Paper details
| Paper authors | Mohamad Alhussein Saoud |
| In panel on | Making Live, Letting Die at Europe’s Borders – violence and resistance and human mobility |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
In-Person / |
Abstract
During New Year’s Eve 2015/2016, the German city of Cologne witnessed mass sexual assaults and thefts by perpetrators with Arab-African appearance. The events fueled anti-immigrant sentiments
and caused major public concern. In this paper, I study whether the event in Cologne also had an immediate backlash on crimes committed against refugees. Using data from several years on
regional anti-refugee crimes in the vicinity of different New Year’s Eves in difference-in-differences regressions, I find an appreciable increase in anti-refugee crimes in Germany promptly after the
Cologne event. Additional effect heterogeneity analyses show that the immediate backlash on anti-refugee crimes appears larger in North Rhine-Westphalia (where Cologne is located), in the counties that have higher GDP per capita, the counties that have an initial reception center, the counties with a higher share of refugee and the counties with a higher share of German suspects with foreign victims. However, no heterogeneous effect is observed in the counties with a higher share of German victims involving refugee suspects or in East Germany. One year later, a rise in anti-refugee crimes is observed, primarily attributed to an anniversary effect, though this increase is relatively
minor and becomes evident only as the analysis approaches New Year's Eve.
