Immigration, cultural distance and natives' attitudes towards immigrants : evidence from Swiss voting results

Brunner, Beatrice; Kuhn, Andreas

Publication type:	Working paper – expertise – study
Title:	Immigration, cultural distance and natives' attitudes towards immigrants : evidence from Swiss voting results
Authors:	Brunner, Beatrice Kuhn, Andreas
Extent:	51
Issue Date:	Aug-2014
Series:	IZA Discussion Paper
Series volume:	8409
Publisher / Ed. Institution:	Institute for the Study of Labor
Publisher / Ed. Institution:	Bonn
Language:	English
Subjects:	Immigration; Cultural distance; Rightwing vote; Voting behavior
Subject (DDC):	305: Groups (age, origine, gender, income)
Abstract:	We combine community-level outcomes of 27 votes about immigration issues in Switzerland with census data to estimate the effect of immigration on natives' attitudes towards immigration. We apply an instrumental variable approach to take potentially endogenous locational choices into account, and we categorize immigrants into two groups according to the cultural values and beliefs of their source country to understand how the cultural distance between natives and immigrants affects this relationship. We find that the share of culturally different immigrants is a significant and sizable determinant of anti-immigration votes, while the presence of culturally similar immigrants does not affect natives' voting behavior at all in most specifications. The cultural distance between immigrant and native residents thus appears crucial in explaining the causal effect of immigration on natives' attitudes towards immigration, and we argue that the differential impact is mainly driven by natives' concerns about compositional amenities. We finally show that the elasticity of the share of right-wing votes in favor of the Swiss People's Party is much more elastic with respect to the share of culturally different immigrants than natives' attitudes themselves, suggesting that the party has disproportionally gained from changes in attitudes caused by immigrant inflows.
URI:	http://ftp.iza.org/dp8409.pdf https://digitalcollection.zhaw.ch/handle/11475/14889
License (according to publishing contract):	Licence according to publishing contract
Departement:	School of Management and Law
Organisational Unit:	Winterthur Institute of Health Economics (WIG)
Appears in collections:	Publikationen School of Management and Law

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Brunner, B., & Kuhn, A. (2014). Immigration, cultural distance and natives’ attitudes towards immigrants : evidence from Swiss voting results. Institute for the Study of Labor. http://ftp.iza.org/dp8409.pdf

Brunner, B. and Kuhn, A. (2014) Immigration, cultural distance and natives” attitudes towards immigrants : evidence from Swiss voting results. Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labor. Available at: http://ftp.iza.org/dp8409.pdf.

B. Brunner and A. Kuhn, “Immigration, cultural distance and natives’ attitudes towards immigrants : evidence from Swiss voting results,” Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, Aug. 2014. [Online]. Available: http://ftp.iza.org/dp8409.pdf

BRUNNER, Beatrice und Andreas KUHN, 2014. Immigration, cultural distance and natives‘ attitudes towards immigrants : evidence from Swiss voting results [online]. Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labor. Verfügbar unter: http://ftp.iza.org/dp8409.pdf

Brunner, Beatrice, and Andreas Kuhn. 2014. “Immigration, Cultural Distance and Natives’ Attitudes towards Immigrants : Evidence from Swiss Voting Results.” Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labor. http://ftp.iza.org/dp8409.pdf.

Brunner, Beatrice, and Andreas Kuhn. Immigration, Cultural Distance and Natives’ Attitudes towards Immigrants : Evidence from Swiss Voting Results. Institute for the Study of Labor, Aug. 2014, http://ftp.iza.org/dp8409.pdf.