Caught between Cultures: Unintended Consequences of Improving Opportunity for Immigrant Girls
What happens when immigrant girls are given increased opportunities to integrate into society and the workplace, but their parents value more traditional cultural outcomes? In this report for the
National Bureau of Economic Research, Gordon Dahl, Cristina Felfe, Paul Frijters, and Helmut Rainer construct a game-theoretic model which shows how opportunities for immigrant girls can have the unintended consequence of reducing their well-being, since identity-concerned parents will constrain their daughter's choices. Using survey data from 57 schools in Germany they find that birthright citizenship lowers measures of life satisfaction and self-esteem for immigrant girls. This is especially true for Muslims where traditional cultural identity is particularly salient. The findings point towards immigrant girls being pushed by parents to conform to a role in traditional culture, whereas boys are allowed to take advantage of the opportunities that come with new citizenship.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w26674.pdf
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