The aim of this article is to show how a ‘traditional’ society may produce a household system in which the structural tensions are no less intense than in the Western world. Muslim Hausa society (in northern Nigeria) has one of the highest rates of divorce (and remarriage) in the world. An explanation is sought here in terms of the economic and organisational requirements of a subsistence farming system that is always potentially short of labour. Divorce is a solution to otherwise unacceptable pressures, particularly on young women, in a society that requires them to be subordinate and marginal within the extended family. The data presented here were collected between 1979 and 1989 in the Niger valley of Sokoto State in northern Nigeria.

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A rise in crime among immigrants allegedly occurred in Europe over the last decades. The origin of this phenomenon is obscure, and traditional theories offer conflicting explanations. The present article addresses these problems by using data regarding the 18 main countries in Western Europe. The results show that the immigrant share in crime figures varies greatly from country to country. This suggests that the non‐national contribution to crime is not associated with immigration per se, but with the contexts in which immigration occurs and features of the immigration inflow. The cross‐national analysis shows, in particular, that ‘culture, respect for rights and universalism’ in the host countries are associated with lower immigrant crime.

This study purpose is to verify if there is an association between foreign immigration and crime. In doing this, the study investigates also some satellite aspects revolving around this possible association: the range of offences affected by immigration, the relationship between immigrant and native crime, and whether the immigration impact on crime is direct or indirect. The present study has addressed these issues by both a cross-sectional and a longitudinal analysis, the latter including an instrument. The study is based on data of the Italian provinces. Italy represents a critical case for studying the migration-crime relationship, because in this country the rise in foreign immigration has been sudden and its pace feverish. The cross-sectional analysis findings show that crime intensities are affected by time-invariant factors and marginally by immigration. On the contrary, the longitudinal analysis shows that variations in immigration had a positive impact on both the most serious and the most common offences, on property crimes as well as on crimes of violence. There is no evidence of indirect effects of immigration on crime or of a link with native crime. In contrast to previous literature regarding the U.S., Canada, and Australia, these results suggest that a spiralling immigration can affect crime. In terms of methods, these findings show that the standard synchronic analysis models can be biased by nonobserved factors and that therefore cross-sectional time-series models can offer significant advantages. Response to Reviewers: Please see the attached file "Comments & Answers". We were unable to place the text of the file here, due to problems of format concerning tables of data.