Immigration from Fragile Countries and Crime Rates in Italy: An Analysis with Province-Level Data

In this study, we explore the impact of immigrants from fragile and conflict-affected Situations (FCS), as defined by the World Bank, on crime rates in Italian provinces. The rationale for an impact of immigration from fragile countries on crime rates is that these immigrants have been exposed to violence in their home countries are more likely to commit violent crimes in the host countries. The variable of interest is immigration from FCS and is defined as the sum of the immigrants’ inflows from the countries, included in the FCS list, to the Italian provinces.

The empirical model is estimated with an Instrumental Variable (IV) strategy which was adopted to correct the assumed endogeneity related to our variable of interest. As IVs, we use a weighted average of the GDP per capita growth rate in the origin countries of the migrants and a shift-share instrument (this last has been widely used in the literature). On average, we found a positive, significant, and robust effect of immigration from FCS on mafia-type of crimes in the Italian provinces.

Gianluca Bortoletto (University of Birmingham) Marco Barassi (University of Birmingham) Michael Henry (University of Birmingham)

Speaker:

Dr. Michael Henry is senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham