Arbeitspapier

Becoming neighbors with refugees and voting for the far-right? The impact of refugee inflows at the small-scale level

We investigate the effect of the refugee inflow between 2014 and 2017 on voting for the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the national parliamentary election in 2017 in Germany. Drawing on unique small-scale data enables us to distinguish between the contact theory, captured by the inflow of refugees into the immediate neighborhood (1km x 1km), and county-level (NUTS 3) effects, which might pick-up other, broader factors such as media coverage or specific county-level policies. We alleviate concerns of an endogenous refugee allocation by a shift-share instrument. Our results indicate that the contact theory is valid in urban West Germany, i. e., higher refugee inflows in West German urban neighborhoods decrease the shares of far-right voting, while there is no robust evidence of a relationship between refugee inflow and far-right vote shares in East Germany and rural West Germany.

ISBN
978-3-86304-386-5
Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Series: DICE Discussion Paper ; No. 387

Classification
Wirtschaft
Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
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
Subject
voting behavior
neighborhood characteristics
refugees
immigration

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Fremerey, Melinda
Hörnig, Lukas
Schaffner, Sandra
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE)
(where)
Düsseldorf
(when)
2022

Handle
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET

Data provider

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Object type

  • Arbeitspapier

Associated

  • Fremerey, Melinda
  • Hörnig, Lukas
  • Schaffner, Sandra
  • Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE)

Time of origin

  • 2022

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