New Risks in Our Age: Migration, Terrorism and Emerging Radical Right in OECD Countries

This thesis consists of three independent journal articles.The first chapter studies the relationship between foreign-born individuals' terrorism and economic inequality. Although the extant literature focuses on sociodemographic factors of migration origin, it remains uncertain why some foreign-born individuals resort to terrorism. What explains terrorist attacks perpetrated by foreign-born individuals? Instead of relying on migration origins or individual terrorist narratives, I argue that horizontal economic inequality between native-born and foreign-born population generates grievances and radicalization, which may increase recruitment to terrorism. Grounded on the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), I manually coded terrorist attacks perpetrated by foreign-born individuals in 27 developed countries (1995-2017). Empirical analyses suggest that increasing economic inequality leads to subsequent foreign-born individuals' terrorist attacks. The second chapter studies how migration and surging radical right parties impact anti-migration terrorism in the long term. Why do people attack migrants even though radical right parties (RRPs) represent their ideologies? I improve the literature with a theory supported by new data. I manually coded anti-migration terrorist attacks that occurred in 31 industrialized countries (1970-2017). Empirical results pronounce that a share of parliamentary seats and votes given to RRPs are associated with subsequent anti-migration terrorist attacks. Simultaneously, anti-migration terrorist attacks contribute to the electoral gains of RRPs, providing weak evidence in favor of the first argument. Contrarily, I found no evidence to support the second mechanism, the notion that strong executive power for RRPs leads to more terrorist attacks against foreigners. The final chapter looks at the impact of right-wing terrorism on public opinion in supporting RRPs in the short term. Although studies focus on public response to migrant terrorism, the scholarship has not explained how the general public responds to right-wing terrorism targeting migrants and minorities. Hence, this chapter aims at filling the research gap. Dr. Krause (co-author) and I constructed a new dataset (2013-2018) which compiles manually coded German right-wing terrorism and public opinion data retrieved from Politbarometer. Realizing that endogeneity is an issue, we employ rigorous time-series models and test whether right-wing terrorism increases RRP support. The empirical results pronounce that the higher level of right-wing terrorism positively and robustly correlates with subsequent public support for AfD.