Not Welcome Anymore: The Effect of Electoral Incentives on the Reception of Refugees

Abstract

Do electoral incentives affect immigration policies? I study this question in the setting of Italian municipalities making decisions about the reception of refugees. The localized control of the reception policy (SPRAR), combined with the exogenous timing of policy decisions and staggered elections, enables me to study the effect of electoral incentives on the reception of refugees. Although municipalities receive fiscal grants for hosting refugees, electoral incentives reduce the probability of opening a refugee centre by 24 per cent. The effect is driven by voters' misperceptions of immigrants and by extreme-right political preferences. The results explain why is difficult to reach an equal redistribution of refugees across and within countries.

The Spillover of Anti-Immigration Politics to the Schoolyard

“…While the recent refugee 'crisis' clearly brought this into sharper focus, much of the political traction that these parties have gained also relates to ongoing economic migration and the perception that this generates negative outcomes for the recipient population. This is reflected in the development of a now sizeable literature that seeks to estimate the effect of immigration flows on voting patterns and the political views of the native population (see, for instance, Otto and Steinhardt, 2014;Barone et al, 2016;Sekeris and Vasilakis, 2016;Dustmann et al, 2019;Hangartner et al, 2019) and on the effect of political preferences on immigration and immigration policy (Bracco et al, 2018;Gamalerio, 2018).…”

What are You Voting for? Proximity to Refugee Reception Centres and Voting in the 2016 Italian Constitutional Referendum

“…Gamalerio (2017), for instance, demonstrates that the probability of opening a SPRAR reception centre is 24% lower for mayors in the final year of the term (i.e., just before elections), no matter the political orientation.…”