Immigration is one of the hottest topics of our age, with one of the more interesting elements of the debate the way migrants integrate into their host community.  There is a sense that living in enclaves of ethnic people is seen as bad as it separates migrants from native people, but native people also want migrants to work and contribute financially to the local economy.

New research from Stanford suggests these twin desires may not be compatible.  It suggests that refugees benefit when they reside in ethnic communities as these communities help the newcomers find work and navigate local bureaucracy.  The study, which explored the Swiss labor market, found that refugees were more likely to find work in their first five years if they lived in an area where a large community existed of people who shared their nationality, language or ethnicity.

“Our study shows that ethnic networks can be beneficial for the economic status of refugees at least within the first few years of their arrival in the host country,” the researchers explain.

Finding work

The researchers analyzed official data on over 8,500 asylum seekers who were given protection status in Switzerland between 2008 and 2013.  The data contained information on when they entered the labor market, and in what kind of work they did.

Official policy in the country sees officials randomly assign each new refugee a place to live in one of the country’s 26 cantons.  These allocations are not typically made with any input from the refugee, unless a family member already lives in the country.  Refugees cannot generally move outside of their assigned canton for five years.

The analysis showed that just 40% of refugees were able to find work during their fifth year in the country, but interestingly, those who lived in cantons with a larger ethnic community were much more likely to have done so.  Indeed, in such circumstances, around 20% of refugees had found work within three years, versus just 14% of those living in an area with few countrymen.

“Given that refugee employment is generally very low, the increase in employment is an important effect,” the researchers explain. “This is just one piece of a bigger puzzle on what helps refugees integrate within their host country.”

The authors believe their findings go against the myth that ethnic enclaves are a failure of integrating immigrants.  Perhaps more importantly however, they should help to inform policy making that often tries to disperse refugees throughout the country to avoid such ethnic enclaves emerging.

“What this research suggests is that those dispersal policies come with some costs, in terms of new refugees not benefitting from the positive effects of ethnic networks,” the researchers conclude. “It doesn’t mean that these policies are generally bad, but it does highlight that there is one potential benefit of geographically concentrated ethnic networks that European officials are not capturing.”