Research
I work on two main lines of research. The first deals with political behaviour and comparative politics questions in Europe, and the second deals with the impact of migration processes on public attitudes and political outcomes. Part of my work also reconciles these two lines of research. More specifically, I have devoted some time now to analyse how the immigration issue is incorporated into patterns of political competition, and how it affects electoral and redistribution outcomes.
Comparative political behaviour and economy
Regarding my political behaviour and comparative politics line of research, I am working on a number of projects studying outcomes like voting behaviour, redistribution preferences, economic perceptions, and political participation among others. I'm particularly interested in understanding how different macro-level configurations of party systems, ideological dimensions, labour market structures, and tax systems affect individual preferences and rational behaviour. For instance, I'm currently using experimental and observational methods to observe the exogenous impact of corruption on preferences for fiscal and political decentralization. I'm also assessing from a longitudinal perspective how economic conditions affect party issue attention over the electoral cycle, and how authoritarian regimes are able to shape the ideological dimensionality and pattern of political competition once they become democracies.
2010 - present
Migration politics
As for my research on immigration, I mostly analyse the determinants of attitudes towards immigration across space and time, and the impact of immigration on redistribution preferences and the sustainability of the welfare state. My current work in this area focuses on variations in labour-market demand (rather than supply) shaping anti-immigrant attitudes, and on levels of tax progressivity moderating the impact of income on preferences. More recently, I started analyzing the impact of immigration policy on foreigners' long-term economic and political integration, and the determinants of anti-immigrant populist voting as a function of redistribution and demographic pressures. My current work on immigration aims for high levels of both external and internal validity, observing cross-national patterns and identifying more local causal effects with experimental and quasi-experimental methodologies.
2010 - present
Ongoing research
’The cost of diversity: tax progressivity, ethnic diversity, and support for redistribution’ (with
Carla Xena), in progress.
’Immigration policy and foreigners’ economic integration in Europe and Britain’, in progress.
’Macro-economic conditions and extreme right success’, in progress.
’Border walls, immigration, and terrorist attacks’ (with Julian Wucherpfennig and Sara Polo), in
progress.
’Transnational terrorism, restrictive migration policy, and government support’ (with Marc Helbling and Daniel Meierrieks), in progress.
’Economic inequality, regional inequality, and anti-immigrant sentiment’ (with Giovanni Fachini,
Anja Neundorf, and Cecilia Testa), in progress
’Regional Labor Markets and the Politics of Resentment’ (with Denis Cohen), in progress