The Violent Legacy of Conflict: Evidence on Asylum Seekers, Crime, and Public Policy in Switzerland
The Violent Legacy of Conflict: Evidence on Asylum Seekers, Crime, and Public Policy in Switzerland
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DOI：
10.1257/aer.20170263
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发表时间：
2019-12-01
影响因子：
10.7
通讯作者：
Thoenig, Mathias
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Couttenier, Mathieu;Petrencu, Veronica;Thoenig, Mathias
我们实证研究如何过去暴露于原籍国的冲突使移民在东道国更容易发生暴力，重点是在瑞士寻求庇护者。我们利用了一个新颖独特的数据集，收集了2009-2016年期间在瑞士报告的所有犯罪，按犯罪者和受害者的国籍划分。我们的基线结果是，童年时期暴露于国内冲突/大规模杀戮的群体比平均群体更容易发生暴力犯罪。这种影响对于幼儿期接触尤其强烈，并且主要限于同国籍人，这与随着时间的推移而持续存在的群体间敌意相一致。我们利用瑞士公共政策的跨区域异质性来记录哪些融合政策最能减轻过去冲突暴露对暴力犯罪的不利影响。我们发现，向寻求庇护者提供劳动力市场准入可以消除三分之二的影响。
We study empirically how past exposure to conflict in origin countries makes migrants more violence-prone in their host country, focusing on asylum seekers in Switzerland. We exploit a novel and unique dataset on all crimes reported in Switzerland by the nationalities of perpetrators and of victims over 2009-2016. Our baseline result is that cohorts exposed to civil conflict/mass killing during childhood are 35 percent more prone to violent crime than the average cohort. This effect is particularly strong for early childhood exposure and is mostly confined to co-nationals, consistent with inter-group hostility persisting over time. We exploit cross-region heterogeneity in public policies within Switzerland to document which integration policies are best able to mitigate the detrimental effect of past conflict exposure on violent criminality. We find that offering labor market access to asylum seekers eliminates two-thirds of the effect.