Subject Area
Economics
Abstract
Across the chapters of this dissertation, I analyze the drivers of immigrant location choice in host countries. I specifically contrast the sorting patterns of refugee and nonrefugee immigrants, and explore how the influence of ethnic networks, economic conditions, and other host-country and origin-country characteristics contribute to the distinct location choices observed across these groups.
Prior research suggests that immigrants are drawn to both economic fundamentals and ethnic networks. However, places that have good fundamentals–in terms of employment, wages, and desirable house prices–often have disproportionately large ethnic networks, making it difficult to disentangle the contributions of economic fundamentals and ethnic networks in driving immigrant location choices. In the first chapter of my dissertation, I exploit variation in ethnic networks and economic conditions arising from the allocation of refugees by resettlement agencies, which creates geographically dispersed ethnic networks and substantial cross-variation between ethnic networks and economic fundamentals. I then track refugee secondary migration to estimate the relative importance of ethnic networks and economic fundamentals in determining refugees’ relocation decisions. I find that refugee secondary migration responds strongly to co-ethnic networks and, surprisingly, tends to flow toward cities with lower employment and wages after accounting for ethnic networks. These findings contrast with previous studies which find disproportionately large immigrant inflows to high-wage, high-cost cities.
While the first chapter contrasts the role of ethnic networks and economic fundamentals more broadly, the second chapter of my dissertation studies the relative importance of two distinct economic factors, employment opportunities and house prices, for refugees and nonrefugee immigrant groups. While existing research generally concludes that immigrants are primarily motivated by employment and wage characteristics of locations, it often fails to distinguish between refugees and non-refugee immigrants–groups that face distinct migration contexts and may exhibit systematically different sorting patterns upon arrival. I study the relocation decisions of refugees in the US in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008-9, which saw house prices plummet and employment fall throughout the country. I reproduce earlier findings showing Mexican immigrants relocating to cities with relatively strong labor markets. Contrastingly, I find that refugees’ relocation decisions were largely motivated by relative house price declines across cities rather than favorable employment opportunities. The effect is substantial–a 10 percent disproportionate decline in city house prices relative to the mean decline across cities is associated with a 13 percent disproportionate rise in the refugee population of the city. While seemingly at odds with the existing literature, I propose a mechanism to reconcile these differences based on the strength of ties to the home country of different immigrant groups.
Degree Date
8-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Department
Economics
Advisor
Ömer Özak
Number of Pages
100
Format
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Shamim, Abdullah, "Essays in Immigration Economics and Immigrant Location Choice" (2025). Economics Theses and Dissertations. 29.
https://scholar.smu.edu/hum_sci_economics_etds/29
