Speaker's presentation

Alexander Patzina is a social scientist working as an Assistant Professor (Akademischer Rat) at the Chair of Sociology, with special emphasis on Social Inequalities at the university of Bamberg and a postdoc scholarship holder of the Daimler and Benz foundation. Moreover, he works as a senior researcher at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in an interdisciplinary group of economists and sociologists at the department “Education, Training and Employment over the Life Course”. His main research interest is how societal change influences social cohesion. To this end he researches inequalities in education, labor markets, health (behavior), wellbeing and trust. Results of his work have been published in journals like The British Journal of Sociology, European Sociological Review, European Societies, Sociology of Education or Socius.

Introduces

Raffaele Grotti

Discusses

Yuxin Zhang

Abstarct

During the last two decades, political instability, wars and climate change caused migration movements all around the world. Consequently, many refugee-receiving societies experienced substantial demographic changes. As the literature demonstrates that increases in refugee shares can lead to short-term increases in exclusionary beliefs and behavior against outgroups, questions about the impact of increasing refugee shares on trust emerge.

Analyzing trust is crucial because trust in strangers and the political system constitute a precondition for democratic participation, acceptance of critical redistributive policies, and compliance with public health measures. Thus, trust is one critical aspect of social cohesion within societies.

By focusing on trust changes and the period between 2018 and 2023 in Germany, this study complements prior research. This period is particularly compelling due to the convergence of multiple crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the unprecedented influx of refugees resulting from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the onset of an economic recession, all of which created a new and challenging social context.

To analyze the impact of changes in district-level refugee shares on social and political trust, the study uses representative panel data from Germany. Using a three-way fixed effects estimation, we account for unobserved time-invariant differences between individuals and districts, and control for national trends in trust.

To operationalize the multiple crises context, we categorize districts regarding their voter share for the leading right-wing party (AfD) in the 2017 federal elections as well as the degree of the regional exposure to the inflation crises triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Regarding social trust, we find no changes on the national level. However, increases in district-level refugee shares decrease social trust. Furthermore, individual unemployment and a stronger regional exposure to inflation amplify negative trust changes. Consequently, while the evidence on social trust provides empirical evidence against contact theory (i.e., increases in trust due to social interactions between the in- and out-group), our findings indicate that perceived insecurities and threats appear to prevail.

Regarding political trust, we find a decreasing national trend, which is amplified through increasing district-level shares in refugees. Interestingly, the decline in political trust is concentrated in districts with high right-wing voting shares in the 2017 federal election, which is evidence for increasing regional divides in sentiments against foreigners. Moreover, a class-based analysis reveals no heterogeneity, which implies that a societal faultline emerges rather along the regional than the social class dimension.

The preliminary conclusions of the study are the following:
First, our evidence indicates that, within the context of multiple crises in Germany, refugee migration can contribute to a decline in social cohesion.
Second, we show that local contexts add to overall (downward) trends in political trust.
Third, our results are important for policy makers and suggest subsidizing regions with increasing shares of refugees.

Registration 

Send an e-mail to csis@unitn.it by 21 May 2025, 11:59.