Literature suggests that sudden mass immigration can fuel xenophobic attitudes. However, there is a lack of reliable evidence on hostile actions, such as discrimination. In this study, we leverage the unexpected mass immigration of refugees to Germany in 2015 in combination with a two-wave field experiment to study the effect of immigration on ethnic discrimination. In 2015/2016, political and social tensions in the Middle East and North Africa led to a historic mass migration to European countries. We carried out a large-scale field experiment on ethnic housing market discrimination in Germany (paired e-mail correspondence test with ~5,000 e-mail applications to rental housing units in each wave) shortly before this “European refugee crisis” (1st wave). We repeated this experiment at the peak of the crisis (2nd wave of our experiment). By taking advantage of the unexpected refugee immigration between the two waves of our experiment and the quasi-random allocation of refugees across regions for causal identification, we find no credible evidence that the large influx of refugees changed the extent of ethnic discrimination of Turks in the rental housing market. This result holds regardless of the extent to which regions within Germany were already accustomed to immigration before the refugee crisis.

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文献表明，突然的大规模移民可能会助长仇外态度。然而，缺乏关于歧视等敌对行为的可靠证据。在本研究中，我们利用2015年意想不到的大规模难民移民德国，结合两波实地实验来研究移民对种族歧视的影响。2015/2016年，中东和北非的政治和社会紧张局势导致历史性的向欧洲国家的大规模移民。在“欧洲难民危机”（第一波）之前不久，我们在德国针对种族住房市场歧视进行了大规模的实地实验（配对电子邮件通信测试，每波对租赁住房单位发出约 5,000 份电子邮件申请） 。我们在危机最严重的时候重复了这个实验（我们实验的第二波）。利用我们实验中两波浪潮之间的意外难民移民，以及跨地区准随机分配难民进行因果识别，我们没有发现可靠的证据表明难民的大量涌入改变了土耳其人在土耳其的种族歧视程度。租赁住房市场。无论德国境内的哪些地区在难民危机之前已经习惯了移民，这一结果仍然成立。

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