South-South Immigration and Redistribution Preferences

• In Event: Economic Change and the Welfare State

Abstract

Immigration is a global phenomenon that has significant economic, social, and political consequences. Conflicts and severe crises are shaking the developing world, leading to an unprecedented increase in international migration and forced displacement, with the majority of this migration taking place between countries in the Global South. Our knowledge about the impact of immigration on domestic politics, however, draws disproportionately from the developed world. In political terms, one of the most important areas where immigration has an impact is on redistribution preferences and social policies of governments (Alesina, Miano, and Stantcheva, 2023; Rueda, 2018). This literature argues for a negative effect of immigration on redistribution preferences, relying on two assumptions: that the welfare state redistributes income, and that immigrants and natives are ethnically different (e.g., Rueda, 2018). To examine this relation in the context of South-South immigration, these assumptions need to be reconsidered. First, in the Global South welfare states are truncated, not redistributing income from the rich to the poor (Holland, 2018). Secondly, in South-South immigration, natives and immigrants frequently are ethnically similar (Alrababa’h et al., 2021). As these assumptions do not hold, the impact of immigration on redistribution preferences should be small or non-existent in South-South contexts. However, whether the effect is driven by the first or the second assumption has broad implications in developing countries.

We investigate this in Colombia. Colombia provides an ideal setting to study this relationship, as the welfare state is truncated with policies that have different redistributive effects (Holland, 2018) and in 2016 experienced a sudden surge of Venezuelans who were ethnically similar to natives. Colombia moved from virtually zero immigration to immigration rates of around 4% in 2020. Using the AmericanBarometers to gauge redistribution preferences and immigration rates provided by the National Statistics Office of Colombia (DANE), we exploit the heterogeneous impact of this immigration shock across departments and municipalities in Colombia. In particular, we use within regional variation in immigration rates, an event study, and a shift-share instrument to show that immigration does not affect redistribution preferences. We extend the results using an original survey with a priming experiment (Alesina, Miano, and Stantcheva, 2023), which to our knowledge is the first time this has been done in the context of South-South immigration. The paper contributes to the literature studying redistribution preferences in countries of the global South (Carnes and Mares, 2016; Castañeda, Doyle, and Schwartz, 2020; Menéndez González, 2021; Martinez-Correa, Peñaloza-Pacheco, and Gasparini, 2022). While these studies usually rely on observational evidence, we try to provide causal evidence of the effect of immigration on redistribution preferences. Concretely, this fills an important gap in the literature on immigration and redistribution, as most migrants and refugees are from countries in the Global South and end up in countries in the same region (Alrababa’h et al., 2021). Although there is research that has tried to provide evidence of the link in developing countries, it faces severe selection problems and the results are often under-theorized (Martinez-Correa, Peñaloza-Pacheco, and Gasparini, 2022; Steele, 2016). The paper is also related to recent accounts that attempt to uncover the political implications of South-South immigration.

Authors

• Josep Serrano-Serrat, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

• Ignacio Jurado, Carlos III University