Regardless of whether immigrants come from France, Bangladesh or Lithuania, they will adjust themselves to the average level of life satisfaction in their new country. However, how much life satisfaction they will absorb depends on where they come from and where they have migrated to. This is important knowledge when integrating new citizens, says happiness researcher from Aarhus BSS.
In Denmark, a woman can leave her handbag by her chair at a café and be sure to find it there when she comes back from the toilet. In France, she could not do the same. This not just says something about the levels of trust in the two countries, but also about the life satisfaction of immigrants in Denmark and France respectively.
In fact, new research from Aarhus BSS shows that living among people with a high level of trust in one another and in the country’s institutions rubs off on immigrants. The study, which focuses on life satisfaction among immigrants, explores the extent to which immigrants come to resemble people in their new country of residence and also how much life satisfaction they carry with them from their country of birth.
“It is important to know how much our new citizens come to resemble us in various respects. The reason is that this affects how they integrate themselves and to what extent this is a reflection of how they perceive their own life. Exploring the life satisfaction of immigrants is one way of finding out to what extent they integrate themselves in a way that is reflected in their own life. The results may thus contribute to the overall debate on integration and how it occurs,” says Christian Bjørnskov, professor of economics at Aarhus BSS and a happiness researcher.
"When you move from Algeria to Denmark, one of the things that increases your life satisfaction significantly is being able to have a high level of trust in the Danish police and legal system. This really adds to their overall life satisfaction. "
Christian Bjørnskov, Professor, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus BSS
New basis for comparison
Together with his colleagues Niclas Berggren, Andreas Bergh and Shiori Tanaka, Bjørnskov has conducted the study ”Migrants and Life Satisfaction: The Role of the Country of Origin and the Country of Residence”. The study is based on data from the European Social Survey (ESS), which measures the attitudes, perceptions and behaviour of people in a number of European countries every second year. As something completely new, this study statistically compares the immigrants’ subjective statements on life satisfaction with two different factors at the same time: 1) the average life satisfaction in their new country of residence and 2) the average life satisfaction in their country of birth.
“This allows us to see how much they carry with them from their home country and how much they adapt to their new country,” Bjørnskov explains.
The strength of this epidemiological approach is that none of the immigrants’ experiences in Denmark will affect the factors that are used for comparison. One weakness of the method is that no one knows exactly how satisfied the individual person was in their home country, as we only know the average life satisfaction for the country in question. However, future studies could explore this through in-depth interviews. Here Bjørnskov would like to focus on one of the three groups in the current study.
“We are studying first and second-generation immigrants from Western countries, developing countries and former communist countries. And first-generation immigrants from the last group really stand out,” says Bjørnskov.
Three groups of immigrants - three results
But first, let us look at the results.
In their study of first-generation immigrants in countries such as Denmark, the researchers find that they largely come to resemble their new countrymen - but then again, not quite.
In terms of life satisfaction, immigrants from Western countries will fill up half of the gap between the average life satisfaction levels of their country of birth and their country of residence. The other half of the gap still depends on their upbringing, family relations, etc.
This means that, over time, the life satisfaction of a woman who has emigrated from Italy to Denmark will increase by 50 per cent of the total gap between the average levels of life satisfaction in Italy and Denmark. All things considered, she will thus be happier in Denmark than she was in Italy, simply because Danes are among the happiest people in the world. However, if an immigrant moves from Italy to France, not that much will happen. In both cases, the immigrants will fill up half of the gap between the average life satisfaction in their country of birth and their country of residence.
“The explanation is that is the gap is wider in the case of Denmark. This means that a person from Algeria will - all things considered - have a higher level of life satisfaction in Denmark than in France because Danes are generally happier than the French,” Bjørnskov explains.
When it comes to immigrants from developing countries such as Tanzania or Fiji, the study shows that they get slightly more accustomed to Danish culture than immigrants from Western countries do, simply because they carry less mentality with them from their country of birth.
And in the case of immigrants from the former communist countries, it is striking that these do not seem to carry anything with them to their new country.
“There is nothing left from their upbringing. Nothing. And that is really interesting,” says Bjørnskov.
