Does far-right populism affect immigrants’ working conditions?

Anna D’Ambrosio (), Roberto Leombruni () and Tiziano Razzolini ()
Additional contact information
Anna D’Ambrosio: Polytechnic of Turin and LABOR
Roberto Leombruni: University of Turin and LABOR
Tiziano Razzolini: University of Siena, GLO, IZA, LABOR, and ASESD

Journal of Population Economics, 2025, vol. 38, issue 1, No 13, 31 pages

Abstract: Abstract Anti-immigrant stances are central in far-right populist propaganda. We investigate whether the electoral success of far-right populist parties affects the labor market conditions of immigrants. Using administrative panel data from Italian manufacturing workers in 1994–2005, we show that higher electoral support for the populist party Lega Nord significantly increases injury risks for foreign workers within job spells. This effect is most pronounced in small firms, which are characterized by lower levels of unionization and employment protection. The increase in injury rates appears driven by task reallocation to overtime and night shifts and to the exploitation of immigrants’ labor supply rigidity. While alternative factors such as import competition and robotization influence injury risk, they fail to explain our core findings.

Keywords: Social norms; Discrimination; Workplace injuries; Night-shift segregation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 J28 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00148-025-01076-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:jopoec:v:38:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s00148-025-01076-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... tion/journal/148/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00148-025-01076-5

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Population Economics is currently edited by K.F. Zimmermann

More articles in Journal of Population Economics from Springer, European Society for Population Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().