2021-22 "Integrating Migrants and Winning Votes: Evidence from an Anti-Exploitation Campaign in the Italian Agricultural Fields"

The Stanford King Center on Global Development’s Academic Year Part-Time Research Assistant Program connects King Center faculty affiliates and affiliated researchers with undergraduate and master's students committed to providing research support for up to 15 hours per week during fall, winter, and spring quarters. 

Students have the opportunity to engage in world-class research and have real-world impact. Undergraduate student research assistants earn $17.50 per hour and master's student research assistants earn $25 per hour. Research assistants can work a maximum of 15 hours per week.  Students must be enrolled full-time to participate.  

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

Policies that favor the integration of migrants frequently increase xenophobic voting and backfire against their promoters, making integration a politically difficult objective to pursue. This research project explores the political and economic consequences of a different type of integration policy: fighting migrant labor exploitation. Dr. Gemma Dipoppa considers the context of the Italian agricultural fields, where more than 400,000 migrants are estimated to be subject to labor racketeering organized and controlled by criminal organizations. Dr. Dipoppa examines a campaign designed to give migrants information and incentives to denounce their racketeers. Exploiting the staggered roll-out of the intervention, Dr. Dipoppa shows that this (i) increased reporting on exploitation and (ii) prosecution of criminal organizations, who are often responsible for smuggling and controlling migrants; (iii) raised awareness among the civil society, and (iv) increased the vote share for pro-integration parties. Survey evidence ties this last result to a change in preferences for immigration: in treated locations, respondents become more pro-integration post treatment. Learning about migrants’ exploitation fostered sentiments of sympathy for migrants, shifting moderate voters towards pro-immigration parties. Unlike other integration policies, fighting migrant exploitation can directly undermine organized crime and improve migrants’ situation at no political cost for parties supporting it.

The research assistant would work with Dr. Dipoppa to search and scrape additional sources of data to characterize the overall effects of this intervention. The ideal candidate would be skilled in scraping and data management. Knowledge of Italian and of the context would be welcome but is not essential.

Research mentor: Gemma Dipoppa (Postdoctoral Fellow, Political Science)