Rodrigo Sánchez Sienra

Higher-education policy is increasingly politicised across advanced western democracies, one important point of contention being the treatment of immigrant students, who are often portrayed as a ‘burden’ on higher-education systems. A second issue, made salient during the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, is students’ ability to make ends meet and the extent to which governments should provide them with financial support. While these issues are gathering scholarly attention, little is known about the demand side at the intersection of the two, namely, under which conditions immigrants are considered deserving of financial aid. We address this gap using data from original survey experiments conducted in six countries. Our main findings are twofold: First, immigrant students are generally evaluated as less deserving of financial aid than native students but can overcome this if they are top performers. Secondly, we find that this penalty for immigrant students is driven disproportionately by right-wing voters.

Since 2015, over 7 million Venezuelans have been forced to leave their homes, seeking refuge predominantly in neighboring countries across Latin America and the Caribbean. The displacement is typically accompanied by vulnerability and marginalization, yet there is a scarcity of actionable evidence on how to alleviate poverty among immigrants and refugees and facilitate their economic, political, and social integration. This study evaluates the impact of a cash-based intervention (CBI) on multidimensional integration outcomes of highly vulnerable Venezuelan immigrants, predominantly women, residing in Peru. Utilizing an original panel survey of beneficiaries and the staggered rollout of the program, which provided a one-time payment of 760 soles (approximately 190 USD or 74% of the monthly minimum wage), we estimate that the CBI increased the IPL-24 index – an overall measure of immigrant integration capturing several dimensions – by at least 0.12 standard deviations. Moreover, the CBI boosted self-employment by 2 percentage points and raised the intention to emigrate from Peru by 1.2 percentage points. Additionally, our heterogeneity analysis reveals that the benefits of the fixed-amount cash payment diminish significantly with the size of the household. We discuss how these findings inform the design of future CBI programs aimed at supporting vulnerable immigrant and refugee families.