The Culture Gap: The Role of Culture in Successful Refugee Settlement

Control Variable 
I control for GDP (per capita, PPP) of countries of asylum, using data from the 
World Bank.
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 This is an important control because the wealth of the country receiving 
refugees will affect their capacity to accept refugees. If a country is receiving refugees of 
similar culture, but their infrastructure and resources are overwhelmed, that will 
negatively impact the decisions about how many refugees to accept and what legal and 
social resources to provide, therefore prohibiting successful integration of the refugees. 
Additionally, the countries of asylum are not homogenous; while many are large 
countries with extensive resources, some are not. Controlling for GDP ensures that any 
results take into account the possibility that financial capacity can outweigh cultural 
distance as a determinant of integration.
Case Studies 
In addition to this quantitative analysis, I conduct a qualitative case study of 
refugee flows in four pairs of countries. For this, the cases are: Syrian refugees in 
Germany, Venezuelan refugees in Colombia, Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, and 
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“GDP per capita, PPP (current international $),” n.d.

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refugees from El Salvador to the United States. These four pairs are good because they 
include a broad geographic area - Latin, Central, and North America, South Asia, Europe, 
and the Middle East. They also each represent different types of refugee crises: 
Venezuela is experiencing political and economic turmoil, Syria continues to face an 
ongoing war, countries in the Northern Triangle have high levels of gang violence, and 
the Rohingya in Myanmar are fleeing ethno-religious violence. Finally, the countries of 
asylum present variety in wealth to help control for the effect of GDP: the United States 
and Germany are highly developed, while Colombia and Bangladesh are developing. By 
employing case-based pattern finding, I analyze these four cases to show how cultural 
distance is realized and influences refugee integration. The cases I include are diverse but 
show common processes, which I highlight in my research.
For each case, I research the history and origin of the refugee crisis itself. I then 
place it in the context of the cultural similarities and differences of each country, making 
note of any historic ties between them. To determine cultural distance, lacking a 
comprehensive indicator such as the World Values Survey, I use data from the CIA 
World Factbook to describe the dominant religion, ethnicity, and language of each 
country, as well as its geographic location, GDP per capita (PPP), and type of 
government. I also use Freedom House scores, an index of how free a country is based on 
political rights and civil liberties, and the United Nations Development Program’s Gender 
Inequality Index (GII) which measures from 0 to 1 how unequal women are, with 1 being 
the least equal.
I go on to analyze the response of the country of settlement at the group level and 
at the state level, including any significant events, policies, and how the situation changed 

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over time. Finally, I assess the level of success of the refugees, attempting to find 
information on social integration indicators like employment, access to education, and 
housing, which varies in availability. The independent variable is the level of cultural 
similarity or difference, while the dependent variables are the indicators of social 
integration. 
I use these case studies in order to assess the relationship between culture and 
settlement as well as the mechanism by which culture might affect settlement. They 
provide more holistic analysis on the impact of cultural distance on integration and take 
into account the histories and particularities of each case. They also provide support for 
and help explain the results of the quantitative analysis and the influence of other factors 
such as wealth of the country of asylum. 
Analysis