Institutions, culture and migrants' preference for state-provided welfare:Longitudinal evidence from Germany

Using the difference-in-differences estimator and data provided by the German Socio-Economic Panel, this article explores migrants' preferences for state-provided welfare. The study finds evidence that over time, the preferences of immigrants and natives become more similar. We interpret this finding as evidence that the culture of home countries does not have a time-invariant effect, and that immigrants' welfare preferences are subject to a socializing effect of the host countries' welfare regime

Claus Offe :Europe entrapped

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Emigration for Development? An Exploration of the State's Role in the Development-Migration Nexus: The Case of Romania

This article explores the proposition that the developmental potential of emigration depends on the context of the sending countries. It builds on the insights from the institutional approach to development and adapts them to the migration-development nexus. It argues that government involvement is necessary if resources from emigration are to become seeds for development. By analysing the case of Romania, one of the largest labour sending countries in Eastern Europe, it argues that its laissez-faire approach is likely not enough to capitalize on emigrants' resources for development

Using population registers for migration and integration research : examples from Denmark and Sweden

The paper starts from the observation that research on immigrants’ integration trajectories needs detailed information, both objective and attitudinal, and ideally longitudinal. This study uses the cases of Denmark and Sweden – whose registers produce detailed records about all natives’ and immigrants’ lives in their host countries – in order to, first, review existing research on immigrants and their integration and, second, discuss the way in which register data are used, their caveats and their potential. The study finds that, in Denmark and Sweden, registers provide systematic objective data which are fully available to researchers and have the potential to help in the collection of high-quality subjective data. However, the population registers have some traits which may impact on the representativeness of the samples. The authors argue that, if researchers are aware of the caveats, registers can be used to obtain representative samples of immigrants, and register data can be complemented with survey-based attitudinal data, thus opening up new research opportunities for testing propositions on integration theories

Making Democratic Citizens: The Effects of Migration Experience on Political Attitudes in Central and Eastern Europe Making Democratic Citizens: The Effects of Migration Experience on Political Attitudes of Central and Eastern European Emigrants

Abstract: This article examines the effects of migration experience on political attitudes in Central and Eastern European countries. The rationale for this quest is the hypothesis that contact with democratic contexts translates into democratic political attitudes, for which evidence is so far inconclusive. In this article, we are interested to see whether migrants returning from Western countries display different political attitudes than their fellow non-migrant citizens. Our analysis of survey data shows that migration experience diversifies the array of political attitudes: while migrants are more likely to trust EU institutions and to try to convince friends in political discussions, they do not differ from non-migrants in their attitudes towards domestic institutions. Based on earlier works on determinants of political attitudes, we argue that migration experience has a significant effect only when these attitudes are related to objects that are associated with improvements in the migrants' material and cognitive status