The Impact of Immigration on Social Trust of Natives: Evidence from the Mass Migration in China

This paper examines the impact of immigration on natives' social trust in the context of China's mass internal migration. Combining individual-level information on social trust and county-level information on immigration rate, we employ the instrumental variable strategy and find that immigration has a significant negative impact on trust among native residents. The impact of immigration on trust is more salient for trust in weak ties than trust in strong ties, and from a compositional perspective, the impact of low-skilled immigrants is more salient than that of high-skilled immigrants. Additional analyses suggest that better public services can buffer the impact of immigration on trust, implying a key role in public policy.