Migration and Cultural Change

57 Pages Posted: 22 Sep 2020

See all articles by Hillel Rapoport

Hillel Rapoport

Paris School of Economics (PSE)

Sulin Sardoschau

Humboldt University - Department of Economics

Arthur Silve

Université Laval; Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: 2020

Abstract

We examine both theoretically and empirically how migration affects cultural change in home and host countries. Our theoretical model integrates various compositional and cultural transmission mechanisms of migration-based cultural change for which it delivers distinctive testable predictions on the sign and direction of convergence. We then use the World Value Survey for the period 1981-2014 to build time-varying measures of cultural similarity for a large number of country pairs and exploit within country-pair variation over time. Our evidence is inconsistent with the view that immigrants are a threat to the host country’s culture. While migrants do act as vectors of cultural diffusion and bring about cultural convergence, this is mostly to disseminate cultural values and norms from host to home countries (i.e., cultural remittances).

Keywords: migration, cultural change, globalization

JEL Classification: F22, 015, Z10

Suggested Citation

Rapoport, Hillel and Sardoschau, Sulin and Silve, Arthur, Migration and Cultural Change (2020). CESifo Working Paper No. 8547, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3689469 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3689469

Hillel Rapoport (Contact Author)

Paris School of Economics (PSE) ( email )

48 Boulevard Jourdan
Paris, 75014 75014
France

Sulin Sardoschau

Humboldt University - Department of Economics ( email )

Unter den Linden 6
Berlin, AK Berlin 10099
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.google.com/view/sulinsardoschau/home

Arthur Silve

Université Laval ( email )

1025 avenue des sciences-humaines
Québec, QC G1V 0A6
Canada
4186562131 (Phone)
4186562131 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.fss.ulaval.ca/notre-faculte/repertoire-du-personnel/arthur-silve

Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse ( email )

Université Toulouse 1 Capitole
1, esplanade de l'Université
Toulouse, 31080
France

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
1,528
Abstract Views
4,315
Rank
23,802
PlumX Metrics