Immigration and Right-Wing Populism: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

No 2019:5, Working Papers from Lund University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Between the 2014 and 2018 Swedish parliamentary elections, the vote share of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats increased significantly. To evaluate the possibility of a causal link between immigration and the right-wing populist vote, this paper uses data from a nationwide policy experiment, under which refugees are allocated randomly to every municipality in the country, creating exogenous variation in the number of refugees between municipalities. Overall, I find a positive and significant impact of immigration on the anti-immigration vote. In areas with strong anti-immigration sentiments during the 1990s refugee wave, the effect is magnified significantly. However, when considering immigration of a particular refugee group dominated by young men, the relationship is considerably weaker. I show that this is because immigration of young men has a balancing effect on the right-wing populist vote among immigration-friendly voter groups.

Keywords: immigration; right-wing populism; natural experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 J15 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 53 pages
Date: 2019-03-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-eec, nep-eur, nep-mig, nep-pol and nep-soc
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2019_005

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