Immigration and Voting

This chapter reviews the political economy literature on anti-immigration voting. More specifically, it assesses how the presence of immigrants in a localized area influences voting behavior. Most results in this literature point to migrants increasing voting for right-wing anti-immigration parties. The chapter also discusses the potential channels underlying this effect: Among them, competition in the labor maket, welfare expenses, compositional amenities, and cultural differences. There is evidence in favor of all these explanations, however, in the end, cultural and economic explanations seem to be highly intertwined. The conclusions suggest a few avenues for further research.