TY - CEPII
A1 - Yasmine Elkhateeb
A1 - Riccardo Turati
A1 - Jérôme Valette
TI - Immigration, Identity Choices, and Cultural Diversity
IS - 2025-18
T3 - Working Papers
KW - Immigration
KW - Social Identity
KW - Cultural Diversity
N2 -
Does immigration challenge the identities, values, and cultural diversity of receiving societies? This paper addresses this question by analyzing the impact of immigration on cultural diversity in Europe between 2004 and 2018. It combines regional cultural diversity indices derived from the European Social Survey with immigration shares from the European Labor Force Survey. The results indicate that immigration increases the salience of birthplace identity along cultural lines, fostering a shift toward nativist identities among the native population. These identity shifts, in turn, trigger a process of cultural homogenization among natives. This effect is stronger in regions receiving culturally distant immigrants. It reflects a process of convergence toward the values of highly skilled liberal natives and divergence from those of low-skilled conservative immigrants.

ER -