Integrating Migrants, Winning Votes: Evidence from an Anti-Exploitation Campaign

• In Event: Statebuilding and Consolidation

Abstract

Policies that favor the integration of migrants frequently increase xenophobic voting and backfire against their promoters, making integration a politically difficult objective to pursue. I study the effects of a new type of multidimensional campaign designed to give migrants subject to the exploitation in the Italian fields the information and the incentives to denounce their racketeers. Using the city-time varying nature of the intervention, I show that this (i) increased police reporting of exploitation and prosecution of criminal organizations, who are often responsible for smuggling and controlling migrants; (ii) raised awareness among the civil society and, importantly, (iii) increased the vote share for pro-integration parties while producing no surge in far-right parties voting. Survey evidence ties this last result to a change in preferences for immigration: in treated locations, respondents become more pro-integration post treatment. Learning about migrants’ exploitation fostered sentiments of sympathy for migrants, shifting moderate voters towards pro-immigration parties. Unlike other integration policies, fighting migrant exploitation can directly damage organized crime and improve migrants’ situation at no political cost for parties supporting it.

Author

• Gemma Dipoppa, Stanford