The Role of Immigration in Affecting Voting Patterns

IF IMMIGRANTS HAVE AN OVERWHELMINGLY POSITIVE EFFECT ON THE ECONOMY OF THE RECIPIENT COUNTRY, THE SAME CANNOT BE SAID ABOUT POLITICS AND ELECTIONS. HERE IS WHAT A BOCCONI STUDY REVEALED BY INVESTIGATING MILANO

by Carlo Devillanova, Dept. of Policy Analysis and Public Management, Bocconi
Translated by Alex Foti


In spite of the fact that aggregate data do not justify the alarmist tone taken by the debate on immigration, certainly the phenomenon is a source of great concern for EU citizens. Indeed, the Eurobarometer opinion poll taken in the fall of 2017 shows that immigration comes second in list of problems facing the European Union as a whole and each member country; in 2015, it was ranked as the first source of preoccupation. It is conceivable that this concern translates into politically significant behavior, both on the part of parties running for elections and the electors voting in them. Many commentators have in fact associated the increase of immigration with the growing consensus gained at the ballot box by anti-immigration parties. The fact that in many cases these same parties also have anti-EU or anti-systemic positions makes the issue particularly important. However, the simple simultaneity of the two phenomena is not enough to establish a causal correlation.

➜ Migration and metropolitan areas.
There are recent studies which have empirically tested the hypothesis that immigration causes an increase in the share of vote going to xenophobic parties. All these studies make use of the variance in migration rates and electoral outcomes characterizing different geographic areas within each EU country. Without going into technical detail (the difficulties in this type of analysis are essentially linked to the fact that immigrants make an active decision where to reside), to date econometric estimates seem to confirm the fact that a growth in the number of immigrants living in a given area causes an increase in the percentage of votes for parties opposed to immigration. Exceptions are studies based on data coming from European large cities (Barone et al., 2016, Dustmann et al., 2017), and an empirical study on Austria (Steinmayr 2016), however based on cross-section data.
 
What can explain the different empirical result we get for EU metropolises? A first possible answer is that inhabitants of metro areas have certain personal characteristics, for example, in terms of education and culture, which give them a better predisposition towards immigrants. If confirmed, this hypothesis would suggest the possibility of sterilizing the electoral effects of immigration through education policy. A second answer is that major cities have historically been exposed to more immigration and this could have made its inhabitants more accustomed and/or less adverse to the arrival of new migrants. However, this explanation is contradicted by the fact that the prior immigrant presence in a municipality seems to exacerbate the electoral impact of immigration (Dustmann et al., 2017). One last, perhaps less encouraging explanation is that metropolitan contexts are very heterogeneous, and using average immigrant presence in estimates can conceal dramatic differences in residential segregation, and thus exposure to the phenomenon of given social strata.

➜ .. and the case of the City of Milano
The still preliminary findings of a research study I've been conducting on the City of Milano supports this last hypothesis. The analysis is based on extremely fine-grained data: Milano was divided into about seventy geographical areas, characterized by great variability in the percentage of foreign-born citizens and in voting results. Taking advantage of this variance over time and between city districts, I found that immigration had a strong impact on electoral results: a rise in migration rates was positively correlated with higher percentages of votes going to anti-immigration parties, and negatively correlated with total voter turnout. Thus, major cities would not seem to be an exception to the rule.

In my opinion, the overall results of this line of research point to a strong gap existing between the economic effects of immigration, which are found to be generally positive, at least for Italy, and its political effects. I personally believe that only by reducing this gap, by means of public awareness campaigns, but also by addressing the distributional conflicts arising with migration flows, mainstream political parties can recoup the votes lost due to the fear of immigration.