Cultural Assimilation during the Age of Mass Migration

Abramitzky, Ran; Boustan, Leah Platt; Eriksson, Katherine

doi:10.3386/w22381

Cited by 83 publications

(81 citation statements)

References 58 publications

(58 reference statements)

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“…Together with Card et al (2008) and Chay and Munshi (2013), our findings highlight the importance of looking for these kind of threshold patterns when considering community-related behavior. Our findings are also in line with recent work on the US by Abramitzky et al (2014), Fouka (2014), and Fulford et al (2015, which suggests that environmental features were significant in determining how culture evolved in 19th and early 20th century United States.…”

supporting

confidence: 82%

Melting pot or salad bowl: the formation of heterogeneous communities

Advani¹,

Reich

2015

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Relatively little is known about what determines whether a heterogenous population ends up in a cooperative or divisive situation. This paper proposes a theoretical model to understand what social structures arise in heterogeneous populations. Individuals face a trade-off between cultural and economic incentives: an individual prefers to maintain his cultural practices, but doing so can inhibit interaction and economic exchange with those who adopt different practices. We find that a small minority group will adopt majority cultural practices and integrate. In contrast, minority groups above a certain critical mass, may retain diverse practices and may also segregate from the majority. The size of this critical mass depends on the cultural distance between groups, the importance of culture in day to day life, and the costs of forming a social tie. We test these predictions using data on migrants to the United States in the era of mass migration, and find support for the existence of a critical mass of migrants above which social structure in heterogeneous populations changes discretely towards cultural distinction and segregation.

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supporting

confidence: 82%

Melting pot or salad bowl: the formation of heterogeneous communities

Advani¹,

Reich

2015

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“…61 However, in this case, immigrants may be able to mitigate discrimination by changing their self-presentation to de-emphasize their foreign roots. Immigrants change their own names and choose less foreign names for their children as they spend more time in the US (Carneiro, Lee and Reis, 2015; Abramitzky, Boustan and Eriksson, 2016). Biavaschi, Giulietti and Siddique (2013) find that immigrants who changed their names between filing their first and second papers for naturalization in the 1920s experienced more occupational upgrading, perhaps because Americanized names shielded them from discrimination.…”

Section: Immigrant Assimilation In the Usmentioning

confidence: 99%

Immigration in American Economic History

Abramitzky

Boustan

2017

Journal of Economic Literature

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241

150

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The United States has long been perceived as a land of opportunity for immigrants. Yet, both in the past and today, US natives have expressed concern that immigrants fail to integrate into US society and lower wages for existing workers. This paper reviews the literatures on historical and contemporary migrant flows, yielding new insights on migrant selection, assimilation of immigrants into US economy and society, and the effect of immigration on the labor market.

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“…One of the best examples for the strength of these sentiments is the revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, which openly embraced an anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic ideology. Similarly, immigrants from non Anglo-Saxon and non English-speaking countries were the main target of the anti-immigration rhetoric at that time (Abramitzky et al, 2018;Leonard, 2016).…”

Section: Cultural Distance: Religious A¢ Liationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…10 Abramitzky et al (2012Abramitzky et al ( , 2014Abramitzky et al ( , 2018 study the selection and the assimilation of European immigrants during the Age of Mass Migration, while Ager and Hansen (2017), Lafortune et al (2016), and Sequeira et al (2017) investigate their impact on contemporaneous and long-run economic development. Closest to my work is the paper by Ager and Hansen (2017), who, consistently with my results, document that the Immigration Acts slowed down economic activity and industrialization across US counties and cities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gifts of the Immigrants, Woes of the Natives: Lessons from the Age of Mass Migration

Tabellini¹

2018

SSRN Journal

145

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In this paper, I show that political opposition to immigration can arise even when immigrants bring signi…cant economic prosperity to receiving areas. I exploit exogenous variation in European immigration to US cities between 1910 and 1930 induced by World War I and the Immigration Acts of the 1920s, and instrument immigrants' location decision relying on pre-existing settlement patterns. Immigration increased natives' employment and occupational standing, and fostered industrial production and capital utilization. However, despite these economic bene…ts, it triggered hostile political reactions, such as the election of more conservative legislators, higher support for anti-immigration legislation, and lower public goods provision. Stitching the economic and the political results together, I provide evidence that natives'backlash was, at least in part, due to cultural di¤erences between immigrants and natives, suggesting that diversity might be economically bene…cial but politically hard to manage.

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Cultural Assimilation during the Age of Mass Migration

Cited by 83 publications

References 58 publications

Melting pot or salad bowl: the formation of heterogeneous communities

Melting pot or salad bowl: the formation of heterogeneous communities

Immigration in American Economic History

Gifts of the Immigrants, Woes of the Natives: Lessons from the Age of Mass Migration

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