Integration Through Friendship – Evidence From A Peer Matching Program in Sweden

The research team is evaluating an innovative program which promotes better social and economic integration of recent migrants to Sweden by matching them with established Swedes and creating local social ties through repeated social interaction. The program, Kompis Sverige, has been in operation since 2013. The team is using an oversubscription-based individualized lottery to select 350-400 migrants (out of 700- 800) to be matched to Swedish peers and to follow outcomes at 6 and 12 months. They will focus on a set of varied outcome measures: (a) social attitudes, especially on belongingness, from the World/European Values Surveys, (b) objective measures of Swedish language ability, (c) current employment and education status and (d) incentivized indirect measures to study social inclusion and belongingness.