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Immigration and Far-Right parties: evidence from Sweden

Bottazzi, Andrea LU and Bottazzi, Luca (2020) NEKN01 20201
Department of Economics
Abstract
International migration is a consolidated and worldwide phenomenon which in recent years has been increasing in Europe due to the political instabilities of the middle east and the African continent. The eects of immigration on the receiving countries are of relevant interest for economic and social policies since these eects contribute substantially to shape the leadership of a country and, in the European framework, of the European Union itself. Despite being at the centre of debate in many nations, the effects of immigration are still not so clear. One one hand the Group Threat Theory states that immigration causes an increase in the share of anti-immigration parties. On the other hand, the Allport's Contact Hypothesis claims the... (More)
International migration is a consolidated and worldwide phenomenon which in recent years has been increasing in Europe due to the political instabilities of the middle east and the African continent. The eects of immigration on the receiving countries are of relevant interest for economic and social policies since these eects contribute substantially to shape the leadership of a country and, in the European framework, of the European Union itself. Despite being at the centre of debate in many nations, the effects of immigration are still not so clear. One one hand the Group Threat Theory states that immigration causes an increase in the share of anti-immigration parties. On the other hand, the Allport's Contact Hypothesis claims the opposite. In this thesis we investigate the role of immigrants on the voting behaviour of Swedish citizens, focusing on the effect of foreign residents on the share of votes for the far-right party, the Sweden Democrats across municipalities. To do so, we collected data from dierent rounds of election for the
Swedish parliament on a municipality level, and various demographic variables including the share of immigrants for each municipality. By using an instrumental variable which relies on historical settlement patterns and municipal level fixed effects, we isolate the causal effect of the share of immigrants on the share of votes for the Sweden Democrats within municipalities. We show a positive and signicant impact on the far-right party, that ranges from 0.31% with normal OLS with control variables to 0.89% with IV and FE combined. The effect is even stronger for smaller and more isolated communities. (Less)
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author
Bottazzi, Andrea LU and Bottazzi, Luca
supervisor
organization
course
NEKN01 20201
year
type
H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
subject
keywords
Immigration, Far right, Fixed Effects, Instrumental Variable
language
English
id
9042235
date added to LUP
2021-04-26 08:58:20
date last changed
2021-04-26 08:58:20
@misc{9042235,
  abstract     = {{International migration is a consolidated and worldwide phenomenon which in recent years has been increasing in Europe due to the political instabilities of the middle east and the African continent. The eects of immigration on the receiving countries are of relevant interest for economic and social policies since these eects contribute substantially to shape the leadership of a country and, in the European framework, of the European Union itself. Despite being at the centre of debate in many nations, the effects of immigration are still not so clear. One one hand the Group Threat Theory states that immigration causes an increase in the share of anti-immigration parties. On the other hand, the Allport's Contact Hypothesis claims the opposite. In this thesis we investigate the role of immigrants on the voting behaviour of Swedish citizens, focusing on the effect of foreign residents on the share of votes for the far-right party, the Sweden Democrats across municipalities. To do so, we collected data from dierent rounds of election for the
Swedish parliament on a municipality level, and various demographic variables including the share of immigrants for each municipality. By using an instrumental variable which relies on historical settlement patterns and municipal level fixed effects, we isolate the causal effect of the share of immigrants on the share of votes for the Sweden Democrats within municipalities. We show a positive and signicant impact on the far-right party, that ranges from 0.31% with normal OLS with control variables to 0.89% with IV and FE combined. The effect is even stronger for smaller and more isolated communities.}},
  author       = {{Bottazzi, Andrea and Bottazzi, Luca}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Immigration and Far-Right parties: evidence from Sweden}},
  year         = {{2020}},
}