A Political Economy of the Immigrant Assimilation: Internal Dynamics

June 24, 2010 Within immigrant society different groups wish to help the migrants in different ways – immigrant societies are multi-layered and multi-dimensional. We examine the situation where there exists a foundation that has resources and that wishes to help the migrants. To do so they need migrant groups to invest effort in helping their country-folk. Migrant groups compete against one another by helping their country-folk and to win grants from the foundation. We develop a model that considers how such a competition affects the resources invested by the groups’ supporters and how beneficial it is to immigrants. We consider two alternative rewards systems for supporters – absolute and relative ranking – in achieving their goals. Correspondence: Ira Gang, Economics Department, Rutgers University, 75 Hamilton St, New Brunswick NJ 08901-1248 USA. email: [email protected] Tel : +1 732-932-7405. Fax : +1 732-932-7416. Gil S. Epstein, Department of Economics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 52900, Israel, Email: [email protected] 1 Financial support from the Adar Foundation of the Economics Department at Bar-Ilan University is gratefully acknowledged.