Refugees welcome? Understanding the regional heterogeneity of anti-foreigner hate crimes in Germany

Arbeitspapier

In this article, we examine anti-foreigner hate crime in the wake of the large influx of asylum seekers to Germany in 2014 and 2015. By exploiting the quasi-experimental assignment of asylum seekers to German regions, we estimate the causal effect of an unexpected and sudden change in the share of the foreign-born population on anti-foreigner hate crime. Our county-level analysis shows that not simply the size of regional asylum seeker infl ows drives the increase in hate crime, but the rapid compositional change of the residential population: Areas with previously low shares of foreign-born inhabitants that face large-scale immigration of asylum seekers witness the strongest upsurge in hate crime. Economically deprived regions and regions with a legacy of anti-foreigner hate crimes are also found to be prone to hate crime against refugees. However, when we explicitly control for East-West German differences, the predominance of native-born residents at the local level stands out as the single most important factor explaining the sudden increase in hate crime.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: ZEW Discussion Papers ; No. 19-005

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination ; Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population; Neighborhood Characteristics ; Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
• Subject: hate crime ; immigration ; natural experiment ; regional conditions

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Entorf, Horst ; Lange, Martin
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): ZEW - Leibniz-Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung
• (where): Mannheim
• (when): 2019

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/193168
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET