Gianluca Bortoletto

Abstract: In this paper, I explore empirically some of the theoretical models of social disorganisation in Europe. Specifically, I estimate the effect of nationality and country of birth on the probability of self-reporting crime as an issue of the neighbourhood using EU-SILC household and individual level data for a pool of European countries (not only EU members) for the period 2004-2010. Nationality and country of birth are defined as EU, non-EU and nationals (native-born). Our findings show that being an EU citizen decreases the probability of self-reporting crime as a problem of the neighbourhood by 13 percent. However, this effect is not robust through different specifications. On the contrary, the effect of other elements of social disorganisation such as socio-economic deprivation, housing deprivation, concentrated disadvantage was highly significant and robust to many different specifications.

In this study, I focused on the effect of immigration from fragile countries, following the official definition provided by the World Bank, on crime rates in a pool of European countries using combined country level data from various sources. The reason for exploring the link between this specific type of immigration lies on the "violence-breed-violence" theory which states that experiencing directly or indirectly violence, as it happens in fragile and politically unstable countries, makes an individual to be more prone to violent conducts. The sample includes 19 countries in Europe for the period 2008-16. The findings show evidence against the "violence-breed-violence" theory as immigration from fragile countries has a negligible and insignificant impact on violent crimes. In addition, I found a negative and highly significant effect on robbery crimes. Specifically, a 10 percent increase in immigration from fragile countries is associated with a reduction in robbery crimes by 13 percent. This result is robust to various specifications.

Compelling theories predict the impact of immigration on crimes and these includes arguments of social disorganisation, cultural conflict, crime exportation and violent legacy. This study focuses on the impact of immigration from the so-called Fragile and Conflict-affected Situations (FCS), a list of socio-political and economic fragile countries provided by the World Bank, on crime rates using Italian provincial level data for the period 2010-17. Data were merged from different sources, and data on immigration and crime at provincial level were taken from the Italian National Institute for Statistics (ISTAT). Our findings show that immigration from FCS is not significantly correlated to the macro categories of crimes normally used in the literature, namely violent and property crimes. Instead, we found a sizeable, significant and positive impact on mafia crimes. Specifically, a 10 percent increase in FCS immigration is associated to an increase in mafia crimes by 9.1 percent. This effect was found to be significant throughout a battery of robustness checks.