TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Hessami, Zohal
AU  - Schirner, Sebastian
        TI  - Immigration Shocks and Shifting Social Group Boundaries
        PY  - 2024/Oct/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 17343
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp17343
        AB  - We study whether the arrival of a new immigrant wave changes natives' acceptance of former immigrants and their descendants. We exploit the 2015 European refugee crisis and the context of German open-list local council elections where voting for immigrant-origin candidates represents a consequential revealed preference. We combine hand-collected candidate-level election data with administrative asylum seeker data. Continuous difference-in-differences estimations (based on municipal %∆ in asylum seekers) reveal that immigrant-origin candidates receive more votes the more asylum seekers arrived locally. This shift in social group boundaries is driven by candidates with a Southern/Eastern European origin being culturally similar to Germans.

        KW  - immigration
KW  - immigrant-origin candidates
KW  - local elections
KW  - social acceptance
KW  - cultural similarity
        ER  -