The Grass Really Is Greener on the Other Side: Immigration and Changes in Expressed Sentiments on Twitter

Jisu Kim, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)
Ingmar Weber, Saarland University
Emilio Zagheni, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)

Immigration produces diverse outcomes, with some immigrants finding happiness in an improved quality of life, while others face emotional distress from unexpected challenges. Studying these emotional experiences is challenging due to costly surveys and limited longitudinal data. To address this, we curated high-quality data and analyzed Twitter activities of immigrants in the US to explore how their expressed sentiments evolve post-migration, comparing them to non-immigrants and US locals in a quasi-causal sense. Our findings reveal that migration generally boosts positive sentiments among immigrants, even when the topics of discussion remain constant. However, there is no conclusive evidence that migration significantly impacts negative sentiments. Immigrants have lower positive sentiment levels than US locals, with no major difference in negative sentiment. Gender plays a key role, as males are less likely to express positive sentiments post-migration. Linguistic ties also foster positive sentiment after migration.

Keywords: International Migration, Health and Morbidity, Big data, Digital and computational demography

See paper.