IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this paper

What Drives Individual Attitude towards Immigration in South Africa?

Author Info

  • Giovanni Facchini

    ()

    (Erasmus University, University of Milan, Centro Studi Luca d’Agliano, CEPR and CES-Ifo)

  • Anna Maria Mayda

    ()

    (Georgetown University, Centro Studi Luca d’Agliano, CEPR and IZA)

  • Mariapia Mendola

    ()

    (University of Milan Bicocca and Centro Studi Luca d’Agliano)

Abstract

This paper empirically investigates the determinants of individual attitudes towards immigration in South Africa using the 1996, 2001 and 2007 rounds of the World Value Survey. The main question we want to answer is whether South African public opinion on migration is affected by the potential labor market competition of migrants towards natives. We investigate this issue by estimating the impact of survey respondents’ individual skill on their pro-migration attitudes. Our estimates show that the impact of individual skill – measured both with educational attainment and an occupationbased measure – is positive and significant in both 1996 and 2001. Given that in both years immigrants to South Africa are on average more skilled than natives, we conclude that the labor-market channel does not play a role in preference formation over immigration. What might explain the positive impact of individual skill are noneconomic determinants.

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: http://www.dagliano.unimi.it/media/WP2011_325.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, University of Milano in its series Development Working Papers with number 325.

as
in new window

Length: 50
Date of creation: 27 Dec 2011
Date of revision: 27 Dec 2011
Handle: RePEc:csl:devewp:325
Contact details of provider: Postal:
Via Conservatorio 7 - 20122 Milano

Phone: +39 02 503 16486
Fax: +39 02 503 16475
Web page: http://www.dagliano.unimi.it/

More information through EDIRC

Keywords: Immigration Attitudes; South Africa;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration
  • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

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. Christian Dustmann & Ian Preston, 2000. "Racial and Economic Factors in Attitudes to Immigration," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 0839, Econometric Society.
  2. Giovanni Facchini & Anna Maria Mayda, 2008. "From individual attitudes towards migrants to migration policy outcomes: Theory and evidence," Economic Policy, CEPR;CES;MSH, vol. 23, pages 651-713, October.
  3. Facchini, Giovanni & Mayda, Anna Maria, 2006. "Individual Attitudes towards Immigrants: Welfare-State Determinants Across Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 2127, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  4. Hainmueller, Jens & Hiscox, Michael J., 2007. "Educated Preferences: Explaining Attitudes Toward Immigration in Europe," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 61(02), pages 399-442, April.
  5. Bauer, Thomas K. & Lofstrom, Magnus & Zimmermann, Klaus F., 2000. "Immigration Policy, Assimilation of Immigrants and Natives' Sentiments towards Immigrants: Evidence from 12 OECD-Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 187, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  6. Kenneth F. Scheve & Matthew J. Slaughter, 2001. "Labor Market Competition And Individual Preferences Over Immigration Policy," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(1), pages 133-145, February.
  7. Barry Chiswick & Timothy J. Hatton, 2003. "International Migration and the Integration of Labor Markets," NBER Chapters, in: Globalization in Historical Perspective, pages 65-120 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  8. David Card & Christian Dustmann & Ian Preston, 2009. "Immigration, Wages, and Compositional Amenities," CReAM Discussion Paper Series 0929, Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM), Department of Economics, University College London.
  9. Mayda, Anna Maria, 2007. "Why Are People More Pro-trade Than Pro-migration?," CEPR Discussion Papers 6351, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  10. Facchini, Giovanni & Mayda, Anna Maria & Mishra, Prachi, 2008. "Do Interest Groups Affect US Immigration Policy?," CEPR Discussion Papers 6898, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  11. Anna Maria Mayda (Georgetown University), 2005. "Who Is Against Immigration? A Cross-Country Investigation of Individual Attitudes towards Immigrants," Working Papers gueconwpa~05-05-10, Georgetown University, Department of Economics.
  12. Facchini, Giovanni & Willmann, Gerald, 2005. "The political economy of international factor mobility," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 201-219, September.
  13. Facchini, Giovanni & Mayda, Anna Maria & Puglisi, Riccardo, 2009. "Illegal immigration and media exposure: Evidence on individual attitudes," CEPR Discussion Papers 7593, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

as in new window


Cited by:

  1. de Coulon, Augustin & Radu, Dragos & Steinhardt, Max F., 2015. "Pane e Cioccolata: The Impact of Native Attitudes on Return Migration," IZA Discussion Papers 8845, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  2. Tiiu Paas & Olga Demidova, 2014. "What Explains People’S Attitudes Towards Immigrants? A Comparative Study Of Estonia And Russia," University of Tartu - Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Working Paper Series 94, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Tartu (Estonia).
  3. Lewis S. Davis & Sumit S. Deole, 2015. "Immigration, Attitudes and the Rise of the Political Right: The Role of Cultural and Economic Concerns over Immigration," CESifo Working Paper Series 5680, CESifo Group Munich.
  4. Alexandra Doyle & Amos C Peters & Asha Sundaram, 2014. "Skills mismatch and informal sector participation among educated immigrants: Evidence from South Africa," SALDRU Working Papers 137, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
  5. Yamamura, Eiji & Shin, Inyong, 2014. "Effect of consuming imported cultural goods on tolerance for immigrants from trade partners: Case of Japanese anime in Korea," MPRA Paper 58467, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  6. Yamamura, Eiji & Shin, Inyong, 2015. "Effect of consuming imported cultural goods on trading partners’ tolerance toward immigrants: The case of Japanese anime in Korea," MPRA Paper 67128, University Library of Munich, Germany.

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

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:csl:devewp:325. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

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

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.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.