The footprint of segregation: The influence of migrant distribution on Italian electoral geography

The link between migration and the perception of the local population has been a focus of attention in academia in recent years, as it has real implications, such as electoral behavior and its consequent results, for example, in the increase of votes received by the radical right in Europe. In this research, we delve into this relationship by proposing a mediating factor of interaction: migrant residential segregation, given its potential to affect the probability of contact between groups. Using a place-based, spatial, and relational approach, this interdisciplinary study examined two dimensions of segregation: isolation and dissimilarity, as well as their spatial aggregation, to analyze how they interact with the electoral results obtained by the radical right in Italy's last national election, held in 2022. The results expose that both dimensions of segregation are relevant, but that they act in opposite directions being isolation the most relevant to understand the variability on the electoral results of the radical right parties in Italy for the analyzed elections, so it is recommended to consider segregation as a relevant phenomenon in political analysis in all its complexity. It is further revealed that these variables and their interactions exhibit high spatial autocorrelation, a methodological challenge in understanding the nature of spatial phenomena using traditional statistical techniques, and underscore the need to incorporate spatial analysis into interdisciplinary fields such as electoral geography.