Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/229184 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
ILE Working Paper Series No. 45
Publisher: 
University of Hamburg, Institute of Law and Economics (ILE), Hamburg
Abstract: 
We analyze possible links between both trust and trustworthiness among Syrian refugees in Germany in relation to the refugees' involvement in two different forms of social networking (forming bonding ties with other refugees vs. forming bridging ties between refugees and Germans). We implement treatment conditions in which Syrian refugees play a trust game either with another Syrian refugee or with a German participant. Our results show that Syrians who engage in bonding networks show higher levels of trust and (un)conditional trustworthiness when they interact with a Syrian compared to when interacting with a German participant. In turn, the negative discrimination refugees display towards Germans decreases regarding trust and conditional trustworthiness, and vanishes regarding unconditional trustworthiness, for refugees engaged in bridging networks. The type of social ties created by the refugees correlates with their living conditions: newly arrived Syrian refugees tend to engage in bonding networks, whereas both staying longer in Germany and having a private home in Germany coincide with increased engagement in bridging networks. Thus, residence in a refugee camp appears to be an important barrier to the proliferation of social networks between hosts and refugees.
Subjects: 
bonding
bridging
refugees
traumatic experience
trust
trustworthiness
social capital
experiments
JEL: 
C93
D91
J15
Z13
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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