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Prof. Martin Kocher

Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany

Authors: Christina Felfe, Martin G. Kocher, Helmut Rainer, Judith Saurer, and Thomas Siedler

Abstract: If a nation is fractured along lines of race, religion, or country of origin, and if people only trust those with whom they share a common identity, then there is limited scope for cooperation between social groups. A central question then is how to overcome these cleavages. We study the effects of a major citizenship reform in Germany—the introduction of birthright citizenship on January 1, 2000—in terms of trust, discrimination in trust, and social difference between immigrant and native youth. The reform cut-off date represents an endowment shock for immigrant children, affecting whether they grew up as German citizens or not. We hypothesize that this endowment shock can have levelling effects for immigrant children that spill-over into the domain of cross-group cooperation. Our setup has three key features: an incentivized artefactual field experiment based on the trust game with almost 4,500 adolescents; an extensive accompanying socioeconomic survey; and a sample design that allows us to connect the experiment with the citizenship reform using quasi-experimental strategies. Based on the experiment, we establish that the scope for cooperation among Germany’s youth is limited by a deep distrust among immigrants towards natives. As our main contribution, we provide evidence these cleavages are not set in stone: the introduction of birthright citizenship caused immigrant children to almost completely drop their distrust towards their native peers. We show that this effect is an entirely male phenomenon, accompanied by a substantially improved educational integration of young immigrant men.

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