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To estimate the causal effect of refugee migration on voting outcomes in parliamentary and municipal elections in Denmark, our study is the first that addresses the key problem of immigrant sorting by exploiting a policy that assigned refugee immigrants to municipalities on a quasi-random basis. We find that in all but the most urban municipalities, allocation of larger refugee shares between electoral cycles leads to an increase in the vote share for right-leaning parties with an anti-immigration agenda, and we show large differences in voters’ responses to refugee allocation according to pre-policy municipal characteristics. However, in the largest and urban municipalities, refugee allocation has—if anything—the opposite effect on vote shares for anti-immigration parties. This coincides with a sharp divide in attitudes to refugees between urban and rural populations, which may be partly explained by distinctive interactions between natives and those with different background in cities and rural areas. Refugee allocation also has a large impact on the anti-immigration parties’ choice of where to stand for municipal election, and we provide some evidence that it influences voter turnout.

I examine the effects of the ethnic enclave size on labor market outcomes of immigrants. I account for ability sorting into enclaves by exploiting a Danish spatial dispersal policy under which refugees were randomly dispersed across locations. First, I find strong evidence that refugees with unfavorable unobserved characteristics self‐select into ethnic enclaves. Second, a relative standard deviation increase in the ethnic enclave size increases annual earnings by 18% on average, irrespective of skill level. Third, further findings are consistent with the explanation that ethnic networks disseminate job information, which increases the job‐worker match quality and thereby the hourly wage rate.

This paper investigates the effect of early exposure to neighborhood crime on subsequent criminal behavior of youth exploiting a unique natural experiment between 1986 and 1998 when refugee immigrants to Denmark were assigned to neighborhoods quasi-randomly. We find strong evidence that the share of young people convicted for crimes, in particular violent crimes, in the neighborhood increases convictions of male assignees later in life. No such effects are found for other measures of neighborhood crime including the rate of committed crimes. Our findings suggest social interaction as a key channel through which neighborhood crime is linked to individual criminal behavior.

We investigate peer effects on crime-specific recidivism using register data for the entire Danish prison population. We find that inmates do not acquire new criminal capital in prison (no introductory peer effects). For certain types of crimes, we find that inmates strengthen their criminal capital in prison because of exposure to offenders in their field of specialization (reinforcing peer effects). Our results accord with a theory of crime-specific knowledge transmission and network building: we find reinforcing peer effects for crimes that require specific capital, planning, and networks (for example, drug crimes, theft, burglary, and fencing) and/or are more effective when committed in groups (for example, threats and vandalism). Reinforcing peer effects are especially strong because of exposure to more experienced criminals. By contrast, we find that exposure to offenders in the same specialization deters inmates from recidivism for violent offenses, including sexual offenses and robbery.

Refugees are at an elevated risk of some mental disorders with studies highlighting the contributing role of post-migration factors. Studies of migrant groups show neighborhood social composition, such as ethnic density, to be important. This is the first longitudinal study to examine this question for refugees and uses a novel quasi-experimental design. We followed a cohort of 44 033 refugees from being first assigned housing under the Danish dispersal policy, operating from 1986 to 1998, until 2019. This comprised, in effect, a natural experiment whereby the influence of assigned neighborhood could be determined independently of endogenous factors. We examined three aspects of neighborhood social composition: proportion of co-nationals, refugees, and first-generation migrants; and subsequent incidence of different mental disorders. Refugees assigned to neighborhoods with fewer co-nationals (lowest highest quartile) were more likely to receive a subsequent diagnosis of non-affective psychosis, incident rate ratio (IRR) 1.25 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.06-1.48), and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), IRR 1.21 (95% CI I.05-1.39). A comparable but smaller effect was observed for mood disorders but none observed for stress disorders overall. Neighborhood proportion of refugees was less clearly associated with subsequent mental disorders other than non-affective psychosis, IRR 1.24 (95% CI 1.03-1.50). We found no statistically significant associations with proportion of migrants. For refugees, living in a neighborhood with a lower proportion of co-nationals is related to subsequent increased risk of diagnosed mental disorders particularly non-affective psychosis and PTSD.

