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Immigration and Right-Wing Populism: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Mehic, Adrian LU (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:
author
organization
publishing date
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
2025-04-04 14:29:47
@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}},
}