On the effect of the New Year’s Eve sexual assaults on anti-refugee violence: a rejoinder to Schwitter and Liebe (2023)

Abstract

Abstract In their comment on my 2020 ESR article, Schwitter and Liebe suggest that the increase in anti-refugee attacks following the 2015 New Year’s Eve sexual assaults (NYE) could be due to a simultaneous broadening of the German Federal Criminal Police Office definition of anti-refugee violence. I address Schwitter and Liebe’s concerns by (i) removing attacks that were included because of the new definition and (ii) restricting the analysis to attacks that were sourced from non-governmental sources. In both cases, the NYE event continues to have a profound effect on anti-refugee attacks, but the revised estimates are smaller than those reported in the original study: for example, in this analysis, the probability of an attack more than doubles in the first week of January 2016, as opposed to tripling in the original study. In line with the original findings, the impact of the NYE event is also more pronounced in districts with low prior levels of anti-refugee hostility.