Department of Political Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.; Immigration Policy Lab, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6044, USA, and University of Zurich, 8050 Zürich, Switzerland.
Immigration Policy Lab, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6044, USA, and University of Zurich, 8050 Zürich, Switzerland.; Departments of Government and Methodology, London School of Economics and Political Science, London WC2A 2AE, UK.
Sci Adv. 2016 Aug 3;2(8):e1600432. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1600432. eCollection 2016 Aug.
European governments are struggling with the biggest refugee crisis since World War II, but there exists little evidence regarding how the management of the asylum process affects the subsequent integration of refugees in the host country. We provide new causal evidence about how one central policy parameter, the length of time that refugees wait in limbo for a decision on their asylum claim, affects their subsequent economic integration. Exploiting exogenous variation in wait times and registry panel data covering refugees who applied in Switzerland between 1994 and 2004, we find that one additional year of waiting reduces the subsequent employment rate by 4 to 5 percentage points, a 16 to 23% drop compared to the average rate. This deleterious effect is remarkably stable across different subgroups of refugees stratified by gender, origin, age at arrival, and assigned language region, a pattern consistent with the idea that waiting in limbo dampens refugee employment through psychological discouragement, rather than a skill atrophy mechanism. Overall, our results suggest that marginally reducing the asylum waiting period can help reduce public expenditures and unlock the economic potential of refugees by increasing employment among this vulnerable population.
欧洲各国政府正在努力应对第二次世界大战以来最大的难民危机，但几乎没有证据表明庇护申请处理方式的管理如何影响难民在收容国的后续融入。我们提供了新的因果证据，说明一个核心政策参数（难民在等待庇护申请决定期间处于困境的时间长度）如何影响他们随后的经济融入。利用等待时间的外生变化和涵盖 1994 年至 2004 年间在瑞士申请的难民的登记面板数据，我们发现，每增加一年等待时间，随后的就业率就会降低 4 到 5 个百分点，与平均水平相比下降 16%至 23%。这种有害影响在按性别、原籍国、抵达时年龄和指定语言区域划分的不同难民亚组中非常稳定，这种模式表明，在困境中等待会通过心理挫折而非技能萎缩机制来抑制难民就业。总的来说，我们的结果表明，略微缩短庇护申请的等待期可以帮助减少公共支出，并通过增加这一脆弱群体的就业机会，释放难民的经济潜力。
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