Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Immigration, integration and terrorism: is there a clash of cultures?

Contents:

Author Info

Abstract

We test whether immigrants are more prone to support terror than natives because of lower opportunity costs, using the international World Values Survey data. We show that, in general, economically, politically and socially non-integrated persons are more likely to accept using violence for achieving political goals, consistent with the economic model of crime. We also find evidence for the destructive effects of a ‘clash of cultures’: Immigrants in OECD countries who originate from more culturally distanced countries in Africa and Asia appear more likely to view using violence for political goals as justified. Most importantly, we find no evidence that the clashof-cultures effect is driven by Islam religion, which appears irrelevant to terror support. As robustness test we relate individual attitude to real-life behavior: using country panels of transnational terrorist attacks in OECD countries, we show that the population attitudes towards violence and terror determine the occurrence of terror incidents, as does the share of immigrants in the population. A further analysis shows a positive association of immigrants from Africa and Asia with transnational terror, while the majority religion Islam of the sending country does not appear to play a role. Again, we find that culture defined by geographic proximity dominates culture defined by religion.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: ftp://www.ceistorvergata.it/repec/rpaper/RP182.pdf
File Function: Main text
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Tor Vergata University, CEIS in its series CEIS Research Paper with number 182.

as in new window
Length: 69 pages
Date of creation: 20 Jan 2011
Date of revision: 20 Jan 2011
Handle: RePEc:rtv:ceisrp:182

Contact details of provider:
Postal: CEIS - Centre for Economic and International Studies - Faculty of Economics - University of Rome "Tor Vergata" - Via Columbia, 2 00133 Roma
Phone: +390672595601
Fax: +39062020687
Email:
Web page: http://www.ceistorvergata.it
More information through EDIRC

Order Information:
Postal: CEIS - Centre for Economic and International Studies - Faculty of Economics - University of Rome "Tor Vergata" - Via Columbia, 2 00133 Roma
Email:
Web: http://www.ceistorvergata.it

Related research

Keywords: terror; terrorism; violence; conflict; immigration; culture; integration; crime;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Pezzini, Silvia & Robert MacCulloch, 2003. "The Role of Freedom, Growth and Religion in the Taste for Revolution," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2003 163, Royal Economic Society.
  2. Dreher, Axel & Gassebner, Martin, 2008. "Does political proximity to the U.S. cause terror?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 99(1), pages 27-29, April.
  3. Gary S. Becker, 1968. "Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 76, pages 169.
  4. Justina AV Fischer, 2010. "Accounting for Unobserved Country Heterogeneity in Happiness Research: Country Fixed Effects versus Region Fixed Effects," CEIS Research Paper 164, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 28 May 2010.
  5. Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell & Paul Frijters, 2004. "How Important is Methodology for the estimates of the determinants of Happiness?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(497), pages 641-659, 07.
  6. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2008. "Long Term Persistence," EIEF Working Papers Series 0810, Einaudi Institute for Economic and Finance (EIEF), revised Aug 2008.
  7. Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard & Mogens Justesen & Robert Klemmensen, 2006. "The political economy of freedom, democracy and transnational terrorism," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 128(1), pages 289-315, July.
  8. Jan Schnellenbach, 2005. "Appeasing Nihilists? Some Economic Thoughts on Reducing Terrorist Activity," Law and Economics 0507001, EconWPA.
  9. Alan B. Krueger & Jitka Maleckova, 2003. "Education, Poverty and Terrorism: Is There a Causal Connection?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(4), pages 119-144, Fall.
  10. Dreher, Axel & Fischer, Justina A.V., 2009. "Government Decentralization as a Disincentive for Transnational Terror? An Empirical Analysis," IZA Discussion Papers 4259, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  11. Bernholz, Peter, 2004. "Supreme values as the basis for terror," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 317-333, June.
  12. Nannestad, Peter, 2004. "Immigration as a challenge to the Danish welfare state?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 755-767, September.
  13. Frey, Bruno S. & Luechinger, Simon, 2004. "Decentralization as a disincentive for terror," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 509-515, June.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Subhayu Bandyopadhyay & Todd Sandler, 2011. "Immigration policy and counterterrorism," Working Papers 2011-012, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rtv:ceisrp:182

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Barbara Piazzi).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.