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New CERGE-EI faculty member Teresa Freitas-Monteiro explores how migration policy shapes integration

29 April, 2026

How do migrants integrate into host societies, and why do those trajectories differ so substantially across groups and institutional settings? What happens when public policy stigmatizes minority communities?

These are among the central questions in the research of Teresa Freitas-Monteiro, a new faculty member at CERGE-EI. Her recent work examines migration, integration, and the unintended consequences of policy design.

As she points out, “research on the effects of culturally restrictive policies on migrants’ socio-cultural integration has emerged only recently. Even less is known about how anti-immigration rhetoric and stigmatizing labeling practices, which impose no direct pecuniary costs or restrictions, affect the targeted minority.”

In one of her current work-in-progress projects, Freitas-Monteiro studies a Danish policy that publicly labeled certain neighborhoods as “Ghettos.” The policy framed non-Western residents as a counter-identity to Danish society and as a threat to national values and social cohesion.

Her research finds evidence that such stigmatizing labels can trigger a cultural backlash among those targeted. Preliminary findings suggest that residents in neighborhoods placed on the list became more likely to give their children foreign-sounding names, while also showing lower early childcare enrollment, more traditional gender attitudes, stronger identification as immigrants or members of a religious group, and a lower tendency to follow Danish news. At the same time, socioeconomic integration and residential composition remained unchanged, suggesting that the symbolic and stigmatizing dimension of the policy itself played a major role.

Drawing on research on refugees in Denmark and immigrants in Germany, Freitas-Monteiro points to two especially important factors: migrant background itself and lower levels of education relative to native-born populations. She also explains that Germany and Denmark offer particularly strong settings for research, albeit for different reasons. Germany’s size allows researchers to study a wide range of minority groups in large-scale surveys, while Denmark offers exceptionally rich administrative data and a long history of immigration.

Methodologically, Freitas-Monteiro’s work is grounded in empirical economics and makes extensive use of longitudinal administrative datasets and large-scale surveys. She emphasizes the strengths of administrative data in capturing “hard” outcomes such as employment and residential decisions, without the response bias, attrition, or misreporting that can complicate survey-based research.

At the same time, she notes that surveys remain especially important when the goal is to understand preferences, identity, or culture — dimensions that are often harder to observe directly in administrative records. To identify causal effects, she relies on familiar but powerful empirical strategies, particularly regression discontinuity designs and difference-in-differences.

Asked why she joined CERGE-EI, Freitas-Monteiro cites a combination of professional and personal reasons: the opportunity for a joint position with her partner, the chance to remain in Europe, strong colleagues, and a supportive academic environment. For CERGE-EI, her arrival strengthens an area of research that is highly relevant not only academically, but also to public debate across Europe.

At a time when migration policy is often discussed in highly polarized terms, Freitas-Monteiro’s work offers something essential: careful empirical evidence on how policy shapes not just material outcomes, but also identity, behavior, and belonging.

Read the full interview here.