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Recent studies have demonstrated generational differences in attitudes towards immigration, however, less is known about what are the exact factors behind these differences. Our study investigates why cohorts formulate distinct patterns in attitudes towards immigration through a collective process of political socialization during their formative years. The theoretical arguments are tested using hierarchical age-period-cohort modelling across thirteen cohorts in thirteen European countries using micro attitudinal data (2002–2020) integrated with historical macro-political data. We find that contextual exposure to the principle of equality in the formative political climate is central to the formulation of a person's attitudes towards immigration later in life. While the prevalence of the principle of equality affects immigration attitudes in adulthood positively, the principle of tradition does not. The findings imply that even subtle and cyclical shifts in national politics affect the political orientations of those undergoing the process of political socialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although much research has been devoted to how political interest is related to different political outcomes, little is known about its influence on attitudes toward immigration. In line with deliberative theory, political interest should facilitate greater exposure to various perspectives via political discussions and other forms of political engagement that, in turn, should contribute to more positive attitude toward those with differing views or backgrounds. Using data from the European Social Survey, including 39 countries across 10 survey rounds 2002–2021, this study shows that political interest is positively related to immigrant acceptance. However, there is moderation effect of conservative values. Being politically interested is associated with a higher probability of holding pro-immigrant attitudes among weak conservatives, while there is no significant association among strong conservatives. This finding can be explained by the motivated cognition theory, which states that individuals tend to seek out and pay more attention to information that supports their strong pre-existing ideologies. For individuals with ideologies that predispose them to adopt very negative attitudes toward immigration (strong conservatives), being politically interested might entail a greater exposure and attention to ideology-congruent perspectives and, as a result, confirmation of initial predispositions.

Why do attitudes to refugees vary? An original panel is used in five EU states – France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Poland – to explain European attitudes towards three groups of refugees following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It is shown that European attitudes to Ukrainian refugees are determined by predispositions to immigration and perceptions of the war and actors involved, with European identity and contact with refugees being relatively unimportant. These findings are validated with dynamic panel models and attitudes towards the Temporary Protection Directive. A 'spill-over' effect is further demonstrated, whereby attitudes to Ukrainian refugees positively affect attitudes to Afghan and Somali refugees, and a declining 'rally-around-the-flag' effect over time. These findings contribute to the literature on attitudinal formation, showing the relative malleability of attitudes to refugees as a function of their embeddedness in broader attitudinal patterns (particularly to immigration and geopolitics), changing context (the different stages of the war), and spill-over from views towards other refugee groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how immigration policy impacts citizens' trust in politicians and political institutions. The article argues that immigration policy affects political trust through policy congruence. More specifically, it claims that the level of restrictiveness of immigration policy impacts political trust heterogeneously, conditional on whether citizens are anti- or pro-immigration and additionally on how strongly citizens are seeking information about political issues, the latter making it potentially easier for them to identify policy (in-)congruencies. Combining country-level data on immigration policy outputs in European countries with individual-level data to complex multilevel models, the findings reveal that the level of congruence of immigration policy to citizens' immigration preferences alone does not impact political trust. But they show that immigration policy impacts the political trust of citizens who are highly anti-immigration and at the same time very strongly seeking political information. Overall, however, the article concludes that the impact of immigration policy congruence on political trust is moderate at best. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The need for strategic communication in migration policymaking is increasingly widely recognised. Whereas until recently there was relatively little academic evidence of what forms of immigration communication are effective, the past few years have seen a large amount of new experimental evidence. This article overviews 68 experimental studies, as well as other relevant studies, categorising their findings into nine common communication strategies. Appealing to common interest rather than self-interest, appealing to conformity rather than diversity, migrant descriptions, appealing to common ground, and appealing to empathy are consistently shown to be effective. Fact-checking of the effects of migration and appealing to emotions are mostly shown to be effective, as is appealing to identity where applicable. By contrast, appealing to diversity is consistently shown to be ineffective, while correcting information about migrant stocks and appeals to self-interest are mostly shown to be ineffective. Overall, this review article supports psychological findings regarding attitudinal formation that emphasise sociotropic considerations of the effects of immigration, economic or otherwise, on the collective while offering weaker support for egocentric approaches.

