SOEP Brown Bag Seminar

There has been a recent shift in Political Science towards integrating
aggregate-level contextual factors into the study of individual-level
political behaviors. while intriguing, findings are inconsistent and
this research area is bereft of theoretical underpinnings. The
underlying idea that drives my dissertation is that civic and
political participation are, at least partially, a response to
economic, political and social realities.The literature on social
context is rooted in the idea that the perception of threat influences
civic and political behaviors. As I argue, perceptions of the threat
represented by foreigners-and thus the impact of social context-vary
based on local economic context. Foreigners are more likely to be seen
as threatening in cities with restricted capacities to fulfill their
traditional welfare tasks, which has consequences for civic and
political behaviors.To develop this theory, I merge SOEP data with
city-level economic, social and demographic data