09/12/2025

Mustapha Kokumo

Researcher

"The Effect of an Immigration Shock on the Integration of Earlier Migrants"

Abstract

As European societies become increasingly culturally diverse, a crucial question for social cohesion is how settled immigrants respond to the arrival of new immigrant groups. While natives’ reactions have been examined extensively, few studies consider incumbents’ responses, typically treating inflows as from a single origin. This paper studies how different incumbent immigrant groups in Germany adjusted their social integration in response to the arrival of large and diverse numbers of asylum seekers during the 2014–2016 European Refugee Crisis. Using the quasi-random allocation of asylum seekers across German states and a social integration index constructed from SOEP survey questions, I show that responses depend both on the origin of the incoming group and the cultural distance of the incumbent group to Germans. On average, an increase in asylum seekers from the Middle East—a culturally distant group—leads incumbent immigrants to increase their integration. In contrast, arrivals from the Western Balkans, a culturally closer group, generate a negative but statistically insignificant average response. These averages conceal meaningful heterogeneity. The behavioural adjustments are driven by immigrants at an intermediate cultural distance to Germans: this group increases its integration when Middle Eastern asylum seekers arrive, but reduces integration when Western Balkan arrivals rise. I provide evidence that the arrival of a more distant group improves natives’ perceptions of culturally distant communities, thereby raising the incentives of intermediate groups to integrate.

For past presentations, click here.