A. Danzer: Economic benefits of facilitating the integration of immigrants

 
Evidently, the countries with poorer anti-discrimination laws are those where immigrants tend to live in socio-economically more precarious conditions. It should be noted that it is impossible to establish any causality here, so we cannot assess whether immigrants are worse off due to these regulations or whether poorly skilled and integrated immigrants live in stricter countries because other countries positively select migrants. Similarly, countries in which immigrants are less well protected against discrimination make it much more difficult to attain citizenship. In most countries only the adoption of citizenship grants full civic rights (like voting etc.), so that barriers in access make integration as a long-term strategy economically disadvantageous and politically unviable...
The evidence presented in this article has shown thatintegration is associated with economic benefits atthe aggregate country level as well as for the individual household. This led to the natural question: Whyare some immigrants not integrated if non-integration is economically disadvantageous? We provided three reasons. Firstly, immigrants will choose to integrate if integration pays off. This requires that integration costs are not excessive. However, these costsare substantial for economically weaker households for whom ethnic networks provide viable alternativesources of income. Secondly, the social and ethnic segregation of immigrants across space provides relatively fewer opportunities and incentives to integrate. This can lead to poorer integration outcomes even if all immigrants are completely willing to acquire proficiency in the local language, culture and code of conduct. Thirdly, policies may reduce the incentives to integrate. Insufficient anti-discrimination laws and poor access to an immigration country’s citizenship can be found in those countries where immigrants perform less well at school, where segregation is greater and integration weaker...Read more