...

Abstract While the structure of party competition evolves slowly, crisis-like events can induce short-term change to the political agenda. This may be facilitated by challenger parties who might benefit from increased attention to issues they own. We study the dynamic of such shifts through mainstream parties’ response to the 2015 refugee crisis, which strongly affected public debate and election outcomes across Europe. Specifically, we analyse how parties changed their issue emphasis and positions regarding immigration before, during, and after the refugee crisis. Our study is based on a corp...

Drawing on the translanguaging practices of Mongolian background English as a Second Language (ESL) immigrant women in Australia, this paper points out two main theoretical points: (1) when translanguaging moves beyond the classroom, it may provide ESL immigrants with an emotionally and linguistically safe space where they feel comfortable in managing their negative emotions through employing multiple entangled layers of linguistic and paralinguistic resources; (2) translanguaging data further presents that these ESL immigrants are deeply emotional and are prone to depression, putting their me...

Culture, religion, and spirituality were identified as intertwined key contributors to the healthcare experiences of African immigrants, and lack of culturally-competent healthcare, distrust, and complexity, of the U.S. health system, and the exorbitant cost of care were identified.

We study immigrant entrepreneurship in 2007 and 2012 using the Survey of Business Owners. First-generation immigrants create about 25% of new firms in America, but this share exceeds 40% in some states. Immigrant-owned firms tend to create fewer jobs than native-owned firms, have comparable pay levels, offer fewer benefits, and engage more in international activities. Immigrant-founded firms in high-tech sectors more closely resemble native-founded firms than in low-tech sectors. Prominent tech clusters display quite pronounced shares of immigrant entrepreneurs, with stronger high-tech immigra...

A systematic review of 58 MH studies examines whether there is a MH advantage among immigrants and explores changes in immigrants’ MH, besides critically assessing the use of HIE theory.