This paper exploits a Danish spatial dispersal policy on refugees, which can be regarded as a natural experiment to investigate the influence of regional factors on recent immigrants' location choices. The main push factors are lack of conationals and immigrants. Additional push factors are lack of rental, including social, housing and lack of institutions for qualifying education, which explain why recent immigrants are attracted to large cities. Finally, placed refugees tend to leave locations with relatively high regional unemployment, ancj there is indirect evidence of welfare seeking.

While a substantial body of literature suggests that lasting community mentoring relationships can have a range of positive effects on youths, little is known about these effects in the Nordic welfare context, where community mentees may have lower risk profiles compared to many previous samples. This study explores how the duration (length) of child mentoring relationships predicts parental perceptions of child well-being among 197 children served by Denmark’s most extensive community-based youth mentoring program. We find that children who have had a mentor for at least one year are perceived to have significantly higher well-being. In contrast, we find no significant differences in well-being between children who had mentors for less than one year and children on a waiting list. Previous research, conducted in primarily North American contexts, finds that longer mentoring relationships substantially improve school behavior and reduce risk taking. Our results add to the literature by indicating that a minimum mentoring relationship duration of one year appears to be similarly important in promoting well-being for youths involved in community-based mentoring programs in a Nordic welfare context.

Refugees subjected to a spatial dispersal tend to be assigned to a location outside the immigrant-dense cities. We argue that such locations are associated with low place utility. Our partial equilibrium search model with simultaneous job and residential location search predicts that the reservation wage for local jobs decreases with place utility. We test the theoretical prediction by estimating the effects of characteristics of the location of assignment on the transition rate into the first job. Our sample is male refugees aged 30-59 who were subjected to the Danish spatial dispersal policy carried out in the period 1986-1998. We find little empirical support for the theoretical prediction. Empirically we find that the transition rate into the first job decreases with the local population size and the number of immigrants while the effect of the local number of co-nationals is insignificant.

We exploit exogenous variation from a school desegregation policy to evaluate the impact of forced busing on bilingual school starters. The policy moved pupils from schools with many Danish as additional language (DAL) pupils and high per-pupil spending to schools with fewer DAL pupils but lower per-pupil spending. Assignment to busing may be regarded as exogenous conditional on three observed individual characteristics. In contrast to the literature on voluntary busing to promote racial school integration, we find that assignment to forced busing has a negative effect on the academic performance and wellbeing of DAL pupils. Our investigation of potential mechanisms shows that bused pupils attend schools with a lower budget per pupil and a lower overall budget for DAL pupils, have a lower enrollment rate in the after-school program in the assigned school, and are more likely to transfer to another public school (after regaining free school choice). Our results suggest that school resources can more than compensate for potential negative peer effects in schools with moderate levels of segregation.

Using survey information about characteristics of personal contacts linked with administrative register information on employment status one year later, I show that unemployed survey respondents with many employed acquaintances have a higher job finding rate. Settlement in a socially deprived neighborhood may, therefore, hamper individual labor market outcomes because of lack of employed contacts. I investigate this hypothesis by exploiting a unique natural experiment that occurred between 1986 and 1998 when refugee immigrants to Denmark were assigned to municipalities quasi-randomly, which successfully addresses the methodological problem of endogenous neighborhood selection. Taking account of location sorting, living in a socially deprived neighborhood does not affect labor market outcomes of refugee men. Furthermore, their labor market outcomes are not affected by the overall employment rate of men living in the neighborhood, but positively affected by the employment rate of non-Western immigrant men and co-national men living in the neighborhood. This is strong evidence that immigrants find jobs in part through their employed immigrant and co-ethnic contacts in the neighborhood of residence and that a high quality of contacts increases the individual's employment chances and annual earnings.