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Migration Crisis in the Local News: Evidence from the French-Italian Border

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  • Silvia Peracchi

    (UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES))

Abstract

The massive inflows of migrants across the Mediterranean has generated widespread political attention and backlash. This paper explores the impact of migrants’ displacements at the EU’s internal borders, due to militarized border push-backs and arising from the European migrant crisis in the 2010s. It investigates how these displacements affect both the local news market and the local political economy. To do so, it relies on a policy implemented in June 2015, whereby French authorities introduced militarized controls at the Italian frontier to redirect migrants and asylum seekers, originally intending to cross the border irregularly, back to the Italian territory. These dynamics created a quasi-experimental setting, where natives in the Italian region were unevenly exposed to pushed back migrants: those residing close to the French border experienced more directly the evolution of events. Using novel text and count data from local news in the interested areas of Liguria, Italy, between 2012 and 2019, this study finds that, following the border push-backs, media coverage of migration decayed with commuting distance to the border. Conversely, anti-immigrant discourse in the news exhibited a relative increase in areas least directly impacted by the border events. Exploring further this framing dimension, the results turn out to be shaped by readers’ demand and to be closely associated with local news penetration. Finally, this study documents that voting preferences share a similar direction to news slant, while a related broad pattern also appears in hate-crime records.

Suggested Citation

  • Silvia Peracchi, 2023. "Migration Crisis in the Local News: Evidence from the French-Italian Border," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 2023021, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    • Handle: RePEc:ctl:louvir:2023021
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    File URL: https://sites.uclouvain.be/econ/DP/IRES/2023021.pdf
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Media slant; EU borders; immigration; diff-in-diff;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration
    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media
    • F50 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - General

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