Exposure to Refugees and Voting for the Far-Right: Evidence from The Netherlands

In my thesis I attempt to estimate the causal impact of micro-level exposure to refugees on the support for right-wing populism in the Netherlands. I exploit the recent European refugee crisis (2013-2016), during which some Dutch municipalities opened refugee shelter locations and some did not, in a difference-in-difference model, using the local vote share of the main Dutch right-wing populist party as an outcome variable. Results indicate that the opening of a shelter location in a municipality during the refugee crisis had no statistically significant impact on local support for right-wing populism