Dustmann, Christian, et al. "The Effects of Immigration on Places and People -- Identification and Interpretation". Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 44, No. 1 (2026).

Dustmann, Christian, et al. "The Effects of Immigration on Places and People -- Identification and Interpretation". Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 44, No. 1 (2026).

• The regional effects of immigration on labor markets must be separated into multiple distinct effects and must focus on the native populations being impacted. Looking at only at region-level effects, without focusing on specific populations, means that the real impact of immigration on native workers is obscured (1-2).
• The authors provide multiple examples from within the paper that region-wide economic effects on wages, employment, productivity, etc., say little about the diverse impact of immigration on different sub-groups of the native population (3-5). 
• This paper differentiates workers by those employed at the time of mass immigration and those who were unemployed. This allows the others to identify three effects on native workers: replacement of existing workers, crowding-out of new workers from job opportunities, and relocation of native workers to other areas.
• To analyze these factors, the paper looks at how German border towns were impacted by an agreement allowing Czechs to work in Germany but not reside there, creating a heavily localized influx of commuter labor into the economy of these border towns (1-2, 17-18). 
• The authors have excluded some towns near both the Czech border and the intra-German border, attempting to exclude the shock from East German immigration into West Germany (17). 
• The data sources for the paper are detailed on page 18 and page 19.  
• The author detail the statistical model used in this paper from page 7 to page 17.
• Adjustments are made to this model to differentiate between workers in employment prior to the start of mass immigration and those who were not employed at this time (11-13). 
• Corrections to the statistical model to account for the particularities of the Czech-German border region are detailed on page 19 and page 20.
• The overall regional effect of Czech immigration on native employment was significant -- decrease of 0.87% for every 1% increase in the employment share of Czech migrants -- but the effect was vastly different for employed versus non-employed workers: employed natives experienced a decline of 0.14% for every 1% increase in Czech migrants in 1993 and no effect by 1995, whereas 88% of the regional effect was due to unemployed natives not entering the workforce due to competition from Czech migrants (3, 21-22). 
• Regional wage growth was effectively zero during the period, which seems to indicate the introduction of Czech migrant workers had no effect, but this is shown to be untrue by looking at the separate effects (3, 23).  
• The overall regional wage effect is low because the overall labor supply change was minimal, as low-wage workers responded to the influx of Czech migrants competing for low-wage jobs by migrating out of the region or remaining in education to move into high-wage skilled employment (23-24).
• High-wage workers tend to more reluctant to move in response to labor market pressures, so they remained while low-wage workers moved away. This accounts for the increase in the quality of the regional workforce (5, 24). 
• The native groups most impacted by immigration are older currently-employed workers, unemployed workers seeking employment or young workers attempting to enter the workforce, and low-skill workers in "routine" employment (5, 28).
• Native workers unemployed at the time of mass migration, include youth leaving education and entering the workforce, are disproportionately impacted by competition with migrant workers. They experience much larger decreases in future employment and lower future wages than other groups (28-30).
• Among native employed workers, workers over the age of 50 are disproportionately impacted. They do not experience divergent wage outcomes, but they are much more likely to leave employment (30).
•  Older employed workers are most likely to leave the area in response to higher paying employment elsewhere (5, 25). 
• The example here shows that, following Czech immigration, the share of native employment falls sharply in low-skill "routine" employment, but remains stable in higher skilled "abstract" employment (5-6, 30).
• One interpretation for this data is that low-skill native workers have moved into more skilled employment and been replaced by immigrants (5-6, 30-31).
• This study does not find any evidence for the movement of native workers employed in low-skill jobs into higher skilled jobs. It does, however, find evidence that native workers choose to remain in education for longer and thus take higher skill jobs when they do enter the labor market (6, 31-32).