Foreigner Presence Is Not Enough: The Prospect of Membership and Voting for Restrictionist Parties

Studies of exposure to foreigners and transit migration find exclusionary reactions but often do not separate mere presence from cues that foreigners live locally, settlement expectations, and elite messages. Foreign tourists are present without residence or settlement prospects. If presence alone provokes exclusion, voters should also react against foreign tourists. In contrast, I argue that voters react to foreigners' prospects of membership in their community. Japan is well suited to test this argument because foreign residents and tourists, mostly from Asia, grew at similar national rates from 2019, and tourist presence surged after individual travel resumed in October 2022. I constructed a new dataset to compare residents and tourists in the same municipalities and elections. Among residents, I compare residence statuses with different settlement prospects, including that of technical interns, whom Sanseito, a new restrictionist party, named in Diet speeches. Across 1,727 municipal units, Sanseito gained more in the 2025 and 2026 elections where foreign residents grew faster. Per standard deviation, tourist coefficients are much smaller than resident coefficients. Furthermore, work residence statuses without renewal limits and the Dependent (family stay) status have larger coefficients than technical intern status, which permits at most five years without family admission. This difference holds within Vietnamese nationals, the largest group among technical interns. Two planned experiments will vary continued residence and family admission with worker numbers fixed, and separately vary whether otherwise identical restrictionist appeals target residents or tourists. The membership account predicts restrictionist gains where foreign presence signals lasting settlement.