Asylum Seeker and Refugee Integration in Europe

本研究旨在确定哪些政策最适合促进难民的社会和经济融合。尽管这个问题很重要，但现有的研究未能为政策提供信息，因为它往往依赖于高度汇总的国家模型，这些模型根据国家是否支持同化主义或多元文化政策来区分国家。本研究的pi集中在三个国家（德国、法国和瑞士）的地方，并为每个国家评估具体政策对融合成功的影响。他们特别关注了政策的四个关键要素：1)影响庇护申请处理时间的官僚协议；2)难民的地理分配；3)构建难民获得公共福利和劳动力市场的政策；4)政府对国有公民课程投资的回报，以及这些投资是否对移民在东道国的成功产生影响。该研究利用识别策略来识别各种政策对随后的一体化结果的因果影响，这是所有欧洲和北美国家都非常关注的问题。对难民融合政策影响的系统评估为现有的移民研究提供了重要贡献：(1)将先进的计量经济学和实验方法应用于一个新的政策领域，以产生内部有效的证据；2)通过直接衡量高度弱势群体的政治和社会结果，促进对经济成功之外的一体化结果的理解。在方法上，政策指标利用行政和调查数据提供的关于难民结果的详细数据，重点确定四个因素的影响：(i)影响处理庇护申请所需时间的政策措施；难民的地理分配；安排难民获得政府福利和进入劳动力市场的政策；（iv）管理融合课程要求的规定（如语言、公民或就业市场培训）。

General SummaryThis research seeks to establish which policies are best suited to promote the social and economic integration of refugees. Despite the importance of this question, extant research fails to inform policy, as it tends to rely on highly aggregated national models that differentiate countries based on whether they espouse assimilationist or multicultural policies. The PIs of this study focus on localities in three countries - Germany, France, and Switzerland - and for each, evaluate the effects of specific policies on integration success. In particular, they focus on four key elements of policy: 1) bureaucratic protocols that affect the length of time it takes for asylum claims to be processed, 2) the geographic allocation of refugees 3) policies that structure refugees' access to public benefits and the labor market, and 4) the returns to government investments in state-run courses in citizenship, and whether these are consequential for immigrant success in the host country. The study leverages identification strategies to identify causally the impact of various policies on subsequent integration outcomes, which is a crucial concern for all European and North American countries.Technical SummaryThis systematic evaluation of the impact of refugee integration policies provides important contributions to existing immigration research by (1) applying advanced econometric and experimental methods to a new policy area in order to produce internally-valid evidence; and 2) advancing understanding of integration outcomes beyond economic success by directly measuring political and social outcomes for highly vulnerable populations. Methodologically, the PIs leverage detailed data on refugee outcomes provided by administrative and survey data to focus on identifying the effect of four factors: (i) policy measures that affect the length of time it takes for asylum claims to be processed; (ii) geographic allocation of refugees; (iii) policies that structure refugees' access to governmental benefits and the labor market; and (iv) regulations that govern integration course requirements (such as language, civic, or job market training).