Does Immigration Cause Crime? Evidence from Spain

Abstract

Abstract AbstractThe relationship between crime and immigration has been a matter of controversy in the US and around the world. This paper investigates empirically the case of Spain. From 1999 to 2009, Spain has had a large wave of immigration from different areas of the globe. At the same time, crime rates have increased. However, by comparison with other European countries that have received similar massive immigration waves during the same period, crime rates in Spain have increased less considerably. We show that there is a significant relationship between crime and immigration. Nevertheless, the explanation is found in the specific characteristics of the different immigration groups, particularly in the amount and type of human capital, which is a result largely in tune with previous studies on US immigration and crime.• This paper is based on a larger project developed by FEDEA on the economics and sociology of immigration in Spain (2008). Garoupa acknowledges the financial support of the European Commission, MMECC (EC Project 044422) and Alonso-Borrego acknowledges the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Grant ECO2009-11165). We are grateful to

Do more immigrants equal more crime? Drawing a bridge between first generation immigrant concentration and recorded crime rates.

“…The influx of immigration in that period was most significantly associated with a reduction in common assault and robbery, with the greatest impact on these attributable to European immigrants. In Spain, assessing the impact of immigration over a similar timescale to the previous study, the origin of the immigrant population proved to be important, with Spanish-speaking immigrants having a much more preferable impact on crime than those of other origins (Alonso-Borrego et al, 2012). This may be ascribed to the 'Latino Paradox' as was identified in Sampson's previously discussed research, that Latino immigrants have a reducing effect on crime rates.…”

“…In the areas where there are high concentrations of immigrant groups that seem to have some connection to higher crime rates, the approach to policing may benefit from considering the potentially problematic conflict. The work of Alonso-Borrego (2012) indicated that contrasting cultures are more likely to see higher crime rates.…”

Legal Status and the Criminal Activity of Immigrants

“…In response to these concerns, a burgeoning literature documents the empirical relationship between immigration and crime across local areas within the United States (Butcher and Piehl, 1998;Reid et al, 2005;Moehling and Piehl, 2009;Borjas, Grogger and Hanson, 2010;Wadsworth, 2010;Spenkuch, 2014), the United Kingdom (Bell, Machin and Fasani, 2013), Italy (Bianchi, Buonanno and Pinotti, 2010), and Spain (Alonso-Borrego, Garoupa and Vázquez, 2012). However, the effect of legal status on immigrants' crime has remained largely unexplored, despite there being ample evidence that legal status improves greatly the labor market opportunities of immigrants (Bratsberg, Ragan and Nasir, 2002;Kossoudji and Cobb-Clark, 2002;Kaushal, 2006;Amuedo-Dorantes, Bansak and Raphael, 2007;Lozano and Sorensen, 2011).…”

Decomposing the Impact of Immigration on House Prices

“…Local outcomes would be differently affected by immigration inflows depending on the size and sign of the native-immigrant location. Displacement effects can also be relevant in other contexts such as the estimation of immigrants on local crime rates (Buonanno et al, 2011;Alonso-Borrego et al, 2012;Bell et al, 2013). By disentangling the different channels through which immigration affects house prices, I provide not only the size of the causal effect but also a meaningful economic interpretation of the estimates.…”

“…2 Most of the papers have focused on the labour market impacts (Bentolila et al, 2008;Carrasco et al, 2008;González & Ortega, 2010;Amuedo-Dorantes & de la Rica, 2011;Farré et al, 2011;Amuedo-Dorantes & Rica, 2013), but a number of contributions have studied other aspects like the effect of immigration on the output mix (Requena et al, 2009), trade (Peri & Requena, 2010), productivity (Kangasniemi et al, 2012), local public spending (Jofre-Monseny et al, 2016), school choices (Farré et al, 2015) or crime (Alonso-Borrego et al, 2012). See De la Rica et al (2014) for a recent revision of this literature.…”