Determinants and Local Consequences of Immigration in France

This project aims to study the determinants of immigration at the local level. In a context where climate change is an increasingly important factor of migration, it has been recently shown that people immigrating to the United States tend to choose their destination based on the similarity between the climate of the destination city and the climate of their city of origin (Obolensky, Tabellini, and Taylor, 2023). Our study aims to test the predictive power of climate proximity on immigration choices in the French context. Our analysis will be conducted at the municipal level and aims to determine if immigrants tend to choose to settle in municipalities where the climate is closer to that of their country of origin, and whether this evolves over time. Subsequently, we will study the impact of these migratory flows (predicted by climate proximity) on the political and economic landscape of the municipalities.