From Border Opening to Political Closing: Immigration and Voting for the Far Right in Switzerland

Ala Alrababah, Andreas Beerli, Dominik Hangartner and Dalston Ward

No hgczq, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: The main theories explaining electoral backlash against immigration give centrality to citizens' cultural, economic, and security concerns. We test these predictions in Switzerland, which opened its labor market to neighboring countries in the 2000s. Using a difference-in-differences design, we document that immigration to Swiss border municipalities increased substantially after the borders opened, followed by a more than six percentage point (29%) increase in support for anti-immigrant parties. However, we find no adverse effects on citizens' employment and wages nor on their subjective perceptions of economic, cultural, or security threats. Instead, we describe how far-right parties introduced novel threats to increase hostility toward immigrants. Our evidence demonstrates how elite rhetoric targeted border municipalities and had the greatest effects on voters vulnerable to political persuasion. Together, these findings emphasize the role that elites may play in driving anti-immigrant votes.

Date: 2024-01-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-int, nep-lab, nep-mig, nep-pol and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/659d1613562e8d0375577812/

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:hgczq

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/hgczq

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().