Roots, Assimilation and Culture: Decomposing Origin and Destination factors Among Immigrants.

Immigration is one of the most pressing issues facing European societies today, raising
significant cultural concerns alongside its economic implications (Collier, 2013; Borjas, 2015).
The arrival of immigrants from diverse backgrounds has sparked debates about the integration
of different cultural values, norms, and perspectives into host countries. Recent surveys
indicate that cultural differences are a primary concern for Europeans regarding immigration
(Confrontations, 2023), and this sentiment has been linked to the resurgence of populism
across the continent (Bonomi et al., 2021; Guriev and Papaioannou, 2022; Docquier et al.,
2024). Understanding the cultural assimilation and persistence of immigrants is thus crucial
for addressing these societal concerns. The project aims to address the following questions:
do the cultural preferences and values of migrants depend more on where they live (destination) or where they come from (origin)? How does assimilation and persistence of origin country culture vary across different cultural traits? Providing a quantitative answer to
these questions is therefore crucial, to address societal concerns and to better understand
the degree of persistence of different cultural traits (Inglehart, 2020).

This project contributes to the ongoing debate on immigrants’ cultural assimilation and
persistence of origin country culture, by providing empirical evidence on the factors influencing these dynamics. First, it will quantify the contributions of origin and destination
countries in explaining immigrants’ cultural values using a novel methodology adapted from
the Abowd-Kramarz-Margolis (AKM) literature (Abowd et al., 1999; Card et al., 2013; Bonhomme et al., 2023). Devloped to understand the drivers of wage inequality, such approach has been widely adopted to then decompose the role of individual-specific and area-specific factors in various outcomes, such as intergenerational mobility, health outcomes consumption preferences and political preferences (Bronnenberg et al., 2012; Finkelstein et al., 2016; Chetty and Hendren, 2018; Cantoni and Pons, 2022). This project leverages multi-country surveys and second-generation immigrants as ”movers”, who link their parents’ country of origin and their own country of residence without having chosen the latter based on cultural motives, creating therefore a connected set of origin and destination countries, allowing to separately identify the origin and destination specific fixed effect (Di Addario et al., 2023). By using a feasible variance decomposition method (Card et al., 2013), the project provides a clear quantification of the role of origin and destination factors in shaping migrants’ cultural preferences. Second, it identifies specific factors that predict the degree of cultural assimilation and persistence for various cultural traits. These factors include, for instance, labor market integration, attitudes of the native population, media influence, and the presence of diaspora (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001; Alba and Nee, 2009; Giavazzi et al., 2019). The project therefore provides a novel methodological approach to the study cultural persistence across various traits, origin and destination countries (Guiso et al., 2006; Alesina and Giuliano, 2015).

The empirical analysis relies on two multi-country and publicly available datasets: the
European Social Survey (ESS) and the Integrated Values Survey (IVS). The ESS includes
data from 36 European countries collected over 10 waves between 2002 and 2020, while the
IVS merges the European Values Study and the World Values Survey, covering 106 countries
from 1981 to 2022. These datasets provide detailed socio-demographic information, including
parents’ countries of birth, and a wide range of cultural values and attitudes, enabling
a comprehensive study of cultural assimilation and persistence across different traits and
regions. Moreover, they include a relevant sample of second-generation immigrants, which
are necessary for the identification of the parameters of interest.

This project aims to provide novel quantitative evidence on the pressing issue of cultural
assimilation (or lack thereof) of immigrants in both developed and developing countries. By
adapting a well-grounded methodology to the study of cultural persistence, it will offer unique
descriptive evidence of the factors enhancing this process. Additionally, the project will
analyze different cultural traits in isolation, acknowledging the varying speeds of adjustment
for different traits (Giavazzi et al., 2019; Desmet and Wacziarg, 2021).