National identity among economic and non-economic immigrants

Abstract

Using recent survey data from the UK, I show that immigrants who originally migrated for family reasons or as refugees are more than twice as likely to report a host national identity as those who migrated for economic reasons. A large part of this gap is explained by differences between immigrant groups in national origin and other observed characteristics. However, even after accounting for such differences comprehensively, family immigrants and refugees remain around 13 and 8% more likely to report a host national identity respectively. These two groups still remain more likely to report a host national identity when restricting the analysis to immigrants without citizenship, to those with only weak incentives to acquire citizenship, or to those from origin countries without linguistic or cultural connections to the UK via the British Commonwealth. I suggest that average differences in time horizons between immigrant groups may be an important unobserved explanatory factor.