Learning from the Origins: Immigrants’ Networks, Political Preferences, and the European Refugee Crisis

Abstract

This paper documents a `home bias' in the dynamics of political attitudes and social norms. It shows that 1st- and 2nd-generation immigrants adjust their attitudes and behaviors following the political opinion at the origin. This dynamic adjustment is stronger for less socially integrated immigrants and for those living in regions with more co-ethnics. To advance causality, I leverage the variation in timing and intensity of the 2015 European Refugee Crisis across European origins, and find that political spillovers `activate' during the periods of increased issue salience at the origin. Moreover, cross-border spillovers of the anti-refugee sentiment contribute to the spread of support for right-wing populist parties. Augmenting social survey data with the data from Google Trends and Facebook, I show that (i) elevated attention to events at the origin, (ii) network homophily, and (iii) social media ties are the mechanisms behind these cross-border contagion effects.