Abstract

I will provide an overview of a project that focuses on immigrants' integration and ties to the origin. It currently consists of two papers. The first paper asks: how do political preferences and voting behaviors respond to information coming from abroad? I focus on the international migration network and document that across a set of topics, opinion changes at the origins spill over to 1st- and 2nd-gen immigrants. Using a plausibly exogenous variation in origin-country exposure to the European Refugee Crisis of 2015, I show that origin-country shocks trigger learning from the origins. When the Crisis hits the origins, changing sentiment about refugees spreads to immigrants abroad, and affects the extent of far-right voting abroad. Data from Google Trends and Facebook shows that elevated attention to events at the origins and communication with like-minded groups there are the mechanisms. 

The second paper (earlier stage) explores the effects of new ICTs on the process of immigrants' social and economic integration. In a model of migration and networking, where immigrants allocate time between local and origin-country ties, an increase in origin-country connectivity decreases immigrants' integration locally. Using the variation in the Internet penetration across immigrants' origins and years, together with the emergence of new low-cost connectivity tools in 2005-2006, I find that expanding communication opportunities with countries of origin affect the process of (i) selection into migration, and (ii) integration of immigrants once they settle at destination.