Sheltering Refugees in Cities: Crime, Public Services, and Voting

• In Event: From Reddit to the Ballot Box: Immigrant Integration, Public Opinion, and Political Reactions

Abstract

An extensive literature documents that immigration flows frequently trigger native backlash, often reflected in heightened support for far-right parties. Yet, the mechanisms driving this response remain unclear, whether rooted in economic competition or cultural threat. Because these channels operate locally and through daily contact, identifying them requires granular data that are typically scarce. This paper examines how the reception of refugees affects local public education, crime, and ultimately voting behavior, exploiting detailed within-city data and plausibly exogenous variation from the quasi-random location of refugee shelters. Using a differences-in-differences strategy, I find that refugee shelters had no impact on crime or congestion in local public schools. However, they boosted natives' support for far-right candidates and reduced votes for the incumbent. Effects are largely driven by shelters hosting culturally diverse refugees comprising different indigenous ethnicities. Together, the results reveal that cultural perceptions can dominate economic channels in shaping local political responses to migration, and that aggregated data can miss essential nuances in locals' attitudes towards migrants.

Author

• Carlos Brito, University of California, Davis
  Presenting Author