Does Immigration into Their Neighborhoods Incline Voters Toward the Extreme Right? The Case of the Freedom Party of Austria

Arbeitspapier

This paper explores one potentially important channel through which immigration may drive support for extreme right-wing parties: the presence of immigrants in one’s neighborhood. We study the case of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). Under the leadership of Jörg Haider, this party increased its share of votes from less than 5 percent in the early 1980s to 27 percent by the year 1999. Using past regional settlement patterns as a source of exogenous variation, we find a significantly positive effect of the residential proximity of immigrants on FPÖ votes, explaining roughly a quarter of the cross-community variance in FPÖ votes. It is the presence of low- and medium-skilled immigrants that drives this result; high-skilled immigrants have no (or even a negative) effect on FPÖ votes.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: NRN Working Paper, NRN: The Austrian Center for Labor Economics and the Analysis of the Welfare State ; No. 1204

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Capitalist Systems: Political Economy ; Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
• Subject: Immigration ; political economy ; voting

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Halla, Martin ; Wagner, Alexander F. ; Zweimüller, Josef
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Johannes Kepler University Linz, NRN - The Austrian Center for Labor Economics and the Analysis of the Welfare State
• (where): Linz
• (when): 2012

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/115087
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET