Refugee crisis and right-wing populism: Evidence from the Italian Dispersal Policy

This paper examines the impact of the 2014–2017 ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Italy on voting behavior and the rise of right-wing populism in national Parliamentary elections. Our analysis exploits unique administrative data on refugee reception centers across Italian municipalities and exogenous variation in refugee resettlement induced by the Dispersal Policy. We find a positive and significant effect, although small in magnitude, of the share of asylum seekers on support for radical-right anti-immigration parties, which runs in parallel with a decline in public support for center-left parties. We further examine the mechanisms underlying this shift in political preferences and provide causal evidence that anti-immigration backlash rather than being rooted in adverse economic effects is triggered by radical-right propaganda and hate-speech.