CRIS Scientific Seminar 2022-2023

Friday, February 10th 2023, 11:30 am
Sciences Po (1, place Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin) - Room K008

In or Out? Xenophobic Violence and Immigrant Integration.
Evidence from 19th century France

Mathilde Emeriau

Assistant Professor in Empirical Political Economy, LSE (London)

How do immigrants respond to xenophobic violence? We study the responses of Italian immigrants in 19th century France to a wave of xenophobic violence triggered by the assassination of the French president by an Italian anarchist in 1894.
By linking nominative census records between 1886, 1891 and 1896, we study the decision of Italian immigrants to either leave their host communities or stay and naturalize using a difference in differences design, comparing the change in exit and naturalization rate of Italians before and after the assassination to that of other foreigners in the same period.
While some Italians left, other stayed and naturalized.

Descriptively, our data is consistent with three different mechanisms: (1) Exposure to or fear of violence drove Italians out, (2) anticipating discrimination from consumers, business owners naturalized to avoid boycott by natives, (3) pressured by French workers, employers fired Italians workers who had to leave to find employment elsewhere.

Registration is mandatory. Thank you.

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