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Local Political Contexts And Immigrant Integration, Dalston Gawain Ward

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the causes of immigrant integration is critical, as its failure can pose substantial economic and social costs for natives and immigrants alike. In this dissertation, I explore the role of local politics and immigrant demographics in explaining variation in immigrant integration across localities. In the first chapter, I develop a theory linking local politics to immigrant integration. Specifically, I argue that when local governing parties have anti-immigrant ideologies, integration becomes more difficult. I test this argument using data from refugees entering Denmark between 1986 and 1998. These refugees were spatially dispersed across Denmark's 275 municipalities, allowing me to identify …