Chapter 13 A Political Economy of the Immigrant Assimilation: Internal Dynamics

Within immigrant society, different groups wish to help the migrants in different ways – immigrant societies are multilayered and multidimensional. 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.