Labor Market Integration, Local Conditions and Inequalities: Evidence from Refugees in Switzerland

“Labor Market Integration, Local Conditions and Inequalities: Evidence from Refugees in Switzerland”

by Martina Viarengo

You may follow the seminar at the following link: https://unibocconi-it.zoom.us/j/94910720846

ABSTRACT:

The paper examines the patterns of economic integration of refugees in Switzerland, a country with a long tradition of hosting refugees, a top-receiving host in Europe, and a prominent example of a multicultural society. It relies on a unique longitudinal dataset consisting of administrative records and social security data for the universe of refugees in Switzerland over 1998–2018. This data is used to reconstruct the individual-level trajectories of refugees and to follow them since arrival over the life-cycle. The empirical analysis exploits the government dispersal policy in place since 1998, which consists of the random allocation of refugees across cantons, to identify the causal effects of the local initial conditions. The study finds that higher unemployment rates at arrival slow down the integration process, whereas the existence of a co-ethnic network does not consistently lead to a faster integration. It is shown that a change toward more restrictive attitudes over time in a canton (relative to attitudes in other cantons) leads to higher employment rates of the successive refugee cohorts. These effects persist over the refugees’ life-cycle. Together these results, highlight the importance of taking a longer run perspective when examining the effectiveness of policies, as the effects may vary over time and different complementary interventions may be needed in the short vs. long-run.

BIO:

Martina Viarengo is an Associate Professor in the Department of International Economics. She is faculty associate at the Harvard University, Center for International Development and principal investigator of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research. Prior to joining the Graduate Institute's faculty, Professor Viarengo was an economist at the Centre for Economic Performance of the London School of Economics and a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government. Professor Viarengo is a specialist in public policy, labor economics and economic development. Her research focuses on labor markets, comparative education policy and international migration. She has examined education policy, gender gaps and labor market outcomes in the OECD and developing countries in trying to better understand how to reduce poverty and inequality. In 2018 Dr. Viarengo was awarded with the Eisenhower Fellowship. In 2013 she was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Professor Viarengo was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and she was named Newton International Fellow by the British Academy, Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering. She holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and a Master’s Degree from Northwestern University.