research

article projects

1. How Economic Shocks Fuel Far-Right Support: The Xylella Outbreak in Italy

   Cremaschi, Simone, Bariletto, Nicola, and De Vries, Catherine

   2023

   Abs

   Research has demonstrated that economic shocks can result in increased vote shares for far-right parties, but questions remain about why and how this happens. By introducing a theory of community-based radicalization, this study uncovers how economic and social hardship following an economic shock increases far right support in affected communities through the interaction of political supply and demand dynamics. We empirically substantiate our theoretical argument by means of an integrative multi-method study of the 2014 sudden and exogenous outbreak of the bacterial plant pathogen Xylella Fastidiosa, which exterminated centuries-old olive groves in the leading olive-oil-producing Italian region of Puglia. First, we exploit geographic variation in the spread of the disease and municipal-level data to a conduct a difference-in-differences analysis that quantifies the social and economic disruption associated with the bacterial spread and its electoral consequences. The outbreak generated income losses, and increased youth emigration and suicides in affected municipalities. Social and economic hardship awarded an excess vote share of 2.2 percentage points to far right parties in affected areas. Second, we develop a new nested-analysis procedure for difference-in-differences settings, and use it to conduct extensive qualitative fieldwork in purposely selected municipalities. Our in-depth within-case analysis allows us to trace the process through which the shock increased far right support and identify causal conditions.

2. An Anti-Feminist Backlash? Female Labour Market Participation and Gender Conservatism in Europe

   Rettl, Paula, Bolet, Diane, De Vries, Catherine, Cremaschi, Simone, Abou-Chadi, Tarik, and Pardos-Prado, Sergi

   2023

   Abs

   This study examines how increased participation of women in the labor market affects the distribution of egalitarian gender attitudes in society. We argue that increased female labor market participation might generate a anti-feminist backlash, because it triggers grievances for certain men and women. For men, increased female labor force participation intensifies competition in the labor market, especially among men who are already economically vulnerable (labor market competition channel). For women, increased female labor force participation might also be threatening if they are financially dependent on men in their household and thus worry about the economic standing of men in their household (household economics channel). We test these conjectures in two studies. The first study uses European Social Survey (ESS) data from over 20 European countries to show the relationship between increased labor market competition of women and more gender conservative attitudes. By linking ESS data to electoral data, we also explore the consequences of such attitudinal change on vote intentions and behavior. The second study relies on panel data from Switzerland to better identify the mechanisms. We conclude that increased labor market competition of women generated a backlash in Europe, but that this is not only driven by men, but is also by women who are financially dependent on men.

3. Self-built Segregation, Shelter Strategies, and the Immigrant Poor

   Cremaschi, Simone

   2022

   Abs

   How do the immigrant poor decide where to live? Sociologists have emphasized economic considerations to explain sorting between segregated and integrated neighborhoods. Drawing on 6 months of ethnographic fieldwork, 33 interviews, and 462 survey questionnaires collected in immigrant shantytowns in Italy, this article proposes that immigrants strategically choose between similarly marginal arrangements to maintain a positive sense of themselves. Most housing-insecure immigrants move between makeshift housing, acquaintances’ houses, and public shelters in an effort to ensure future stability. Others withdraw into shantytowns for the long term, giving up hopes of inclusion and finding worth in their ability to survive without support. Building, following, and adapting “shelter strategies” allows immigrants to meet basic needs while maintaining their self-worth, but it also constrains their location choices, which helps explain how extreme socio-spatial segregation emerges and continues indefinitely.

4. Brokered Exploitation: Immigrant Farmworkers Navigating Unregistered Labor Markets in Italy

   Cremaschi, Simone

   2022

   Abs

   This paper examines the relationship between brokerage and exploitation in the informal economy, arguing that scholars should broaden their focus from the worker-intermediary duplet to the employer-broker-worker triplet and consider how workers strategically decide whether to recur to brokers or not. Brokerage often emerges within an employer-worker relationship that is, per se, exploitative. The broker can either (1) amplify, (2) moderate, (3) mediate, or (4) monopolize the relationship. Drawing on ethnographic, interview, and survey data, I apply this framework to analyzing brokerage relationships within shantytowns housing immigrant farmworkers in Italy. First, I quantitatively evaluate the job market costs and benefits associated with broker-based job search. Then, I combine quantitative and ethnographic evidence to examine the workers’ decision making and show how the brokerage relationship can shift from amplifying exploitation to mediating it depending on external labor market conditions. Broadening relational understandings of exploitation, my study demonstrates that examining immigrant workers’ choices is crucial to understand how involvement in the informal economy impacts their lives.

book project

1. Exploited Community: Building a Separate Society Among Immigrant Outcasts

   Cremaschi, Simone

   2022

   Abs

   Exploited Community: Building a Separate Society Among Immigrant Outcasts examines the social lives of marginalized immigrants in Italy, their segregation into self-built settlements, and their recruitment into unregistered farm jobs. Based on immersive fieldwork and a combination of original qualitative and quantitative data, I examine the functioning of the parallel society immigrant farmworkers have built within the unauthorized settlements known as “the ghettos.” The extra-legal institutions they have built allow marginalized immigrants to survive poverty. But this collective action plays divergent roles in the strategies immigrants adopt to confront life at the margins. Some immigrants spend short periods working in the ghettos and then try their chances in town, sleeping in precarious arrangements while looking for better opportunities. Others refrain from this search and withdraw into the ghettos on a long-term basis. The book demonstrates how these diverging strategies emerge from cost-benefit calculations and the need immigrants have to make sense of their condition. Exploited Community sheds light on the marginalizing processes that sustain globalized agriculture in one of the world’s wealthiest economies, whose high-quality food the world as a whole appreciates. But the implications of these findings travel far beyond Italy. The book allows readers to understand how residential segregation processes functional to global production emerge from complex individual choices and micro-interactions and expands our understanding of immigrant adaptation by illuminating the role of individual strategies.