Deportation’s Fallout: Causal Evidence from Denmark

• In Event: Immigration and Justice Issues II

Abstract

As traditional distinctions between immigration and criminal law have blurred in recent decades it has become increasingly hard to answer questions about deportation’s consequences for families. This is problematic as deportations have exploded in numbers in many Western societies and the ‘crimmigration’ trend predominates policy in both the U.S. and Europe. With this paper we solve fundamental challenges of sampling issues, selection bias and unclear counterfactuals in research on deportation’s fallout to analyze short- and long-term consequences of deportation for families. We do so by using administrative data on all criminal deportations from the Criminal Convictions Register in Denmark in 2008-2021 and two rigid research designs: a dynamic difference-in-differences approach and a fuzzy regression discontinuity evaluation of policy-induced variation in deportation risks. Consistent with evidence from qualitative studies we document initial family setbacks after a deportation order is issued, followed by periods of surprising resilience and recovery.

Authors

• Lars Hojsgaard Andersen, ROCKWOOL Foundation

• Michael T. Light, University of Wisconsin-Madison