In areas where immigrants come, the common explanation goes, there is a good chance that the score for the extreme right will rise. House prices are rising, traffic jams are becoming longer, crime and employment are becoming an issue, and the presence of newcomers with different cultures and religions causes friction with natives – who then vote for anti-immigration parties. Logical, right?
Well, it could be more complicated. Four researchers from Bocconi University in Milan and ETH in Zurich have just published a study that is interesting in light of the current hysterical anti-immigration discourse in Europe and that partly explains the political turbulence in countries such as France, Romania and the Netherlands. The success of anti-immigration parties, they argue, is not so much because citizens vote for those parties because of cultural, economic or political problems with immigration, but more because “political elites” in those parties themselves conduct tough, targeted campaigns in areas with migrants. slogans such as ‘full is full’ or ‘stop migration’. In short, citizens do not so much complain on their own, but are frightened and incited by political entrepreneurs from the extreme right, so that they complain about immigration and vote for the extreme right.
The scientists examined the correlation between immigration and the success of the far right in border municipalities in Ticino, the Italian-speaking canton in Switzerland. They focused on the period after 2000, the year in which Switzerland and its EU neighbors opened their borders so that citizens could more easily live and work in each other’s countries. Immigration in Ticino then increased by 14 percent, support for the extreme right by 32 percent.
Yet the researchers barely found a link between the two. “We find limited evidence that common economic, cultural, and security explanations are fueling this growing anti-immigration sentiment,” they write. The Free Movement of People and the Success of Far-Right Parties: Evidence from Switzerland’s Border Liberalizationa report just published in the American Political Science Review. What the report does show: that from the moment the borders with France, Germany, Austria and Italy opened, Swiss political elites started campaigning vigorously in border areas, with stories about overpopulation, crime and density stressor too much pressure on public transport, housing, parking, healthcare and the like.
Citizens do not complain on their own, but are incited
The researchers consistently use the term ‘political elite’ to emphasize that the success of the far right is orchestrated from above, and does not come from ‘the people’. Far-right politicians often say that they speak on behalf of the people, who have had enough of the elite. But these politicians, the researchers argue, are the elite themselves.
The choice for Ticino is intriguing. Immigrants there come from Italy, often just across the border. Most are white, Catholic and educated. They speak Italian and eat pasta. So culturally no problem. There are also few economic problems. On the contrary: the cantonal economy has grown since the borders opened to migrant workers. Employment increased, salaries rose slightly. Traffic jams did become longer, the researchers saw. But the same happened in parts of Ticino further from the border (the control areas in the study), where support for the far right did not increase. How does that happen? Simple, the politicians there did not conduct an anti-immigration campaign: “Political elites really aim their hostile rhetoric at border areas, where it resonates more strongly with impressionable voters.” Politicians from border areas also submitted motions to stop migration in the Ticino parliament more often than colleagues from control areas further from the border. Those petitioners were mainly extreme right-wing politicians, and later also politicians from middle parties who fell into the trap and thought they had to listen to the people who were fed up with migrants.
This research is important. It confirms findings of renowned political scientists such as Larry Bartels and Nancy Bermeo: it is not voters who determine the political course, but political elites who make calculated decisions to offer voters certain options and not other options. It would be good if the political center, which often unthinkingly follows the extreme right, would notice this.