Past event
Brown Bag Seminar with Dr Neil Lloyd, University of St Andrews Understanding immigration and xenophobic violence in South Africa
Abstract: The belief that immigration strains national cohesion and ferments domestic discontent has solidified and come to dominate policy debate across much of the world in recent decades. This rejection of immigration is of particular concern in disadvantaged, high-unemployment areas, which are paradoxically in need of the entrepreneurialism and economic dynamism that immigrants have been shown to bring. Is the conjecture true? If so, is the induced fragmentation due to heterogeneous real economic impacts—native winners and losers—or immigration itself; for example, compositional amenities? We investigate this question in South Africa, where xenophobic violence has taken root in society in the wake of national riots in 2008. Frequent, well-documented xenophobic events allow us to directly test the relationship between immigration and “revealed” domestic backlash. Our shift-share identification strategy exploits the historical constraints to mobility under Apartheid and large changes in the source of immigration to examine differential responses to “similar” (i.e., neighbouring countries) and “dissimilar” migrants. We do not find evidence of a negative relationship between immigration and native labour market or security outcomes. However, we do find that immigration increases perceived insecurity. We show that xenophobic events disproportionately involve “dissimilar”, minority migrant groups and small business owners. We find that large immigration shocks, relative to native population, increase the likelihood of xenophobic violence; a relationship which is stronger in areas with lower (higher) unemployment (labour force participation). And that violence against “dissimilar” minority immigrant groups, increases with immigration from more “similar” neighbours.