Not Always Backlash the Rise of RSO during the European Refugee Crisis

• In Event: Migrants, Public Opinion, and Policy Preferences in Europe and the Americas

Abstract

How do voters respond to the arrival of refugees? While past scholarship largely focuses on popular backlash, this paper studies welcoming responses. To that end, I assemble novel data on refugee support organizations (RSOs) in Germany and show that the creation of RSOs is unrelated to the actual inflow of refugees. A difference-in-differences strategy demonstrates instead that RSOs were more likely to be founded in domestic in-migration areas, a result not driven by socio-economic differences between places with different domestic migration rates. Household panel data substantiates the idea that domestic migrants are more likely to support refugee integration: I show that domestic migrants became more likely to participate in local voluntary organizations during the refugee crisis. The paper contributes to our understanding of refugee integration and joins a nascent literature on how domestic migration can reshape politics and civil society by altering the composition of local electorates.

Author

• Hans Lueders, Stanford University