Mardi 21 janvier 2020 — Séminaire DYNAMICS

INVITES :

• Simone Bertoli (Univ. Cler­mont Auvergne, CNRS, CERDI, IZA, ICM);
• Alexia Loch­mann (PSE, Univ. Paris 1‑Panthéon Sorbonne, ICM);
• Matthieu Soli­gnac (Univ. de Bordeaux, CNRS, Comp­trasec, Ined, ICM);
• Sorana Toma (ENSAE, ICM);
• Liam Wren-Lewis (PSE/​INRA, ICM).

HORAIRES ET LIEU :

• 15:30–19:00 ;
• Campus Condorcet, Centre des colloques, Salle 3.03.

RESUMES :

Simone Bertoli (Univer­sité Cler­mont Auvergne, CNRS, CERDI, IZA, ICM)
Co-resi­dence patterns of the indi­vi­duals left behind by Mexican migrants : evidence and analy­tical impli­ca­tions (travail conjoint avec Elsa Gautrain et Elie Murard)

The occur­rence of an inter­na­tional migra­tion episode is often asso­ciated with a change in the compo­si­tion of the house­hold of origin of the migrants. We draw on data from Mexico to show how these varia­tions in co-resi­dence choices have rele­vant impli­ca­tions for the analysis of the conse­quences of migra­tion on the indi­vi­duals left behind. The large-scale survey connected to the 2010 Census, which includes retros­pec­tive ques­tions on migra­tion, reveals that the wives and their chil­dren left behind by a male migrant very often start co-resi­ding with their parents after the depar­ture of the husband.These changes in house­hold compo­si­tion inter­fere with the ability of the survey to enume­rate past migra­tion episodes. This, in turn, entails that the survey misses a large number of women and chil­dren left behind by the migrants, which differ along rele­vant obser­vable charac­te­ris­tics from those that are captured in the data.

Alexia Loch­mann (PSE, Univer­sité Paris 1‑Panthéon Sorbonne, ICM)
Fake news and cultural iden­tity. Evidence from South Tyrol in 1939 (travail conjoint avec Max Viskanic)

This research paper aims at finding answers to the ques­tion of whether fake news can provoke an imme­diate response in the forma­tion or mani­fes­ta­tion of cultural prefe­rences of the affected popu­la­tion. For this purpose, we carry out an event study, relying on a regres­sion discon­ti­nuity design, to study whether parents changed the naming patterns of their newborn chil­dren follo­wing the spread of fake news around possible forced emigra­tion. In 1939, the so-called “South Tyrol Option Agree­ment” between Musso­lini and Hitler asked all German-spea­king heads of house­holds in Northern Italy to decide whether to stay in their home­land and accept the inevi­table italia­ni­za­tion, or to emigrate to Germany and preserve their cultural iden­tity. The announ­ce­ment of the policy was over­sha­dowed by a series of fake news, histo­ri­cally named « Sici­lian Legend », accor­ding to which indi­vi­duals who did not want to emigrate to Germany would be deported to the southern­most regions of Italy. This research paper shows that the fake news around the possible impli­ca­tions of the policy shook the affected popu­la­tion to the point of pushing them to streng­then their cultural iden­tity. We analyze possible chan­nels of the observed change in naming patterns and find the channel of streng­thened cultural iden­tity to be the most impor­tant one, as compared to acti­vated cultural iden­tity and a change in incen­tives. Further­more, we look at possible hete­ro­ge­neity of effects and find similar effects for male and female chil­dren, but a more pronounced effect for later born chil­dren as compared to first born children.

Matthieu Soli­gnac (Univer­sité de Bordeaux, CNRS, Comp­trasec ; Ined ; ICM)
Homeow­ner­ship of immi­grants in France : selec­tion effects related to inter­na­tional migra­tion flows (travail conjoint avec Laurent Gobillon).

We inves­ti­gate the diffe­rence in homeow­ner­ship rates between natives and first-gene­ra­tion immi­grants in France, and how this diffe­rence evolves over the 1975–1999 period, by using a large longi­tu­dinal dataset. We find that the homeow­ner­ship gap is large and has remained steady. Entries into the terri­tory have a large nega­tive effect on the evolu­tion of homeow­ner­ship rates for immi­grants. Although entrants have on average better educa­tion than people staying in the terri­tory for the entire period (i.e. stayers), they are younger and thus at an earlier stage in the wealth accu­mu­la­tion process. They are also located in large cities, where the homeow­ner­ship rate is lower, and the returns to their charac­te­ris­tics are lower than those for stayers. Leavers have a posi­tive effect on the evolu­tion of homeow­ner­ship rates for immi­grants because they have a low access to homeow­ner­ship and they exit the country. But this effect is only one-fifth that of entrants. For stayers, we show that returns to charac­te­ris­tics change in favor of immi­grants, which is consistent with assi­mi­la­tion theo­ries. However, among stayers who access homeow­ner­ship, immi­grants end up in owned dwel­lings that are of lesser quality than natives.

Sorana Toma (ENSAE, ICM)
Social Posi­tion and Migrant Social Capital in Inter­na­tional Migra­tion from Africa to Europe (travail conjoint avec Mao-Mei Liu).

Social capital has been concep­tua­lized as a mecha­nism through which socioe­co­nomic inequa­li­ties are rein­forced, and a growing body of labor market, educa­tion and health studies support this. In contrast, some migra­tion scho­lars believe that migrant social capital can poten­tially broaden access to migra­tion, but few empi­rical studies exist. We build on prior work by Nan Lin and Sandra Smith to examine indi­vi­duals’ access, mobi­li­za­tion, and returns to social capital and how these are asso­ciated with their social posi­tion. Using retros­pec­tive data from the Migra­tion between Africa and Europe (MAFE) project, we study how indi­vi­dual social capital is stra­ti­fied for migra­tion to Europe from DR Congo, Ghana and Senegal. Our results suggest that access, mobi­li­za­tion and returns to social capital are deeply and diffe­rently stra­ti­fied by social posi­tion. While high-status indi­vi­duals have greater access to migrant networks, low-status pros­pec­tive migrants are more dependent on migrant social capital to migrate and are more likely to mobi­lize it to help finance the trip.

Liam Wren-Lewis (PSE/​INRA, ICM)
Impacts of diver­sity in a national volun­tee­ring program

This project aims to unders­tand the impact of expo­sure to diver­sity over several months among youth who have volun­teered for « service civique ». By rando­mi­zing who volun­teers are paired with, we will be able to measure the impact of spen­ding time working with people from different back­grounds across a range of dimen­sions inclu­ding immi­gra­tion history, educa­tion level and gender. We will also explore whether pairings can have an impact on outcomes such as civic parti­ci­pa­tion, poli­tical prefe­rences or economic integration.