I’m happy to announce a working paper with Sjoerdje Van Heerden that examines sympathy for the populist radical right in the Netherlands: Who feels close to the PVV?
We use panel data (i.e. we trace people over time), fixed-effects regression analysis to account for many individual-level influences, look at levels and changes of immigrants at neighbourhoods that match how people live their lives (i.e. small), differentiate different immigrant groups, and we consider people moving between neighbourhoods.
Even though we started with threat theories, the results are in line with contact theory: an increased share of immigrants is associated with a decrease in sympathy for the PVV — especially so if we look at non-Western immigrants. However, those who have moved to a neighbourhood with more immigrants have significantly more sympathy for the PVV. Looking at interactions with composition, we find that residents of traditionally ‘native’ neighbourhoods express more sympathy for the PVV when Western immigrants move in, than do residents of neighbourhoods that have been of mixed composition for a longer time.
Available on SocArXiv: https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/23xtd
Van Heerden, Sjoerdje, and Didier Ruedin. 2020. “Fear of the Known or the Unknown? Neighbourhood Dynamics and Individual-level Sympathy for the Dutch Populist Radical Right.” SocArXiv. October 10. doi:10.31235/osf.io/23xtd.
Related — my first article with a Chinese abstract: Heerden, Sjoerdje van, and Didier Ruedin. 2019. ‘How Attitudes towards Immigrants Are Shaped by Residential Context: The Role of Neighbourhood Dynamics, Immigrant Visibility, and Areal Attachment’. Urban Studies 56 (2): 317–334. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098017732692.
Image credit: cc-by-nc Jeroen Mirck
Didier Ruedin 