Refugees Crisis and Right-Wing Populism Evidence from the Italian Dispersal Policy

This paper examines how the 2014-2017 ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Italy affected voting behavior and the rise of right–wing populism in national Parliamentary elections. We collect novel administrative data across all Italian municipalities and leverage exogenous variation in refugee resettlement induced by the Dispersal Policy. We find a positive and significant effect of the share of asylum seekers on support for radical-right anti-immigration parties, although small in magnitude. We further examine the underlying mechanisms behind the shift in political preferences and provide causal evidence that anti–immigration backlash is not rooted in adverse economic effects, while it is triggered by radical–right propaganda