The Social Determinants of Refugee Integration and Improved Dispersal: A Study in Denmark

Using data from refugees resettled quasi-randomly to municipalities across Denmark, I study the impact of enclave characteristics and details of the placement regime on labor market outcomes for refugees up to 12 years after seeking asylum. I find that being placed in larger enclave has positive effects on refugees' employment, while the causal effect of increasing an refugee's enclave population is negative for the initial size but positive for size measured concurrently with employment. The timing of the settlement of other refugees is also important, with refugees placed in the same year or in consecutive years in an enclave lowering each other's probability of employment. I show that under optimal distribution of refugees over time and municipalities, employment for the refugees placed during the spatial dispersal policy would have been 9.7% higher, with most of the increase concentrated in municipalities that received more refugees.