Does asylum seeker immigration increase support for the far right? Evidence from the United Kingdom, 2000–2015

ABSTRACT

What effect does the influx of asylum seekers have on the electoral support of the far right? This paper answers this question by examining changes in support for far right parties in response to the British government's relocation of asylum seekers across the United Kingdom from 2000 to 2015. Relying primarily on a difference-in-differences (DD) empirical strategy, our main finding is that an increase in the number of asylum seekers dispersed to a local authority is associated with an increase in the vote share of parties of the far right. Further tests indicate that the effect is due both to the far right contesting more seats in those localities receiving asylum seekers and to higher levels of support it receives in those areas where it is present. We find the effect is non-linear, that it is mitigated by higher recipient area ethnic diversity, and that it is limited to the most extreme right-wing parties.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigration
• asylum seekers
• far right
• threat perception‌

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 These figures are for total flows of asylum seekers dispersed, not for stocks of asylum seekers resident at any one time in a given local authority.

2 The Multiple Deprivation Index is a qualitative measure of socioeconomic deprivation composed of seven indicators: income, employment, health and disability, education and training, housing and services, crime, and living environment.

3 The far right also includes the street protest movement, the English Defence League (EDL), but it has not been directly active in local or national electoral politics. The EDL instead furnished candidates and support for the BFP.

4 These models exclude Scotland because Scottish crime data is recorded differently to English data.

5 See Table A3 in Appendix A. The table shows the change in the ethnically white percentage of the United Kingdom population as a percentage of local authority population in the 2001 census vs the 2011 census regressed on total number of asylum seekers received up to that point.

6 The EU 8 refers to Malta, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Hungary, while the EU 2 refers to Hungary and Romania. The EU 10 refers to the full bloc of Eastern European entrants. EU 8 member citizens gained full rights to live and work in the United Kingdom from 2004, while the EU 2 faced extended restrictions until 2014.

7 Technically, a negative coefficient on the squared term implies that at some point the relationship would reverse. Our calculations imply that if one additional asylum seeker was added to an annual influx of 4,384 in a local authority, this would begin to generate a fall in support for the BNP from its peak. However, we do not actually observe any more than 3,210 asylum seekers going to any one authority in any one year so such a reversal is out of sample.