COVID Border Accountability Project-Xenophobia and International Border Closures

• In Event: Poster Session: Comparative Politics I

Abstract

Despite growing evidence that border closures introduced during the coronavirus pandemic were ineffective at reducing the virus' spread, several wealthy countries have continued to institute targeted bans on foreigners' travel, as well as visa and citizenship applications. We examine with our recently published global dataset of over 2,000 country-level border closures whether anti-immigrant sentiments were a significant motivating factor in the introduction of bans on specific groups of foreigners. We use ultraviolet rays data as an instrumental variable to predict approximate skin tone for different countries, hypothesizing that specific types of border closures were xenophobic. We define xenophobic border closures as bans on entry into a country which target specific groups of people without a public health basis. We hypothesize that governments with more anti-immigrant ideological positions, as measured by the Manifesto Project database, were more likely to implement xenophobic border closure policies.

Authors

• Paul Friesen, University of Notre Dame

• Mary Shiraef, University of Notre Dame