Waking Up the Golden Dawn: Does Exposure to the Refugee Crisis Increase Support for Extreme-Right Parties?

Abstract

Does exposure to the refugee crisis fuel support for extreme-right parties? Despite heated debates about the political repercussions of the refugee crisis in Europe, there exists very little—and sometimes conflicting—evidence with which to assess the impact of a large influx of refugees on natives’ political attitudes and behavior. We provide causal evidence from a natural experiment in Greece, where some Aegean islands close to the Turkish border experienced sudden and drastic increases in the number of Syrian refugees while other islands slightly farther away—but with otherwise similar institutional and socioeconomic characteristics—did not. Placebo tests suggest that precrisis trends in vote shares for exposed and nonexposed islands were virtually identical. This allows us to obtain unbiased estimates of the electoral consequences of the refugee crisis. Our study shows that among islands that faced a massive but transient inflow of refugees passing through just before the September 2015 election, vote shares for Golden Dawn, the most extreme-right party in Europe, moderately increased by 2 percentage points (a 44 percent increase at the average). The finding that mere exposure to the refugee crisis is sufficient to fuel support for extreme-right parties has important implications for our theoretical understanding of the drivers of antirefugee backlash.

Refugee Migration and the Politics of Redistribution: Do Supply and Demand Meet?

“…The latter is consistent with recent findings on how intensity of exposure to the refugee flows matters (see e.g. Dinas et al 2019) and, it is important from a policy perspective as it points to the possibility of addressing some of the issues arising by mass migration via better management and fairer allocation of the flows.…”

“…The rather robust result that immigration tends to increase the support for far-right (see e.g. Dinas et al 2019) could be consistent both with non-economic reasons and welfare chauvinism. For example, Alesina et al (2018) find that immigration decreases the voter support for redistribution.…”

First Impressions of Faces of Refugees are More Strongly Influenced by Target Cues and Perceiver Attitudes Than by Sheer Group Affiliation

“…Refugees' integration has become one of the most important and challenging issues in recent times (e.g., Bach & Schenke, 2017;Echterhoff et al, in press;Esses, Hamilton, & Gaucher, 2017;. This is reflected not only in political debates (e.g., Dinas et al, 2019;Goodman & Kirkwood, 2019;van Prooijen, Krouwel, & Emmer, 2018) but also in an increasing number of studies on stereotypes and prejudice toward refugees (e.g., Bansak et al, 2016;Canetti, Snider, Pedersen, & Hall, 2016;Cowling, Anderson, & Ferguson, 2019;Echterhoff, Hellmann, Back, Esses, & Wagner, 2019;Hangartner, Dinas, Marbach, Matakos, & Xefteris, 2019;Kotzur et al, 2017;Kotzur et al, 2019;Murray & Marx, 2013;Schweitzer, Perkoulidis, Krome, Ludlow, & Ryan, 2005).…”

Expected political participation and demographic changes in Europe

“…In particular, this literature has focused on changes in local attitudes about and the political behaviour driven by immigration. For example, Dinas et al (2019) report that across the Greek islands on the Aegean Sea, exposure to migrant seeking asylum in Europe induced sizable and lasting increases in locals' hostility towards refugees, immigrants, and Muslim minorities. They also find that exposure increases support for restrictive immigration and asylum policies, as well as political engagement to effect those exclusionary policies.…”