Immigration, Wealth and Discontent in the Spanish Metropolitan Space. The Robustness of Spatial Approaches in Studying the Electoral Rise of the Extreme Right

Based on the results of the 2018 and 2019 regional and national elections in Andalusia and Spain, the aim of this chapter is to analyse two of the main contextual factors associated with the emergence of the extreme right: the presence of an immigrant population and the discontent of the population in underprivileged areas towards the political system and the socio-economic consequences of globalisation. To do this, we look at different contextual or ecological studies, compare them with those which use individual registers, and reflect on the most suitable analytical tools for this type of study. Our results show that the presence of immigrant population at the census tract level, especially economic migrants, is, in principle, related to greater support for extreme right-wing parties in the host society. However, these results clearly seem to vary depending on the nationality, the geographical area analysed and the methodology used: in fact, if we analyse the results from the point of view of territorial concentration, the results show the opposite trend. Finally, although support for this type of party according to the socio-economic level of the areas analysed varies according to the local characteristics of each area, there is more support in wealthier areas than in poorer ones, which seems to show a tendency opposite to that found in other European countries.