How political reception contexts shape location decisions of immigrants

Abstract

Several academic fields study how immigrants choose their place of residence when moving to, or within destination countries. Existing studies, however, focus on isolated factors, and we do not know whether political factors matter once we have accounted for well-established determinants. This paper examines the extent to which political factors, such as voting rights for foreign citizens, citizenship policies and popular support for right-populist parties, influence internal mobility decisions of newly-arrived immigrants, relative to other variables. We draw on a 2020 conjoint experiment in Switzerland (N = 1596 participants) in the context of a larger survey of foreign citizens who arrived in Switzerland in the preceding 15 years. The conjoint experiment provides data on the causal effects of contextual factors on mobility decisions, allowing us to assess their relative importance. We show that inclusive political reception contexts constitute a pull factor for immigrants. Exploratory analysis indicates that the size of the effect of the political reception context on residential location choice depends on educational achievement, income, legal status, a feeling of belonging to Switzerland and social networks. We conclude that studies of immigrant location choice should routinely consider political factors.