Nothing to hold on to from home
The current data does not reveal why this is the case. However when talking to the researchers, some Eastern European immigrants indicated that there is nothing worth taking with them from their country of birth.
“Before the introduction of communism, these countries were characterised by a great sense of national pride, which the immigrants still carry with them. If they were to hold on to anything from their home country, it would be this. However, they would not hold on to anything from the Soviet era. This corresponds very well to previous our studies, which show that the communism of the Eastern European countries ruined people’s social trust: If you lived in Romania in the 1980s, you grew up in a time where 700,000 people worked for the secret police Securitate,” Bjørnskov explains.
In terms of second-generation immigrants, the researchers find that in all three groups, they no longer carry anything with them from their parents’ home country. However, although this is the case for the average second-generation immigrant, the researchers are rather convinced that behind this data, we find people who do carry something with them and people who do not.
“If you were to further explore the idea that, overall, second-generation immigrants seem to adjust themselves completely to the average life satisfaction in the country in which they grow up, or the question why first- generation immigrants do not seem to carry anything with them from their country of birth, it would in both cases require another scientific article,” says Bjørnskov.
In case of the second-generation immigrants, he would attempt to uncover whether they come from a specific religious background, or whether their parents’ educational level makes a difference.
“Several other studies suggest that some of these groups tend to follow the culture of their home country closely, e.g. by watching Turkish television. This connection to their home country might in part contribute to maintaining their culture. However, as this group is quite diverse, the question is whether the educational level of their parents is one of the factors that help explain whether or not they carry something with them from their home country,” Bjørnskov explains.
In terms of the immigrants from post-communist countries, finding an explanation would require a number of interviews. As mentioned, there is nothing in the ESS questionnaires that point towards possible explanations.
“It would likely require an anthropological study to find out why people choose to leave everything behind,” Bjørnskov says.
Although there are still unanswered questions in terms of explaining the results, the researchers identify at least two factors in their study in relation to what drives integration: Trust in the institutions of the new country and the trust between the citizens in the new country.
“When you move from Algeria to Denmark, one of the things that increases your life satisfaction significantly is being able to have a high level of trust in the Danish police and legal system. This really adds to their overall life satisfaction. Trusting other people is also likely to matter. We are not sure just to what extent moving to another country increases the immigrant’s level of trust in other people. However, we are certain that a country’s high level of trust does rub off - living among people that share a unique culture of trust, e.g. in Norway and Denmark, will affect those who come here. This will not happen if you move to France,” says Bjørnskov.
Differences are important
To understand what unites people, Bjørnskov believes that you need to gain a better understanding of what sets them apart.
“The way I see it, everything we can find out about the status of immigrants is valuable knowledge because some groups are experiencing significant problems and others are not. Studies such as ours can give us an indication of how some immigrants have succeeded and how some have not. For example, there is a world of difference between a Bosnian immigrant and a Palestinian. The Bosnian comes from a former communist country, which he has left behind for good. We now know that he will become like us. The Palestinian might be watching television from his home country and thus might be a lot less like us. This could be explored in future studies,” he says.
According to Bjørnskov, the study’s most important contribution is that we have now gained an insight into the extent to which immigrants adjust to their new countries. We can use this insight to prevent people from stereotyping a whole population group:
“The current narrative - also in Danish politics - is that these people are completely different from us. However, our study shows that they do not remain different. This allows us to look at them in another way - both as citizens and as politicians. This is a good thing since being stereotyped is very detrimental for developing and integrating yourself. We now also know that migration benefits the vast majority of immigrants - they get a better life.”
People from Poland may be easier to integrate in the workplace than we thinkThe study exploring life satisfaction among immigrants also reveals something about what kind of employees the immigrants will become. Not least for those employees who might be slightly nervous about hiring people from countries such as Poland and Lithuania. “Our study suggests that workwise, the immigrants have let go of their culture and many of the problems they grew up with. It would be fair to assume that their upbringing has not affected them in this respect, which would mean that in many other ways they will become more like us a lot quicker. There is an indication that they are more easily integrated,” says Bjørnskov. Read the article |