The Violent Legacy of Victimization: Post-Conflict Evidence on Asylum Seekers, Crimes and Public Policy in Switzerland

Abstract

We study empirically how past exposure to conflict in origin countries makes migrants more violent prone in their host country, focusing on asylum seekers in Switzerland. We exploit a novel and unique dataset on all crimes reported in Switzerland by nationalities of perpetrators and victims over 2009-2012. Our baseline result is that cohorts exposed to civil conflicts/mass killings during childhood are 40 percent more prone to violent crimes than the average cohort. We exploit cross-region heterogeneity in public policies within Switzerland to document which integration policies are able to mitigate the detrimental effect of past conflict exposure on violent criminality.