Research
Final project report
Francesco Fasani, Tommaso Frattini & Reinhard Weisser:
Asylum policies in Europe and the refugee crisis [download] - December 2019
ABSTRACT
This report presents the main findings of a two-year research project on “Asylum Policies and the Refugee Crisis in Europe”, funded by a grant of the Nuffield Foundation.
Using multiple data sets from across Europe this project investigates three specific aspects of the interplay between asylum policies and refugees’ outcomes:
1. The influence of border control policies on the composition, size and direction of migrant and refugee flows, and the impact on migration-related hazards during migrants’ journeys (Theme 1).
2. The impact of different asylum and refugee policies on refugees’ socio-economic integration in the host countries (Theme 2).
3. The feedback into policy-making through the effect of refugee flows on host country nationals’ voting behaviour (Theme 3).
The project assesses the effectiveness of asylum policies in reaching their stated objectives, but also examines other unintended, but potentially relevant, longer term consequences. The combined findings provide timely policy-relevant evidence on the role of asylum policies.
Working papers
Francesco Fasani & Tommaso Frattini:
Border policies and unauthorized flows: Evidence from the refugee crisis in Europe
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we first describe the size, composition and characteristics of the recent unauthorised migration flows through external European Union borders. We then assess the effectiveness of border enforcement policies in deterring or diverting migration flows across alternative routes. Our empirical analysis is based on a novel dataset of Frontex records on attempted illegal crossing by quarter, country of origin and route of entry in Europe for the period 2009-2015. These records are matched with a dataset - that we assembled - on the monthly EU budget spent on border enforcement and search and rescue operations on each route of entry. Our empirical analysis is threefold. First, we document the existence of a political cycle in enforcement spending at the external EU borders which is orthogonal to expected flows. Second, we use this result as a first stage to deal with the endogeneity of border policies and retrieve the causal impact of enforcement on unauthorized ows. Third, we analyse the effect of outsourcing border controls to a non-EU transit country (the 2016 EU-Turkey deal) on deterrence and diversion of unauthorized flows.
Francesco Fasani & Reinhard Weisser:
Gunboat asylum policy: Migration-related incidents and naval operations in the central Mediterranean sea
ABSTRACT
This research evaluates the impact of five major national and international naval operations on the number of ships in distress and migrant fatalities in the central Mediterranean. Our methodological approach is based on linking operational areas and cell-specific frequencies of migration-related incidents in the years 2012-2017. Using variations in operational areas over time we find that different types of operations, i.e. those with a focus on border protection or search and rescue, may be of differing effectiveness in the short- and medium run. We further document the relevance of violence and the level of governmental control in the countries of departure with respect to the formation of migrant flows, and subsequently the occurrence of migration-related incidents in the Mediterranean.
Francesco Fasani, Tommaso Frattini & Luigi Minale:
(The Struggle for) Refugee integration into the labour market: Evidence from Europe
CReAM Discussion Paper, CPD 16/17 [Download]
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we use repeated cross-sectional survey data to study the labour market performance of refugees across several EU countries and over time. In the first part, we document that labour market outcomes for refugees are consistently worse than those for other comparable migrants. The gap remains sizeable even after controlling for individual characteristics as well as for unobservables using a rich set of fixed effects and interactions between area of origin, entry cohort and destination country. Refugees are 11.6 percent less likely to have a job and 22.1 percent more likely to be unemployed than migrants with similar characteristics. Moreover, their income, occupational quality and labour market participation are also relatively weaker. This gap persists until about 10 years after immigration. In the second part, we assess the role of asylum policies in explaining the observed refugee gap. We conduct a difference-in-differences analysis that exploits the differential timing of dispersal policy enactment across European countries: we show that refugee cohorts exposed to these polices have persistently worse labour market outcomes. Further, we find that entry cohorts admitted when refugee status recognition rates are relatively high integrate better into the host country labour market.
Francesco Fasani, Tommaso Frattini & Luigi Minale:
Lift the ban? Initial employment restrictions and refugee labour market outcomes
ABSTRACT
This article investigates the medium to long-term effects on refugee labour market outcomes of the temporary employment bans being imposed in many countries on recently arrived asylum seekers. Using a newly collected dataset covering almost 30 years of employment restrictions together with individual data for refugees entering European countries between 1985 and 2012, our empirical strategy exploits the geographical and temporal variation in employment bans generated by staggered introduction and removal coupled with frequent changes at the intensive margin. We find that exposure to a ban at arrival reduces refugee employment probability in post-ban years by 15%, an impact driven primarily by lower labour market participation. These effects are not mechanical, since we exclude refugees who may still be subject to employment restrictions, are non-linear in ban length, confirming that the very first months following arrival play a key role in shaping integration prospects, and last up to 10 years post arrival. We further demonstrate that the detrimental effects of employment bans are concentrated among less educated refugees, translate into lower occupational quality, and seem not to be driven by selective migration. Our causal estimates are robust to several identification tests accounting for the potential endogeneity of employment ban policies, including placebo analysis of non-refugee migrants and an instrumental variable strategy. To illustrate the costs of these employment restrictions, we estimate a EUR 37.6 billion output loss from the bans imposed on asylum seekers who arrived in Europe during the so-called 2015 refugee crisis.
Francesco Fasani & Elisabetta Pasini:
The politics of asylum seeker allocation? Evidence from the UK
Previous research on refugee migration
Francesco Fasani (ed., 2016):
Refugees and economic migrants: Facts, policies and challenges
eBook [Download]
Christian Dustmann, Francesco Fasani, Tommaso Frattini, Luigia Minale & Uta Schönberg (2017):
On the economics and politics of refugee migration
Economic Policy, 32 (91), 497-550 [access article]
CReAM Discussion Paper, CPD 16/16 [Download]