Becoming neighbors with refugees and voting for the far-right? The impact of refugee inflows at the small-scale level
We investigate the effect of the refugee inflow between 2014 and 2017 on voting for the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the national parliamentary election in 2017 in Germany. Drawing on unique small-scale data enables us to distinguish between the contact theory, captured by the inflow of refugees into the immediate neighborhood (1km x 1km), and county-level (NUTS 3) effects, which might pick-up other, broader factors such as media coverage or specific county-level policies. We alleviate concerns of an endogenous refugee allocation by a shift-share instrument. Our results indicate that the contact theory is valid in urban West Germany, i. e., higher refugee inflows in West German urban neighborhoods decrease the shares of far-right voting, while there is no robust evidence of a relationship between refugee inflow and far-right vote shares in East Germany and rural West Germany.
Year of publication: |
2022
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Authors: | Fremerey, Melinda ; Hörnig, Lukas ; Schaffner, Sandra |
Publisher: |
Düsseldorf : Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE) |
Subject: | voting behavior | neighborhood characteristics | refugees | immigration |
Saved in:
freely available
Series: | DICE Discussion Paper ; 387 |
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Type of publication: | Book / Working Paper |
Type of publication (narrower categories): | Working Paper |
Language: | English |
ISBN: | 978-3-86304-386-5 |
Other identifiers: | 1799630307 [GVK] hdl:10419/251890 [Handle] RePEc:zbw:dicedp:387 [RePEc] |
Classification: | D72 - Economic Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Elections, Legistures, and Voting Behavior ; J15 - Economics of Minorities and Races ; R23 - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population |
Source: |
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013174217