Becoming White: How Mass Warfare Turned Immigrants into Americans. How this might be of concern for Germany with its refugees influx.

Marginal Revolution points to an interesting study about assimilitation and integration of refugees/immigrants in the USA around the time of World War I. The title is

Becoming White: How Mass Warfare Turned Immigrants into Americans

The study focuses on refugees of European nativity and as such they are much closer to the culture of the Americans. The conclusions of the study should give Germany some serious concerns about ever being able to get the refugees/immigrants who entered the country since 2015 integrated, let alone culturally assimilated.

Germany's track record in integrating foreigners is not particularly encouraging judging by the fact that Turks who started entering the country as guest workers from the 1960s onward are still not very well integrated. The new wave of refugees/immigrants could hardly be further apart from Germany's culture and their numbers are staggering.

In 2015 and 2016, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan were the main countries of origin of asylum seekers. [5] In 2016, approx. 280,000 arrived in Germany (in the previous year approx. 890,000). In 2016, 745,545 applications for asylum were filed (2015: 476,649). At the end of September 2017, fewer than asylum applications were pending at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) with almost 100,000 asylum cases than at the beginning of the crisis. 73,000 family members of eligible Syrians and Iraqis arrived in 2016 with a visa (2015: 24,000).

Not only Syrians and refugees from other countries of the Middle East sought asylum in Germany in 2015/16, but also migrants from Africa, from non-EU states of the Balkans, from Pakistan [3] and from Afghanistan. (Google translate)

Here is the Harvard University study:

Becoming White: How Mass Warfare Turned Immigrants into Americans (Pdf)

How do groups on the social periphery assimilate into the social core of a nation? I develop a theory of cultural assimilation that highlights the way in which mass mobilization around warfare can reduce ethnic stratifications by incorporating low-status ethnic groups into the dominant national culture. To test the theory, I focus on the case of World War I in the United States–a period that closely followed a massive wave of immigration into the United States. Using an instrumental variables strategy exploiting the combination of the exogenous timing of the war and features of the draft system, I show that individuals of foreign, European nativity–especially, the Italians and Eastern Europeans–were more likely to assimilate into American society. I also provide evidence of backlash against Germans despite their service for the United States in World War I. The theory and results contribute to our understanding of the ways in which states make identity and the prospects for immigrant assimilation in an age without mass warfare.

Conclusion

How did immigrants become (white) Americans? In this paper, I advance a theory that emphasizes the central role of the state in shaping the cultural incorporation of marginalized groups such as immigrants into a polity; particularly, I argue and show that participation in mass warfare is an important factor in moving individuals from the social periphery into the social core of a nation. Using an instrumental variables strategy exploiting the exogenous variation in the likelihood of military service across birth cohorts paired with individuallevel, administrative data on over 4 million immigrants from 1930 U.S. Census, I find that on average immigrant veterans were more likely to marry natives, more likely to petition for citizenship, more likely to become naturalized citizens, and more likely to name themselves and their children more “American” sounding names. When examining heterogeneity across ethnic groups, I also find that these effects seem to be concentrated among newer immigrant groups such as Eastern Europeans and Italians and less so among the Irish. This finding is consistent with the notion that military service has the potential to inculcate and socialize individuals into a national culture. Finally when looking at Germans, I find that natives’ preferences and the backlash they had against German immigrants mattered in terms ofthe ability ofGermans to ultimately become U.S. citizens. 

In general, the theory and results provide further evidence of the powerful force ofmass warfare in the creation of political order, democracy, and equality (Tilly 1990; Scheve and Stasavage 2012; Ferejohn and Rosenbluth 2016; Scheidel 2017). While the vast majority of studies in this tradition emphasize the role that warfare has on our political institutions, I provide a novel theory in which warfare can fundamentally reshape our social identities. This idea is related to the broader notion that mass mobilization can change the ideological context of a nation. For example, Klinkner and Smith (1999) recount howWorld War II shifted ideas about the compatibility ofdemocracy and the Jim Crow system ofracial discrimination in the United States. While these studies tend to highlight the broader ideological changes that come withmass warfare, this paper highlights the incredibly personal way in which participation in mass warfare can reshape who we are. 

This paper also has important implications for contemporary debates about the way in which liberal societies can incorporate immigrants. Though scholars have convincingly shown that immigrants face a massive degree of discrimination, we know much less about the factors that can help to incorporate immigrants (Hopkins 2010; Newman 2012; Fouka 2016, 2017; Halla, Wagner, and Zweimuller 2017). Several recent studies show that the state can play an important role in facilitating immigrant incorporation. For example, Hainmueller, Hangartner, and Pietrantuono (2015, 2017) show that providing citizenship to immigrants increases their assimilation into society across political and social dimensions. At the same time, Hainmueller and Hangartner (2013) show that natives preferences over these immigrants play a strong role in determining which immigrants natives are willing to accept into their society.

In short, there are many factors that influence both an immigrant’s willingness to assimilate and natives’ willingness to accept an immigrant that shape the decision to naturalize. Instead, I show that participation in mass warfare can jointly affect both channels. 

On a much broader note, this study, when viewed alongside the broader literature on the relationship between warfare and egalitarianism, raises a number of thorny normative questions. Are the status-leveling features ofmass warfare compatible with the principles ofliberal democracy especially when considering the mass violence and destruction associated with warfare? If warfare does actually lead to prodigious societal progress, what are the prospects for maintaining equality and reducing new inequalities in an age where nations no longer engage in mass warfare for normative and technological reasons? Obviously, there are no easy answers for these questions, but in an age where discrimination and inequality are now again on the rise, we must grapple with this irony of social progress.

There is an interesting observation regarding Germans and their reduced likelihood of receiving naturalization.

Finally turning to just the Germans, another set of interesting patterns emerges. Across all outcomes where individuals themselves can largely determine the outcome, veterans of German heritage seem to invest more in becoming assimilated. When it comes time for natives and the state to directly intervene, however, on cases of actual naturalization, Germans actually have a much lower effect relative to all other groups. Moreover, this effect is actually negative whereby German veterans of WWI are actually less likely to receive naturalization even though they seem to increase their rates of petitioning. These results are consistent with Hypothesis 3 from the theory where native preferences should also partially determine assimilation patterns. That is, when natives have a negative preference toward certain groups, then we should see natives being less likely to accept individuals from those groups into their own.

By extension one can with certainty assume a much larger negative preference towards todays refugees and immigrants from the Middle East and Africa from Germans.

Germany has its work cut out and it will influence the political landscape on a vast scale.