Who cares? How political reception contexts shape immigrants’ location decisions

Immigrants’ choice of residence in countries of destination, or internal mobility, is a topic of research in several academic fields. Apart from economic and social considerations, some studies suggest that political factors tied to the immigrant reception context can potentially explain mobility decisions. However, existing studies focus on isolated factors, and little is known about the importance of a broader range of political factors on mobility decisions. We also do not know how important political factors are in comparison to other known determinants, such as financial considerations highlighted in economics. Therefore, this paper examines how political factors, such as non-citizen voting rights, citizenship policies and popular support for right-populist anti-immigrant parties, influence immigrants’ mobility decisions relative to other local contextual elements like public transportation, buying power or access to nature. We conducted a conjoint experiment with 1596 respondents, who have all immigrated to Switzerland in the last 15 years. Each participant had to choose between two Swiss municipalities composed of eight attributes, whose levels were varying randomly. This experimental design allowed us to estimate causal effects of contextual factors on mobility decisions, and to assess their relative importance. Our results show that an inclusive political reception context can attract immigrants and act thereby as a pull factor for internal mobility. Among the factors measuring the political reception context, inclusive citizenship policies have the strongest effect on individual location choice.