Are Immigrants More Left Wing than Natives?

Simone Moriconi, Giovanni Peri and Riccardo Turati

No 16164, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We analyze whether second-generation immigrants have different political preferences relative to children of citizens. Using data on individual voting behavior in 22 European countries between 2001 and 2017, we characterize each vote on a left-right scale based on the ideological and policy positions of the party. First, we describe and characterize the size of the "left-wing bias" in the vote of second-generation immigrants after controlling for a large set of individual characteristics and origin and destination country fixed effects. We find a significant left-wing bias of second-generation immigrants, similar in magnitude to the left-wing bias of those with a secondary, relative to a primary, education. We then show that this left-wing bias is associated with stronger preferences for inequality-reducing government intervention, internationalism and multiculturalism. We find only weak evidence that second-generation immigrants are biased away from populist political agendas and no evidence that they have stronger preferences for pro-immigrant policies. Finally, we show that growing up with a father who is struggling to integrate into the labor market is a strong predictor of this left-wing bias.

Keywords: elections; immigration; Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 J61 P16 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 64 pages
Date: 2023-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-eec, nep-lab, nep-mfd, nep-mig, nep-pol and nep-ure
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Published - published as 'Analyzing political preferences of second-generation immigrants across the rural–urban divide', in: Journal of Urban Economics, 2025, 146, 103740.

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