Fear and Loathing in Times of Distress – Causal Impact of Social and Economic Insecurity on Anti-Immigration Sentiment

Abstract

The causal nexus between socio-economic stressors and anti-immigration sentiments remains unclear despite increasing evidence over their correlation. We exploit the social and economic disruptions brought about by the epidemic outbreak in March 2020 to randomly provide survey respondents with, at the time of the survey, pessimistic information about the economic and health consequences of the epidemic. Both economic and social stressors causally induce upsurges in anti-immigration sentiment and demand for fiscal pressure retrenchment. However, radicalised attitudes are accompanied by political radicalisation only when the negative economic consequences of the epidemic are highlighted.

How do Shared Experiences of Economic Shocks Impact Refugees and Host Communities? Evidence from Afghan Refugees in Iran

“…Studies using European Social Survey suggest that the crisis of 2007-09 raised negative attitudes toward migrants, especially in countries more influenced by the crisis (Hatton, 2016;Isaksen, 2019;Turner & Cross, 2015). More recent papers explore the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak on the rise of negative attitudes towards migrants (Daniele et al, 2020;Dipoppa et al, 2021).…”

Inmigration and the public economy: prejudices, myths and misperceptions of the spanish case

“…Recientemente, Danielle et al (2020) llevaron a cabo una experiencia interesante mediante el análisis de los drásticos efectos económicos de la crisis de la COVID-19 en Italia para evaluar los cambios en los sentimientos antiinmigratorios de la población, condicionando previamente sus respuestas sobre la estimación de la crisis económica derivada de esta pandemia. De esta forma, afirman contar con un experimento casi de laboratorio en el que pueden aislar dos fenómenos que se suelen incluir en la literatura sobre los sentimientos antiinmigratorios: el origen natural de esta crisis no permite que se atribuya a los emigrantes y la falta de anticipación y crueldad de esta crisis generan una inseguridad económica sin precedentes.…”

The End of Work is Near, Isn’t It? Survey Evidence on Automation Angst

“…A fourth group receives a different order of survey questions than all other groups where questions about policy preferences and individual labor market behavior come ahead of questions that relate to labor-market automation. For example in Alesina et al (2022), Daniele et al (2020a) and Daniele et al (2020b), this alternative sequence of questions allows for testing priming effects. For brevity, we do not discuss the related results here, but refer to Section 2.3 and Appendix Section H for a detailed discussion.…”