“Tough on immigration”: social democratic parties, group interests and the ethnic minority vote

ABSTRACT

As social democratic parties reposition themselves on immigration and integration issues to appeal to anti-immigrant voters, ethnic minority voters may switch to parties that are perceived to better protect their group interests. The Flemish social democrats in Antwerp adopted several policies that were perceived as discriminatory by ethnic minorities in response to the electoral growth of the radical right party, while the francophone social democrats in Liege faced no such threat. Evidence from the Belgian Ethnic Minority Election Study 2014 confirms that ethnic minority voters who perceive their group to be more discriminated in everyday life more likely turn to the radical left in Antwerp but not in Liège, supporting the claim that social democrats cannot adopt assimilationist integration policies unpunished. Besides, findings suggest that ethnic minorities distinguish between different group interests in evaluating parties, contributing to the study of the role of group interests in ethnic minority voting.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnic minorities
• social democracy
• voting behavior
• Belgium
• group interests
• Muslim voters

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank prof. dr. Maria Sobolewska from the University of Manchester for her helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author does not have any conflicting interests

Notes

1 The party has announced its name will be changed into VOORUIT (an acronym that spells out the word “forward” in Dutch) at some point in the near future.

 

Additional information

Funding

This study was made possible with the support of the National Science Foundation Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen), the National Lottery (De Nationale Loterij) and the KU Leuven Research council.