Local labour market competition and radical right voting: Evidence from France

Abstract

How do the economic effects of immigration affect radical right support? The evidence in support of the labour market competition theory-which posits that the economic threat posed by immigration to jobs and wages leads to radical right voting-has been mixed. On the one hand, individual-level surveys underreport economic drivers because of social desirability bias. On the other hand, contextual studies show contradictory findings due to an over-reliance on units of analysis that are too aggregated to meaningfully capture the competitive threat posed by immigrants. This paper identifies the influence of labour market competition on radical right voting at a local level in contexts where native workers are directly affected by the arrival of immigrants who have similar or higher skillsets. Using an original longitudinal dataset of fine-grained municipal electoral, demographic and economic data from France over the 2002-2017 period, the paper provides empirical evidence of local contextual influences of economic competition between natives and immigrants of any skillset. Under local conditions of material deprivation, measured by the local unemployment rate, the effect of labour market competition on municipalities' radical right vote share is amplified. Moreover, higher radical right support is observed in municipalities with a higher share of any one of the following groups: low-skilled natives, medium-skilled immigrants or high-skilled immigrants. This supports the hypothesis that immigrants with higher qualifications are compelled to accept lower-skilled jobs, and are thus perceived as a competitive threat to low-skilled natives. By reconciling radical right contextual studies and research on the political economy of immigration policies, this paper highlights the importance of a local analysis in detecting the effect of labour market competition on radical right support. This paper also explains why some local areas are more prone to radical right support than others over time.

Drinking Alone: Local Socio-Cultural Degradation and Radical Right Support—The Case of British Pub Closures

“…Some recent studies have begun to look more closely at subnational levels to investigate the local contextual determinants that explain radical right voting. These determinants include economic factors such as economic hardship (Carreras et al, 2019; Colantone & Stanig, 2018a), labor market competition (Bolet, 2020), austerity reforms (Fetzer, 2019) and changes in housing prices (Ansell & Adler, 2019); as well as changes in immigration levels (Patana, 2020), changes in the share of non-Western residents (Arzheimer & Carter, 2006; Lubbers et al, 2002; Rydgren & Ruth, 2011); and institutional and party system variables (Kestilä & Söderlund, 2007). Studies that combine the two units of analysis mostly use hierarchical models with cross-sectional data consisting of a handful of attitudinal measures and a set of sociodemographic variables (Arzheimer & Carter, 2006).…”

Political Trust in the “Places That Don't Matter”

“…Rodríguez-Pose cites several correlational studies and has since bolstered the case with further aggregate-level analyses of anti-EU voting across Europe as a whole (Dijkstra et al, 2020) and voting for Donald Trump in 2016 (Rodríguez-Pose et al, 2020). Further research has sought to determine whether these behaviors truly reflect contextual effects and if so, how those effects operate (Colantone and Stanig, 2018;Ansell and Adler, 2019;Bolet, 2020). These studies demonstrate the plausibility of the claim that place matters to right-wing populist voting, although the magnitude of effects and their mechanisms require further inquiry.…”

Correlates of Aggregate Support for the Radical Right in Portugal

“…Finally, one could also argue that radical right support is shaped by a combination of cultural and economic factors, or more precisely that the effect of economic factors is conditioned on cultural factors and vice-versa. Bolet (2020) looks for instance at the role of labour market competition between natives and immigrants and unemployment and finds an amplifying effect. Drawing on this, we could assume that radical right support is shaped by the combination of cultural and economic factors rather than these exerting an influence separately.…”