Do Politicians Discriminate Against Constituents with an Immigration Background? Field Experimental Evidence from Germany

The diversification of Western European electorates due to immigration raises the question whether politicians discriminate against constituents with an immigrant background. While ethnic distance can explain lower responsiveness to outgroup constituents, shared partisanship might mitigate discrimination. We examine this issue through an audit experiment with 1,522 MPs in fifteen German state legislatures. We find that politicians are eleven percentage points less likely to respond to a constituent’s email asking for a personal meeting if the sender has an immigrant background (RI p-value < .001). Surprisingly, there is no difference in rates of discrimination between leftist and rightist parties. We also find evidence that signalling partisanship can mitigate the immigrant-background effect. Our findings imply that on the dimension of responsiveness, politicians – on the right and the left – might hamper rather than foster the political integration of immigrants.