Brothers or Invaders? How Crisis-driven Migrants Shape Voting Behavior

Sandra Rozo () and Juan Vargas

No 16836, Documentos de Trabajo from The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA)

Abstract: What explains voters’ negative attitudes toward immigration? Self-interested voters care about their personal economic and social circumstances. Sociotropic voters display in-group bias and perceive migrants as threats to their customs and culture. We study the electoral effects of forced internal and international migration in Colombia to provide evidence on the relative importance of these two hypotheses. We exploit the fact that migrants disproportionally locate in places with earlier settlements of people from their place of origin. In line with the sociotropic hypothesis, we find that only international migration inflows increase political participation and shift votes from left- to right-wing ideologies. Also consistent with the sociotropic hypothesis, we show that these results are not accounted for by the observed changes caused by migration inflows on socioeconomic variables.

Keywords: Migration; Electoral Outcomes; Political Economy; Colombia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 F2 O15 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54
Date: 2018-10-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-mig, nep-pol, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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http://vox.lacea.org/files/Working_Papers/lacea_wps_0014_rozo_vargas.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Brothers or invaders? How crisis-driven migrants shape voting behavior (2021)
Working Paper: Brothers or Invaders? How Crises-Driven Migrants Shape Voting Behavior (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:col:000518:016836

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