Germany and the 2015 Refugee Crisis
Final Report Abstract
During the second half of 2015, Germany witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of refugees, fueled in particular by the conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic. Data on this inflow (its scale, its regional distribution, and its demographic composition) have been scarce, or lacking entirely in reliable form, which has hampered the study of its consequences for the economy and society in Germany, and has made difficult analyses of how refugees fared upon arrival. For this research project, we identified, collected, combined and analyzed various novel data on regional refugee populations and outcome measures to explore the impact at regional level that the mass inflow of refugees to Germany in 2015 had on electoral outcomes, real estate markets, as well as anti-foreign violence and criminal activity by foreigners, and how the impact in each of these areas was moderated by regional variation in economic conditions and public policies governing the type of predominant accommodation provided for refugees. Concerning electoral outcomes, we find for the state election in Rhineland-Palatinate in March 2016 that refugee inflows in 2015 at municipality level increased the local vote share of right-wing parties. This effect proved insensitive to local economic conditions. Further analyses, however, show that the electoral effect is solely driven by refugees living in centralized accommodation, and particularly by municipalities that host reception centers for refugees. Concerning real estate markets, we find evidence for a negative effect of refugee immigration at county level on the rental price growth for flats. This adverse price effect is attenuated in the heyday of the crisis in late 2015, if a larger share of refugees in a county was housed decentrally rather than centrally in group quarters. For single-family houses in vicinity (walking distance) of operating refugee reception centers, we also find sizable price growth penalties. Furthermore, fewer houses near such sites were offered for sale and those that were offered took longer to be sold, as proxied by the elapsed duration of offer postings. Our results on both types of property hence suggest that refugee settlements are seen as a disamenity which, because of ‘not in my backyard’ perceptions, harm prices of property, in particular prices of property in close vicinity to centralized refugee accommodation sites, such as refugee reception centers. Concerning crime, we find for German counties no evidence for a systematic link between the scale of refugee immigration (or the type of refugee accommodation and the gender structure of refugee populations) and the risk of Germans to become victims of a crime in which refugees are suspects, neither for all crimes with suspect and victim recording by the police, nor for various sub-categories of such crimes, including robbery, bodily injury, and rape and sexual coercion. Further analyses, however, show that both refugees and non-refugee foreigners, and hence not only refugees, did suffer greater rates of victimization in antiforeign crimes, when refugee immigration was larger to a county.
Publications
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(2018), “The 2015 European Refugee Crisis and Residential Housing Rents in Germany”, IZA Discussion Paper, 12047, 2018 (also FEMM Working Paper, 18013)
Kürschner Rauck, K., Kvasnicka, M.
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(2019), “Immigration and Crimes against Natives: The 2015 Refugee Crisis in Germany”, IZA Discussion Paper, 12469, 2019 (also FEMM Working Paper, 19006)
Huang, Y., Kvasnicka, M.
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(2020), “Immigration and electoral outcomes: Evidence from the 2015 refugee inflow to Germany”, Ruhr Economic Paper #886
Bredtmann, J.
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(2020), “‘Not in my Backyard!’ The 2015 Refugee Crisis in Germany”, FEMM Working Paper No. 8/2020 (also School of Finance Working Paper 2020/04, Universität St.Gallen)
Kürschner Rauck, K.
