define as self-employed all individuals that contributed to old age provision from independent work. In order to obtain information on an individual’s education, we are adding the Swiss Structural Surveys from 2010–2017 to the data. The Structural Survey is a cross sectional dataset collected by the FSO that includes permanent residents aged 15 and older. Around 200,000 persons are randomly sampled every year to participate with an online questionnaire. The information we are using from the Structural Surveys is the highest completed level of education. Since this data is only available starting in 2010 and only for a subsample of individuals, we are assuming education to be constant over time and we are running most specifications first with the larger sample excluding the Structural Surveys and then with the smaller sample including the Structural Surveys.

The analytical sample used in our empirical analysis includes all refugees and migrants that arrived after 1998 since we only observe the labor market outcomes from 1998. We are restricting the sample to the working age population (18-64 years old)<sup>18</sup> and we only consider refugees and migrants who arrived after the age of 17, excluding those who would have had access to primary or secondary education in Switzerland.For the comparison of refugees and migrants we are further restricting the migrant group to those who are coming from a non EU-15 country to make them more comparable. Robustness checks with the universe of the migrant population are available from the authors.

The final sample includes 111,382 refugees, 701,371 migrants from non EU-15 countries and 1,293,071 natives. The sample that includes the Structural Surveys is smaller and comprises 12,379 refugees, 93,150 immigrants and 390,071 natives. Table 2 presents the summary statistics of the main variables used in the analysis.<sup>19</sup> Figure 3 shows the top 10 origin countries for refugees arriving in Switzerland between 1998 and 2018. Most refugees in this period came from Eritrea, the second biggest group came from Syria, followed by Afghanistan. The biggest wave of refugees came to Switzerland in the year 2015.

In the second part of the empirical analysis, where we examine the role of the initial conditions, we focus on the universe of refugees and we add information on three different conditions in the canton of arrival at the time of arrival. The first condition we analyze is the unemployment rate. This data is measured yearly at the cantonal level and comes from the State Secretariat of Economic Affairs (SECO). The second dimension, we are looking at is the network of migrants and refugees from the same origin country residing in the arrival canton at the time of arrival. The variable co-ethnic network is defined as the log number of co-nationals, measured at the canton level. The third aspect we are focusing on are attitudes towards migrants and natives in the canton of arrival, measured by voting outcomes. The voting data comes from the FSO and the construction of our indicator is described in the remainder of this section.

# **Attitudes toward migration and asylum**

To measure attitudes toward migration and asylum, we construct a time-varying indicator at the canton level, which is based on cantonal vote outcomes. The Swiss (semi-)direct democracy provides an ideal context to measure attitudes over time at a detailed geographical level. Between 1996 and 2020, Swiss voters were asked to vote 21 times on issues related to migration and asylum. A complete list of these votes is provided in Table A.1 in the appendix. There are three types of votes: popular initiative (a proposal to change the constitution, which can be initiated by a group of citizens with 100’000 signatures), mandatory referendum (the parliament proposes to change a constitutional article or an international treaty, which has to be approved by popular vote) and optional referendum (a law voted by the parliament is challenged by a group of citizens with 50’000 signatures). All these different types of votes have in common that the outcome of the popular vote is binding, since they result in a change in the constitution or the legal framework.

> 18. We use 64 as the upper age bound given that in Switzerland the ordinary retirement age for women is 64 years. 19. Data for natives are only available after 2010. When we carry out comparisons between natives and refugees (and natives and migrants) in section 5.1, we limit the sample to the period 2010–2018.

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