Does immigration decrease far-right popularity? Evidence from Finnish municipalities

Lonsky, Jakub

doi:10.1007/s00148-020-00784-4

Cited by 39 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…Concerning the endogeneity of immigrants' location decision, the large majority of studies address it by instrumenting the share of immigrants in the area. The most commonly adopted instruments are variants of the well‐known shift‐share approach proposed by Card (2001), which exploits the tendency of immigrants to settle in places where a group of the same ethnicity had already settled, under the identification assumption that local economic shocks that attracted immigrants in the past are uncorrelated with present political preferences (Barone et al, 2016; Halla et al, 2017; Lonsky, 2018; Tabellini, 2020). Mayda, Peri, and Steingress (2016) use a shift‐share approach with predicted migration shares inversely proportional to the state's distance from the country of origin.…”

Section: The Electoral Impact Of Immigrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most studies find that immigrants, or refugees, cause an increase in anti‐immigrant‐party votes and protest votes. The few exceptions are Lonsky (2018) and Steinmayr (2016) — which document a negative effect of immigrants and refugees, respectively, on anti‐immigration far‐right parties, and Altindag and Kaushal (2017), who do not detect any significant effect. Thus, results of this literature largely support the prediction of local intergroup threat theory.…”

Section: The Electoral Impact Of Immigrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The outcome E a , t is the share of valid votes for Northern League.

{ImmShare}_{a, t} = \frac{{italicImmigrants}_{a, t}}{{italicPopulation}_{a, t}}

is the share of immigrants in the area: the total number of immigrants ( Immigrants a , t ) divided by the total population ( Population a , t )—I also replicate all the analysis computing immigrant shares using past population in the area (Lonsky, 2018). The only available time‐varying area characteristics X a , t are population density and the aging index.…”

Section: Empirical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the validity of its identification assumption is a general concern in this strand of the literature (Mayda et al, 2016), and it is particularly problematic here, since demographic data are not available before 1999 and therefore the base year (1999) is relatively close to the beginning of the estimation period (2001). Although having few years lags is common in this literature (Lonsky, 2018), I address this data limitation by proposing a new instrumental variable for the immigrant share in NIL a at time t , using:

Z 1_{a, t} = \frac{{\overset{false^}{θ}}_{a, 0} \cdot {Immigrants}_{t}}{{italicPopulation}_{a, t}},

where Immigrants t denotes the total number of foreign presences in Milan in year t ;

θ_{a, 0} = \frac{{italicImmigrants}_{a, 0}}{{italicImmigrants}_{0}}

is share of total immigrants in NIL a in the base year (1999); and

{\overset{false^}{θ}}_{a, 0}

is its predicted value using the physical characteristics of local buildings, measured 10 years before the first election (1991). Z 1 a , t combines two different sources of exogeneity of immigrants' location.…”

Section: Empirical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tolerant or segregated? Immigration and electoral outcomes in urban areas

Devillanova

2021

Papers in Regional Science

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Despite recent research evidence that an increased share of immigrants in an area causes an increase in anti‐immigrant‐party votes, the electoral impact of exposure to immigration appears virtually non‐existent—or even contrary—in urban areas. This study thus reassesses the latter using disaggregated data for Milan, Italy's second‐largest city. The spatial scale of the analysis addresses the possible bias from aggregating neighbourhoods that are experiencing different immigration inflows. Using a sharp measure of anti‐immigration vote and a new instrumental variable to address the possible endogeneity of immigrant share, I find that exposure to immigration has a positive effect on anti‐immigration‐party votes even in urban contexts. These results are of possible major interest to moderate political forces and European institutions and could usefully guide policy‐makers in designing immigrant location policies.

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Section: The Electoral Impact Of Immigrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Electoral Impact Of Immigrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The outcome E a , t is the share of valid votes for Northern League.

{ImmShare}_{a, t} = \frac{{italicImmigrants}_{a, t}}{{italicPopulation}_{a, t}}

Section: Empirical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Z 1_{a, t} = \frac{{\overset{false^}{θ}}_{a, 0} \cdot {Immigrants}_{t}}{{italicPopulation}_{a, t}},

where Immigrants t denotes the total number of foreign presences in Milan in year t ;

θ_{a, 0} = \frac{{italicImmigrants}_{a, 0}}{{italicImmigrants}_{0}}

is share of total immigrants in NIL a in the base year (1999); and

{\overset{false^}{θ}}_{a, 0}

Section: Empirical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tolerant or segregated? Immigration and electoral outcomes in urban areas

Devillanova

2021

Papers in Regional Science

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“…In Austria, local voting for the FVÖ has increased as an effect of the inflow of immigrants into a community (Halla, Wagner, and Zweimüller 2017). One study of Finland finds that increases in the share of foreign citizens in a municipality decreases the votes for the Finns Party (note, however, that all foreigners are considered) (Lonsky 2021). In the UK membership of the British National Party is higher in highly-segregated cities with a larger proportion of non-whites (Biggs and Knauss 2012).…”

Section: Effects Of Immigration On Support For Radical Right Partiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Immigration within the European Union Increases Support for Eurosceptic Parties

Toshkov¹

2021

Preprint

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What are the political consequences of immigration? Theoretically, the mechanisms of intergroup contact and outgroup threat can lead to contradictory effects, and it remains uncertain which one would prevail in different contexts. In this article I study the impact of immigration from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) on support for Eurosceptic parties between 2004 and 2019 in the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Italy and Portugal. I find that higher levels of immigration from CEE are systematically related to higher voting shares cast for right-wing Eurosceptic parties at the local level in all of these countries, net of the influence of non-Western immigration. In most countries, the effects are also robust to including a rich set of local-level socio-economic controls. These effects can be found in elections for the European Parliament as well as in national elections. The effects have not diminished over the past 15 years and are most visible in mid-sized localities. The effect on left-wing Euroscepticism is positive in the Netherlands, but negative in Denmark, Sweden and Italy. These results highlight the tension between free movement and political support for European integration. Even in the European Union, immigration from other member states can trigger hostile political reactions.

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