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Explaining The Anti‐Immigrant Sentiment Through a Spatial Analysis: A Study of The 2019 European Elections in Italy
Author(s) -
Pagliacci Francesco,
Bonacini Luca
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.766
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1467-9663
pISSN - 0040-747X
DOI - 10.1111/tesg.12524
Subject(s) - immigration , proxy (statistics) , settlement (finance) , competition (biology) , variable (mathematics) , instrumental variable , political science , variables , demographic economics , economics , econometrics , law , ecology , mathematical analysis , mathematics , finance , machine learning , computer science , payment , biology
Does the settling of foreigners cause a rise in anti‐immigrant sentiment due to resource competition? Or do direct interactions lead to more respectful relations? And what if one also considers the settlement of foreigners in neighbouring municipalities? Applying an instrumental variable approach to variables collected at the Italian municipality level and including neighbouring areas, this paper aims to answer these questions by considering the vote for the Lega party in 2019 European parliamentary election as a proxy for the anti‐immigration sentiment. Our results point out that, once controlling for most socio‐economic variables and remoteness, a larger presence of foreigners within the municipality reduces the vote for the Lega. In contrast, the presence of immigrants in the neighbouring municipalities does not show a significant effect.