Previous studies of right-wing populist (RWP) parties primarily investigate how domestic factors as well as external forces, such as immigration, incite the emergence and electoral success of RWP parties. Studies examining the link between migration and far-right support have found mixed empirical results, using various measures of immigration. In this article, we construct our own measures of immigration that highlight the economic and cultural dimensions of migrant-sending states in relation to migrant-receiving states. Our empirical analysis of 15 Western European countries uses these measures to examine whether the economic and cultural characteristics of migrant-sending states can enhance RWP success in wealthy, advanced democracies. We find some evidence that relatively large economic and cultural differences between natives and immigrants are conducive to RWP support in Western European countries. But the findings suggest that future research should identify and examine other factors that strengthen or undermine the extent to which RWP parties can make electoral gains by focusing on immigration.
This article examines the determinants of immigration policy toward low-skilled workers across 13 relatively wealthy autocracies after World War II. I argue that authoritarian immigration policy is a consequence of an autocrat's redistributive policy. As the distribution of resource rents in rentier autocracies reduces the incentive of domestic labor to enter the labor force, rentier states rely on migrant workers to meet the demand for low-skilled labor. Autocrats without resource rents, however, lack capacity for redistribution, so they use policies that provide people with wages in exchange for their labor while restricting immigration. Using a policy index that measures the extent to which low-skilled migrant workers can get into a country in a given year, I find strong evidence for this argument across 13 autocracies in the post-World War II era.
This article argues that substantial natural resource wealth leads to more restrictive low-skill immigration policy in advanced democracies. High-value natural resource production often crowds out labor-intensive firms that produce tradable goods. When these proimmigration business interests disappear due to deindustrialization, also known as the Dutch Disease, the proimmigration coalition weakens in domestic politics. Without strong business pressure for increased immigration, policy-makers close their doors to immigrants to accommodate anti-immigrant interests. Using a newly expanded dataset on immigration policy across twenty-four wealthy democracies, I find that oil-rich democracies are more likely to restrict low-skill immigration, especially when their economies are exposed to foreign competition in international trade. The results supplement the voter-based theories of immigration policy and contribute to an emerging literature on the political economy of natural resources and international migration.
How does inequality between capital and labor affect immigration policy? By inciting native anxiety, rising inequality can cause policymakers to restrict low-skill immigration. At the same time, it can lead to more open immigration policy since firms demand more labor when their profit shares increase. We argue that the level of economic development conditions how inequality affects immigration policy by assessing the effect of economic development on the substitutability between immigrants and natives in the labor market. In less developed economies where the substitutability is high, rising inequality leads to more restrictive immigration policy. In advanced economies where the substitutability is low, rising inequality leads to less restrictive immigration policy. Using data on the capital share of value added in the industrial sector as a measure of inequality between capital and labor and low-skill immigration policy in 24 democracies from 1947 to 2006, we find empirical support for our argument. * We would like to thank Charlotte Cavaillé and Adam Harris for providing comments and suggestions on previous versions of the manuscript. In addition, we would like to thank panelists and audiences at the 2015
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