Refugee Urban Shelters and Locals' Electoral Outcomes: Evidence from the Venezuelan Refugee Crisis in Northern Brazil

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

Abstract

Refugee camps and shelters in rural and secluded areas (often combined with restrictions on rights) remain the predominant form of aid provided by developing host countries, even though 78\% of refugees worldwide reside in urban areas. Since 2014, one million Venezuelans have entered Brazil, and the border between the two countries in Roraima has become the main entry point of an unprecedented migration flow. Diverging from this "standard" reception strategy, the Brazilian government granted comprehensive rights to Venezuelans and opened 11 urban refugee shelters in different neighborhoods of Roraima's capital. Leveraging the quasi-random placement of these shelters, I investigate how this "refined" reception policy affected locals' political choices. According to the results, Brazilians living closer to shelters increased their support for far-right presidential and gubernatorial candidates, at the expense of the incumbent governor involved in the shelter policy efforts. Therefore, urban shelters triggered an accountability effect combined with a shift towards far-right populist candidates. The results are mainly driven by shelters hosting Venezuelan Indigenous people (an especially vulnerable and culturally distinct subgroup of the refugee population). This reveals that the establishment of urban refugee shelters itself might be less important than the cultural and ethnic features for explaining political backlash.

Author

• Carlos Brito, University of California, Davis
  Presenting Author