Background: This article investigates how European public opinion has responded to short-term variations in regional immigration over the past decade (2010-2019). Methods: Combining data from the European Social Survey and the European Union Labour Force Survey and using multilevel modelling, we test how natives’ opinions over migration policy and the contribution of immigrants to society have changed with the net rate of international migrants in 183 EU regions from 21 countries. Results: We find that while European natives living in regions with a higher share of foreign-born populations are generally less anti-immigrant, a short-term increase in the number of immigrants within a given region is associated with more negative attitudes. Conclusion: Our findings demonstrate the importance of temporal dynamics for attitudes to immigration. They also point to the relevance of regional variations in attitudes beside cross-country differences.

Immigration has become an increasingly politicised issue in many European countries. While prior research emphasises the role of party cues and education in shaping public attitudes to immigration, we know less about the impact of these two factors when they place individuals under cross-pressures. This study explores how exposure to cross-pressures arising from the incongruence between party cues and the values one is expected to hold as a function of educational attainment affects immigration attitudes. The empirical analysis relies on cross-sectional analyses of public preferences in ten European countries and longitudinal analyses of public attitudes in the Netherlands. The results point to attitudinal moderation among party supporters with lower levels of education due to exposure to incongruent party cues. Highly educated party supporters appear to be insensitive to such incongruent cues. Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.1975447. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for strategic communication in migration policymaking is increasingly widely recognised. Whereas until recently there was relatively little academic evidence of what forms of immigration communication are effective, the past few years have seen a large amount of new experimental evidence. This article overviews 68 experimental studies, as well as other relevant studies, categorising their findings into nine common communication strategies. Appealing to common interest rather than self-interest, appealing to conformity rather than diversity, migrant descriptions, appealing to common ground, and appealing to empathy are consistently shown to be effective. Fact-checking of the effects of migration and appealing to emotions are mostly shown to be effective, as is appealing to identity where applicable. By contrast, appealing to diversity is consistently shown to be ineffective, while correcting information about migrant stocks and appeals to self-interest are mostly shown to be ineffective. Overall, this review article supports psychological findings regarding attitudinal formation that emphasise sociotropic considerations of the effects of immigration, economic or otherwise, on the collective while offering weaker support for egocentric approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks globally at the motivations behind attitudes to immigration. Such motivations have been typically conceptualised by academics either in terms of the 'economic competition' or 'cultural threat' that immigrants are perceived to pose to the individual or their 'in‐group'. We propose and test a third possibility: that support for or opposition to immigration is determined by one's perceptions of immigration's effects on social conflict. Using the 2017–2020 World Values Survey (WVS) for forty‐nine countries, we show that: in most countries, globally, citizens are more likely to agree than disagree that immigration leads to social conflict; levels of concern about the effects of immigration on social conflict are higher than those regarding unemployment or culture in sixteen—disproportionately economically developed—countries; concern about social conflict is conceptually and distributionally distinct; belief that immigration leads to social conflict predicts immigration policy preferences; but, uniquely, is positively predicted by higher education. Our findings highlight the importance of institutional conflict resolution capacity, including those related to integration, for the politics of migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has recently been argued that subjective status – the way individuals feel about their worth in society – deserves greater prominence in accounts of political preferences including anti-immigration sentiment and Brexit. In this paper, we give a detailed empirical account of the relationship between Subjective Social Status (SSS) and Brexit-related preferences, using data collected online in the autumn of 2017 (N = 3600). We find limited evidence that 'objective' dimensions of status translate into preferences via SSS. Rather, most of the effect of education and social class on political preferences is direct (or via another unmeasured mechanism). We propose that SSS has a role in norm compliance and demonstrate that high SSS among the university-educated and among those with high-status social ties is associated with a higher probability of voting leave in the referendum, as well as higher levels of anti-immigrant sentiment. Thus, we conclude that if SSS has a role in shaping populist preferences, it is more complex than has been assumed. It exerts an effect in the opposite direction to the expected one among the privileged, and does not appear to explain the preferences of the 'left behind'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper Jacobs examines the connection between attitudes on migration, perceived threats linked to migration and the (lack of) willingness to help refugees using a data set of twelve countries from a survey project called the Aurora Humanitarian Index. The higher the perceived ethnic threat (economic, cultural or religious), the less willing individuals are to mobilize for refugees. In addition to patterns on the individual level, we examine the impact of country characteristics (gross domestic product (GDP), number of migrants and so on) through correlational and multilevel analysis. While neither the proportion of migrants nor the proportion of refugees impacts on the willingness to mobilize in favour of refugees, the economic situation does have an effect. In richer countries there is less willingness to help. Furthermore, we can observe that the effect of both opposition to migration and the perception of refugees as posing an economic threat is exacerbated in richer countries (countries with a higher GDP). