COMING TO AMERICA: IMMIGRATION, POLITICAL CAMPAIGNING, AND POLARIZATION

Funders: German Research Foundation (DFG)

Partners: Dr. Axel Dreher, Johannes Matzat, M.A. (Heidelberg University); Dr. Christopher Parsons (University of Western Australia), Dr. Sarah Langlotz,

Period: 2021 - 2023

Abstract: As immigration has become an important wedge issue in elections, politicians have tried to influence political outcomes by instrumentalizing immigrants in political campaigns. Understanding the conditions under which these campaigns are successful, as well as the type of donor reacting to these campaigns, will further our understanding of the role of political campaigns in the political impact of immigration. The proposed project draws on unique and previously unexploited individual-level microdata on the universe of refugees that entered the United States between 1975 and 2015, which we extend with county-level refugee data up to 2018. Moreover, we develop a new identification strategy based on an arbitrary distance threshold within refugees without family ties in the US have to be settled. Altogether, we will examine novel questions, introduce new data, and develop new identification strategies.