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AbstractThe present study evaluates the interplay between the effects of host countries' characteristics and self‐selection patterns of immigrants from a highly developed country on their economic assimilation in other developed countries. The focus is on immigrants originated from Germany during 1990–2000 who migrated to Sweden and the US. The results show that almost all German immigrants reached full earnings assimilation with natives of similar observed attributes, and that the assimilation of highly educated Germans was better than that of the less educated. It was also found that the skilled immigrants were compensated for their human capital acquired in Germany. Finally, the better assimilation of German immigrants, especially the highly educated, took place in the US. This finding was probably the result of an interaction between the Germans' pattern of self‐selection and the US context of reception.

Following the intensified waves of refugees entering Europe, dispersal policies for newly arrived refugees have been proposed to speed up their integration and to share the financial burden across and within the EU countries. The effectiveness of dispersal policies depends, among other factors, on the extent to which refugees tend to stay in the initial location they are assigned to live in, and on their patterns of self-selectivity during subsequent moves of internal migration. Economic theories of migration suggest that economic immigrants are self-selected to destinations based on their abilities. Highly skilled and motivated people tend to migrate to labor markets with broader opportunity structures, while less capable individuals choose markets that are more sheltered. We use a quasi-experimental design to examine the extent to which those theories are first, applicable to refugees as well, and second, explain their self-sorting into local labor markets at destination. We focus on a refugee cohort that came to Sweden during the period when the so-called "Whole-Sweden" policy was in effect. This policy was designed to reduce the concentration of refugees in the larger cities by randomly deploying asylum seekers across Sweden. After being assigned to an initial location, refugees could move freely within Sweden. We use individual register data from Statistics Sweden to study all refugees who arrived in Sweden during 1990–1993, and we follow each one of them during an 8-year period. We use discrete-time survival analysis (complementary log-log models) in order to assess the effects of abilities on the destination choices of refugees, and individual fixed-effect models to assess the effects of internal migration on their income. Destinations were defined on the basis of the economic opportunities they offer. The results suggest that refugees' education levels are related to major differences in their destination choices. Highly skilled refugees were more likely to migrate to labor markets with a wide structure ...

We study the interplay between host countries' characteristics and self-selection patterns in relation to refugees' economic assimilation using a natural experiment in which immigrants from one region migrated to three destinations under similar circumstances. We focus on emigrants fleeing from Argentina and Chile during the military regimes there to the United States, Sweden, and Israel. We find that those refugees show patterns of selection and assimilation similar to those of economic immigrants. Immigrants to the United States and Israel exhibit better selection patterns and consequently faster assimilation than immigrants to Sweden even considering the positive effect of the Swedish market structure.