Immigration and Right-Wing Populism: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
(2019) In Working Papers- Abstract
- Between the 2014 and 2018 Swedish parliamentary elections, the vote share of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats increased significantly. To evaluate the possibility of a causal link between immigration and the right-wing populist vote, this paper uses data from a nationwide policy experiment, under which refugees are allocated randomly to every municipality in the country, creating exogenous variation in the number of refugees between municipalities. Overall, I find a positive and significant impact of immigration on the anti-immigration vote. In areas with strong anti-immigration sentiments during the 1990s refugee wave, the effect is magnified significantly. However, when considering immigration of a particular refugee group dominated... (More)
- Between the 2014 and 2018 Swedish parliamentary elections, the vote share of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats increased significantly. To evaluate the possibility of a causal link between immigration and the right-wing populist vote, this paper uses data from a nationwide policy experiment, under which refugees are allocated randomly to every municipality in the country, creating exogenous variation in the number of refugees between municipalities. Overall, I find a positive and significant impact of immigration on the anti-immigration vote. In areas with strong anti-immigration sentiments during the 1990s refugee wave, the effect is magnified significantly. However, when considering immigration of a particular refugee group dominated by young men, the relationship is considerably weaker. I show that this is because immigration of young men has a balancing effect on the right-wing populist vote among immigration-friendly voter groups. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/7369268b-e891-4229-acfa-b42e3954e538
- author
- Mehic, Adrian LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2019
- type
- Working paper/Preprint
- publication status
- published
- subject
- in
- Working Papers
- issue
- 2019:5
- pages
- 53 pages
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 7369268b-e891-4229-acfa-b42e3954e538
- alternative location
- https://swopec.hhs.se/lunewp/abs/lunewp2019_005.htm
- date added to LUP
- 2019-04-11 14:57:44
- date last changed
- 2019-04-11 14:57:44
@misc{7369268b-e891-4229-acfa-b42e3954e538, abstract = {{Between the 2014 and 2018 Swedish parliamentary elections, the vote share of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats increased significantly. To evaluate the possibility of a causal link between immigration and the right-wing populist vote, this paper uses data from a nationwide policy experiment, under which refugees are allocated randomly to every municipality in the country, creating exogenous variation in the number of refugees between municipalities. Overall, I find a positive and significant impact of immigration on the anti-immigration vote. In areas with strong anti-immigration sentiments during the 1990s refugee wave, the effect is magnified significantly. However, when considering immigration of a particular refugee group dominated by young men, the relationship is considerably weaker. I show that this is because immigration of young men has a balancing effect on the right-wing populist vote among immigration-friendly voter groups.}}, author = {{Mehic, Adrian}}, language = {{eng}}, note = {{Working Paper}}, number = {{2019:5}}, series = {{Working Papers}}, title = {{Immigration and Right-Wing Populism: Evidence from a Natural Experiment}}, url = {{https://swopec.hhs.se/lunewp/abs/lunewp2019_005.htm}}, year = {{2019}}, }