The Politics of Immigration and Crime in Europe

Abstract

This dissertation shows that right-wing parties in Europe can capture progressive urban electorates through law-and-order campaigns focused on immigrant crime. In recent years, advanced democracies have seen rising fears about crime. These worries – frequently connected to immigration – are particularly pronounced in diverse urban areas. Cities, at the same time, are commonly considered leftist strongholds since they are increasingly populated by highly educated cosmopolitan voters. Progressive parties, however, often struggle to formulate a response to crime, especially when this issue is linked to immigration. I argue that the Left’s vulnerability on immigrant crime presents opportunities for right-wing parties to challenge the Left’s hold on urban, progressive electorates and creates the potential for a realignment of these voting blocs. Analyzing a range of quantitative data sources capturing voter attitudes, party behavior, and electoral outcomes, I show that fears about immigration’s effect on crime rates are widespread among Western European voters and even extend to highly educated, urban supporters of left-wing parties – a subset of the electorate usually considered to be staunchly pro-immigration. I further demonstrate that concern about immigrant crime can lead to defections of progressive voters to the center-right. This defection is the result of party strategy: I show that center-right parties deliberately seek to capture urban electorates through law-and-order campaigns while left-wing parties do not devote comparable attention to this issue. I also present evidence that the center-right's urban strategy pays off in elections. Overall, my findings point to limits of the educational cleavage in electoral politics and immigration attitudes. The existing literature largely assumes that the growing faction of highly educated voters in Western Europe is robustly pro-immigration and supports the Left. By focusing on crime, I demonstrate that perceptions of immigrants as a threat are prevalent even among cosmopolitan voters. I also contribute to our understanding of contemporary urban politics in advanced democracies by demonstrating that the Left's electoral dominance in cities is more fragile than commonly believed. Voter concern over crime presents opportunities for the Right to capture urban electorates.