In the upcoming second edition of the textbook, we include more analysis of the European refugee crisis.
Box 12.1
The European refugee crisis began unfolding in 2015 when tens of thousands of
refugees from the Middle East and North Africa fled their homelands and headed
north. This influx of new refugees provides even more case studies of how new
refugee populations affected political outcomes in Europe. Christian Dustmann,Kristine Vasiljeva and Anna Damm (2019) analyze effect of refugees on electoral
outcomes in Denmark, where refugees are allocated randomly by the Danish
government. Unlike economic migrants, refugees usually do not have a say in
which region of a country they will reside, at least initially. (This is not
the case in the United States, where resettlement agencies take into
consideration the specific characteristics of the refugees, such as networks of
former immigrants from similar countries of origin and availability of local
programs to meet the needs of the specific refugee group). The random
allocation of refugees across different municipalities in Denmark avoids issues
with selection bias (the Appendix to Chapter 8 discusses selection bias). The
researchers find that refugee allocations have large effects on voting
outcomes: Right-wing parties experience a 1.3 to 2.3 percentage point increase
in vote shares (which varies across different levels of government) in response
to a 1 percentage point increase in refugees. Overall, there is a shift in the
distribution of votes from parties on the left to parties on the right in
municipalities with more refugees. However, for the largest municipalities, the
response is the reverse: More refugees lead to fewer votes for anti-immigrant
parties, suggesting a divide among urban and rural areas.
Dustmann, C., Vasiljeva, K., and Piil Damm, A. (2019) “Refugee migration and electoral outcomes.” Review of Economic Studies 86(5), pp. 2035–2091. DOI: 10.1093/restud/rdy047.
