The issue of welfare receipt by immigrants is highly controversial across Europe. In this paper, we assess whether immigrants are more likely to receive welfare payments relative to natives across a range of European countries. Using the European Union Survey on Income and Living Conditions for...

This paper studies the educational investment decisions of returning migrants while abroad in the context of their decisions about the choice of activity upon returning and the duration of migration. The theoretical model builds on Dustmann (1999), Dustmann and Kirchkamp (1992) and Mesnard...

Whether Europe will be able to stand up to its internal and external challenges crucially depends on its ability to manage its internal mobility and inflows of international migrants. Using a unique expert opinion survey, we document that Europe needs skilled migrants, and skill mismatch is to...

This paper documents assimilation of immigrants in European destinations along cultural, civic, and economic dimensions, distinguishing by immigrants' generation, duration of stay, and origin. Based on the European Social Survey, it suggests that assimilation may have multiple facets, and take...

The concentration of people with diverse socio-cultural backgrounds in particular geographic areas may boost the creation of new ideas, knowledge spillovers, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. In this paper we measure the impact of the size, skills, and diversity of immigration on the...

This paper explores the role of culture in determining divorce decisions by examining country of origin differences in divorce rates of immigrants in the United States. Because childhood-arriving immigrants are all exposed to a common set of US laws and institutions, we interpret relationships...

The analysis of how the economic crisis in Europe has reshaped migration flows faces two challenges: (i) the confounding influence of correlated changes in the attractiveness of alternative destinations, and (ii) the role of rapidly changing expectations about the evolution of the economic...

We study how the EU enlargement in 2004 and the Great Recession in the late 2000s have shaped the scale and composition of migration flows from the New Member States to Germany. We demonstrate that immigration increased substantially despite the restrictions on the German labor market, and that...

This chapter summarizes the main trends, policies and empirical evidence regarding immigration in Europe. We start by providing descriptive evidence on long-term immigration trends and current characteristics of the immigrant populations in various important European destination countries and...

This paper first presents a brief historical overview of immigration in Europe. We then provide (and distinguishing between EU and non-EU immigrants) a comprehensive analysis of the skill structures of immigrants and their labor market integration in the different European countries, their...