Studying Migrant Assimilation Through Facebook Interests

TL;DR

This study leverages Facebook interest data to analyze the cultural assimilation of Arabic-speaking migrants in Germany, revealing demographic and origin-based gradients and offering new research avenues for computational social science.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method using Facebook interests to measure migrant assimilation, addressing data collection challenges in cultural integration studies.

Findings

Assimilation varies by demographics, language, and country of origin.

Facebook interests can serve as proxies for cultural assimilation.

The approach enables timely analysis of migrant integration trends.

Abstract

Migrants' assimilation is a major challenge for European societies, in part because of the sudden surge of refugees in recent years and in part because of long-term demographic trends. In this paper, we use Facebook's data for advertisers to study the levels of assimilation of Arabic-speaking migrants in Germany, as seen through the interests they express online. Our results indicate a gradient of assimilation along demographic lines, language spoken and country of origin. Given the difficulty to collect timely migration data, in particular for traits related to cultural assimilation, the methods that we develop and the results that we provide open new lines of research that computational social scientists are well-positioned to address.