The 2015 refugee crisis in Germany: Concerns about immigration and populism

Arbeitspapier

This paper investigates the effect of the refugee crisis, and the related government's asylum policy, on concerns about immigration of the German population. Exploiting exogenous variation in survey interview timing of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), I employ a difference-in-differences strategy to estimate the short-term causal effect of the refugee crisis on concerns about immigration. The estimated effect is substantial, representing an increase in concerns of around 22%, compared to the pre-refugee crisis baseline level. Interestingly, I find that this increase was twice as large for East Germans, compared to West Germans. In a second section, I show concerns about immigration are positively correlated with political support for the relatively new, right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). However, using the variability in concerns generated by the refugee crisis, I find no evidence of a causal effect of concerns on political preferences in the short term.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research ; No. 966

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; International Migration ; Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers ; Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior ; Crisis Management
• Subject: concerns about immigration ; refugee crisis ; Germany ; AfD ; populism ; political preferences

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Sola, Alessandro
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW)
• (where): Berlin
• (when): 2018

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/178208
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET