The deterrent effect of an anti-minaret vote on foreigners’ location choices

Abstract

In a national ballot in 2009, Swiss citizens surprisingly approved an amendment to the Swiss constitution to ban the further construction of minarets. The ballot outcome manifested reservations and anti-immigrant attitudes in regions of Switzerland which had previously been hidden. We exploit this fact as a natural experiment to identify the causal effect of negative attitudes towards immigrants on foreigners' location choices and thus indirectly on their utility. Based on a regression discontinuity design with unknown discontinuity points and administrative data on the population of foreigners, we find that the probability of their moving to a municipality which unexpectedly expressed stronger reservations decreases initially by about 40 percent. The effect is accompanied by a drop of housing prices in these municipalities and levels off over a period of about 5 months. Moreover, foreigners in high-skill occupations react relatively more strongly highlighting a tension when countries try to attract well-educated professionals from abroad.

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

“…First, immigrants may decide to avoid anti-immigrant far-right strongholds. This has been shown in a recent paper by Slotwinski and Stutzer (2019) to be the case in Switzerland after its anti-minaret referendum in 2009. Following the specification suggested in Halla et al (2017), I directly test for this reverse causality by regressing the change in the 2006-2015 immigrant share on a number of initial conditions including the 2003 Finns Party vote share.…”

Hate at first sight? Dynamic aspects of the electoral impact of migration: the case of Ukip

“…Immigrants could avoid areas with anti-immigrant sentiments and locate where they could more easily integrate. For example, by analyzing the case of Switzerland, Slotwinski and Stutzer (2019) find evidence that foreign location choices are significantly affected by natives' attitudes to immigrants. Thus, in areas with more tolerant attitudes, the presence of immigrants would be larger than what would be predicted purely by push factors.…”

Immigration, Cultural Distance and Natives' Attitudes Towards Immigrants: Evidence from Swiss Voting Results

“…By the same token, it also seems unlikely that immigrants will decide to settle in areas where they expect racial discrimination. In fact, there is ample empirical evidence in support of endogenous locational choice of both natives and immigrants (Card et al, ; Damm, ; Saiz and Wachter, ; Slotwinski and Stutzer ; Wong, ). In these circumstances, it is well understood that ordinary least‐squares (OLS) estimates of parameter (vector) β c in equation or are likely to be downward biased and inconsistent, even in the presence of fixed effects.…”