Bend it like Beckham’: Identity, socialization and assimilation. CEPR Discussion Paper 5662

This paper is about ethnic identity. We first develop a model of identity formation resulting from the interaction of cultural transmission and socialization inside the fam-ily, peer effects and social interactions, and identity choice. We then put the model to data using the UK Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities. We show that the main determinants of ethnic identity include past racial harassment and discrimination experiences, language spoken at home and at work, quality of housing, and structure of the family. Most importantly, we find that, consistently with our theoretical analysis, identity and socialization to an ethnic minority are, other things equal, more intense in mixed neighborhood than in segregated neighborhoods. We argue that this last result has important and up-to-now unnoticed implications for integration and assimilation policies