# **5.3 Trust, Political preferences and civic engagement**

Was the successful integration of refugees sufficient to lead to full cultural assimilation and the disappearance of refugees’ distinctive identity and values? Or, to the contrary, has the historical strife between refugees and natives (detailed in section 2) cemented into persistent mistrust, discrimination, and polarized political attitudes?

**Trust and self-perceived discrimination** To address these questions, I first look at trust and selfperceived discrimination, as elicited in the ESS survey. Table 2 shows that only 3% of secondgeneration refugees report to have ever felt discriminated against, no differently from natives. This stands in stark contrast with first-generation Albanian immigrant, 50% of whom declare to have been discriminated against, as Table 3 shows. This difference is also related to the fact that only 54% of Albanians report to speak Greek at home, while 99% refugees do. Another crucial difference is that only 12% Albanians report to have the Greek citizenship while all refugees have it. With respect to self-declared trust in others or in institutions (legal system, police, politicians), I find no significant differences between refugees and natives, with a gap of typically less than 5% of the standard-deviation in the attitudinal scale between the two groups.

**Voting** I also examine the voting patterns of second-generation refugees and of Greek natives. The ESS asks respondents the political party they have voted at the last national election. Table 2 shows that, on average, the voting patterns of refugees and natives are virtually identical. Self-reported political preferences measured with a 11-point left-right scale are also very similar between refugees and natives, with a gap of less than 2% of the standard-deviation of this scale between the two groups.

**Political values** Forced displacement, a life-changing experience of “uprootedness”, can have longlasting effect on individual preferences. An important body of evidence has documented how exposure to violence, conflicts, or economic shocks, even temporary, can induces a permanent shift in individual preferences, possibly persisting across generations.<sup>24</sup> Table 2 shows that, relative to Greek natives, second-generation refugees report more egalitarian preferences, and in particular higher support for the principle of equality of opportunity. Refugees also display more altruistic values and greater openness towards understanding different people. This is in line with the existing evidence that exposure to conflict and to economic shocks (e.g., loss of possessions in case of displacement) increases individual support for redistribution and egalitarian values (Giuliano and Spilimbergo, 2014; Bauer et al., 2014) . Furthermore, refugees report greater support for a strong government that protects its citizen and ensures safety, as one could expect from people whose family and community have been persecuted and forcibly displaced by conflict. **Civic engagement** Importantly, refugees’ more egalitarian and prosocial values result into more

> 24See, among others, Bauer et al. (2014); Voors et al. (2012); Cassar, Grosjean and Whitt (2013). On economic shocks, c.f. Giuliano and Spilimbergo (2014) and Fisman, Jakiela and Kariv (2015).

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