Ethnic Residential Segregation and Immigrants' Perceptions of Discrimination in West Germany

Using survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, this study shows that immigrants living in segregated residential areas are more likely to report discrimination because of their ethnic background. This applies to both segregated areas where most neighbors are immigrants from the same country of origin as the surveyed person and segregated areas where most neighbors are immigrants from other countries of origin. The results suggest that housing discrimination rather than self-selection plays an important role in immigrant residential segregation.Segregation, immigrants, housing discrimination, self-selection

Ethnic Concentration and Right-Wing Voting Behavior in Germany

Abstract: Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and administrative data from 2005 to 2009, I investigate the question whether or not right-wing extremism of German residents is affected by the ethnic concentration of foreigners living in the same residential area. More specifically, I regress voting for a right-wing party (namely DVU, NPD or Republikaner) on the share of foreigners measured at county level. Controlling for a rich set of individual and residential variables, my results show a positive significant relationship between ethnic concentration and the probability of right-wing voting behavior in Germany, which is in line with findings in previous studies. However, due to potential endogeneity issues caused by self-selection of immigrants as well as Germans I additionally instrument the share of foreigners in a county with the share of foreigners in each federal state (following an approach of Dustmann/Preston 2001). In contrast to other studies that do not take these endogeneity issues into account, I find that the share of foreigners no longer significantly explains right-wing voting behavior. Nevertheless, the subsample for West Germany provides evidence for the interethnic contact theory, predicting a negative relationship between foreigners ’ share and right-wing voting