Des nôtres? The Political Effects of Hosting Internal Evacuees

Abstract

Conflict-driven internal displacements are a common yet understudied phenomenon. We explore the political consequences of such displacements on hosting communities using the case of the forced evacuation of Alsatians to the French interior at the start of WWII. Our identification strategy leverages exogenous variations in exposure to evacuees generated by unexpected deviations from the French evacuation plan. Municipalities that were to receive evacuees from the front zone, a strip of land between the Maginot Line and the French-German border, received a larger-than-expected number of evacuees relative to others. Increased expo- sure to Alsatian evacuees led to greater support for left-of-center parties after WWII. Additional evidence suggests that an identity response to contact with a co-national but culturally different out-group explains these results.