Immigration - Bad or Good for Country Economy

Immigration bad or good for country's economy

Introduction

The aim of my paper is to study the impact of immigration on the host economy from society's point of view. I will focus on the attitudes of Norwegian society toward immigration.

“Immigrant” means a person, who born abroad, permanently is a resident in Norway, both parents born abroad.*

“Economy” means all the factors concerning the production, distribution and consumption of material goods.

As dependent variable I chose “Immigration bad or good for country's economy?”. I find this dependent variable as being important because in the last few years immigration policy proved to be the subject of political debate in the most western countries. Immigration control is an issue that figures prominently in public policy discussions and elections campaigns throughout Europe. Although immigration may have positive effects on economy efficiency and growth in the receiving economy it is often the negative aspects of immigration that attract the most attention.(.......).

The three independent variables that I will use in studying my topic are: gender, age and education. I think that factors as education, age and gender are relevant because it allow us to appreciate the extent to which people cooperate with immigration issue.

I will continue my paper with the previous research that has studied this topic. Basing myself on this researches I will formulate the theory and the hypothesis on which I want to study them. In order to answer the research question I will choose the method of analysis according to the independent variables I have chosen. After I finish the data analysis work I will end my paper with a conclusion where I mention the results that I obtained.

Previous research

The literature and previous researches on this topic speaks about the effects of education as being always positive, statistically significant and quite large in magnitude across dependent variable. Under its competition with a stranger for a job determines the less educated individuals to adopt racist and less tolerant behavior towards immigrants such as immigration reached an opposite attitude while individuals with a high level of education will focus on cultural diversity, the economic benefits from immigration and a positive attitude toward this. Not only the less educated individuals are opposed to immigration but women have a negative attitude towards immigrants, too. There are more women than men disagree with immigration. The age is an important factor too because the theory this has a negative support for immigration.(Jess Hainmueller and Michael Hiscox, 2007).

Immigrants represent a greater threat to the livelihoods and living standards of lower-status respondents than they do to persons with higher education and more skills. So, the poorer the person, the greater the fear that more immigrants will mean fewer jobs, lower rates of pay, fewer opportunities for mobility, and more competition for housing, schools and social services. Illegal immigrants are feared most because they are viewed as the strongest contenders for lower-status jobs and benefits.(Simon and Alexander 1993: 29-47).

As many previous studies have demonstrated (ex hoskin 1991 147) increased education powerfully decreases reported opposition to immigration. In addition, several other factors affect attitudes. Women (Palmer, 1996) and older people are less supportive of immigration (Gang, Rivera-Batiz, and Yun, 2001). In the case of women this has been linked to their more tenous labor market position. The explanation for the effect of gender is provided little (O'Rourke and Sinnot, 2006). almost every study finds that increases in education are related to greater support for immigration (Gang, Rivera-Batiz, and Yun, 2001; Tucci, 2005; Haubert and Fussell, 2006; Pantoja, 2006).

In their research (“No Thanks, We are Full”: Individual Charcteristics, National Context, and Changing Attitudes Toward Immigration, University of British Columbia, The International Migration Review) from 2008 Wilkes, Guppy and Farris used the European Social Survey 2003 database and they showed that explaining variation in levels of support for immigration has been a topic of considerable interests to scholars and policy makers alike (p.302).

The meaning scholars attribute to the effect of education varies. Some scholars view education as a marker for labour market competitiveness (Mayda, 2006). Others (Dustmann and Preston, 2004) suggest that education indicates the ideology (racism) of the less educated and the interest concerns (labor market competition) of the more educated (p.306).

We expect that if attitudes are caused by interests, than if they are in the labor force, the following groups will hold less favorable attitudes toward immigration: old workers, women and the less-educated. We also expect that factors such as age, gender and education will remain significant even when we control for labor force status (p.310).

Jens Hainmueller's and Michael J. Hiscox's research from 2007 (“Educated Preferences: Explaining Attitudes Toward Immigration In Europe”, International Organization 61, Spring 2007, pp. 399-442) showed that more educated respondents significantly are less racist and place greater value on cultural diversity than do their counterparts (p.399). There are other non-economic variables that have been identified as predictors of attitudes towards immigration (demographic and characteristics as age and gender). Age tends to be negatively associated with support for immigration and women seem generally more opposed to immigration than men do (Citrin et al. 1997; Dustmann and Preston 2001 and Gang, Rivera-Batiz, and Yun, 2002)