Understanding Out-Mobility and Radical-Right Support as Responses to Differentiated Refugee Exposure

Àlex G De La Prada

doi:10.1093/jrs/feab109

Abstract

Abstract The refugee crisis of 2015 became a major issue of both national and pan-European debate. Behavioral reactions among natives in the form of support for radical-right parties or leaving neighborhoods following influxes of non-Westerners are well documented, but a detailed account of how asylum seekers contribute to these dynamics remains elusive. In this paper, I study how asylum centers and refugees choosing their own residences prompt each of these two behavioral outcomes using register data for the whole of Sweden (2013–2018). The analyses show a divergence depending on the particular type of refugee exposure experienced and the specific behavior under analysis. Only increased radical-right support is observed following the establishment of a new asylum center, whereas greater native out-mobility is found following refugees self-selecting into native-based areas.

Highlights

The refugee crisis of 2015 and its aftermath, reflected in numerous European countries facing an influx of large numbers of asylum seekers, became a major issue of both national and pan-European debate
The estimates are obtained by contrasting the synthetic control (X* 1⁄4 0) with the average for polling districts that experienced an increase in refugee presence, and with the average for polling districts with at least one new asylum center (X 1⁄4 1)
Building on Hirschman’s theory of exit and voice, in this article I have shown that natives facing influxes of refugees near where they live may react in different ways depending on how they encounter the refugee population, which I conjectured is due to the expectations that the incoming refugee population might prompt on the native population regarding the future quality of their neighbourhood

Summary

Introduction

The refugee crisis of 2015 and its aftermath, reflected in numerous European countries facing an influx of large numbers of asylum seekers, became a major issue of both national and pan-European debate. Previous research on far-right support (Valdez 2014) and residential mobility (Grannis 2005) has shown that the salience of ethnic minority visibility and spatial proximity are key factors that are necessary to influence the behavior of natives. These factors underline the importance of the way in which natives encounter refugees in their local contexts, rather than the total refugee population, as a primary condition for increasing far-right support and neighbourhood out-mobility (see Logan 2012). Due mainly to limitations in the available data, most research has relied on the share of refugees in large areas to account for natives’ responses, and has thereby underestimated the outcomes produced by refugee presence by assuming equal salience throughout these large areas, whose size means that refugee visibility may be too low to produce any effect (Park 1924)

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