Syrian refugee influx and the rise of far-right rhetoric: a quasi-experimental investigation

Abstract

ABSTRACT The shockwaves of Syrian refugee influx are coupled with the phenomenal rise of the far-right parties in Europe. There are studies explaining the electoral upsurge of far-right parties responding to the immigration crisis, however, there has not been a study investigating how fierce the far-right rhetoric has become. This question situates European politics in a post-Syrian conflict scenario in which a conflict and subsequent immigration from far away has framed the polarization in Europe. Using the Comparative Manifesto Project's dataset, which measures percentages of sentences allocated to issues, we tested whether Syrian refugee influx has casually increased the far-right rhetoric (e.g. ‘negative mention of internationalism’ and ‘negative mention of multiculturalism’). Using propensity score matching of countries based on Consumer Price Index and Industrial Production Index, top refugee-receiving European countries are considered as the treatment group and other countries as the control group. The findings reveal that, the Syrian refugee influx has causally increased the far-right rhetoric in general, regardless of the electoral success. To test whether there is any scientific basis of the far-right rhetoric that refugees increase crime, it is found that there was no significant increase in crime rates among the treatment and the control countries..