Immigration and Nationalism in the Long Run

Valentin Lang () and Stephan A. Schneider ()
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Valentin Lang: Universität Mannheim, Germany, https://www.uni-mannheim.de/
Stephan A. Schneider: KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

No 22-505, KOF Working papers from KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich

Abstract: During recent immigration waves, nationalist parties increased their vote shares in many countries, but the political backlash against immigration in some regions was much stronger than in others. We examine whether past experience with migrant inflows shapes voters' reactions to current immigration waves. Our study is based on a natural experiment from Germany, where a short-term and demonstrably arbitrary drawing of occupation zones entailed a discontinuous distribution of forced migrants after World War II. Combining historical migration and election records in a 1949-2021 panel at the municipality level, we exploit these differences in a spatial fuzzy regression discontinuity design. Our results show a substantially weaker nationalist backlash against current immigration in regions that received more forced migrants in the past. Current immigration levels activate and mute this effect of exposure to immigration in the past over a period of at least 70 years.

Keywords: Migration; Nationalism; Persistence; Voting Behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 77 pages
Date: 2022-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-his, nep-int, nep-inv, nep-pol and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kof:wpskof:22-505

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