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been greater scholarly enquiry into explaining variation in support for European Union membership. We theorise that one cause of such variation is likely to be non-political psychological predispositions, such as one's personal values. We test this proposition by applying Schwartz's theory of basic human values to predict voting intentions in hypothetical referendums on EU membership. We theorise that these values determine both voting intentions and more proximate explanatory variables of support for EU membership: attitudes to immigration and identifying as European. Using data on 13 countries from the European Social Survey (N =24,703 citizens) and multigroup structural equation modeling, we demonstrate that this psychological framework effectively predicts voting intentions, notably in terms of the consistent cross-country evidence for indirect effects of values on support for membership via European identity and attitudes to immigration. We then discuss the implications of our findings, including differences in effects between countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Britain's unexpected vote to leave the European Union (Brexit) in June 2016 has proved divisive and damaging both within the United Kingdom and internationally. Across two correlational studies, the current research proposed a model to explain the Brexit vote, with attitudes to immigration and willingness to disagree (WD) as direct predictors of the referendum result, and internal (IMS) and external (EMS) motivation to respond without prejudice as indirect predictors. Study 1 (N = 353) and Study 2 (N = 363) both showed good fit with the model and, respectively, explained 48% and 46% of the referendum result. More positive attitudes to immigration predicted a vote to remain. Higher IMS and lower EMS predicted a vote to remain, fully mediated by attitudes to immigration. In Study 1, lower WD also predicted a vote to remain, both directly and indirectly via attitudes to immigration, although this was not replicated in Study 2. These results are discussed both in relation to the Brexit result, and the implications for motivation to respond without prejudice, WD, and political correctness more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers what types of strategic communication messaging regarding migration policy are likely to be more or less effective. To do so, the article summarizes the literature to, first, note the broadly postulated effectiveness of value-based messaging and, second, note how underdefined this concept remains. To overcome this shortcoming, I introduce Schwarz’s psychological theory of “basic human values” and use European Social Survey data to visualize the relationship between these values and attitudes to immigration. I argue that messaging with a value-basis that is concordant with that of its audience is more likely to elicit sympathy, whereas that which is discordant with the values of its audience is more likely to elicit antipathy. Given the value-balanced orientations of those with moderate attitudes to immigration, persuasive migration messaging should attempt to mobilize values of its opposition; that is pro-migration messaging should mobilize Schwarz’s values of conformity, tradition, security, and power, whereas anti-migration messaging should mobilize values of universalism, benevolence, self-direction, and stimulation. I then turn to an inventory of 135 migration communication campaigns provided by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development. I show that few pro-migration campaigns contained value-based messaging, whereas all anti-migration campaigns did. Similarly, very few pro-migration campaigns included values besides “universalism” and “benevolence,” whereas anti-migration campaigns included values associated with both pro- and anti-migration attitudes. I visually demonstrate examples of each case before discussing ramifications for policy communication.

Socio-cultural and ethnic origin can be a powerful predictor of social attitudes and behaviours but, unlike the situation in the classical countries of immigration such as Australia, Canada and the USA, there is no standard measure in Europe for measuring ethnic background. The paper reports a new measure and classification, developed for the ESS and trialled in the ESS wave 7 (2014/2015). It describes the underlying theoretical concepts, structure and classification criteria and reports a range of substantive findings. The paper shows that the new measure of ethnic origins has both criterion and predictive validity: it predicts whether respondents identify themselves as belonging to an ethnic minority and whether they feel that theirs is a group which is discriminated against. It also predicts strength of national identity and attitudes towards immigration. A particular strength of the new measure is that it identifies both indigenous and (sub)national minorities as well those with a migration background. The paper shows that in some countries subnational minorities are quite distinctive, for example in their feelings of being discriminated against and in their low levels of national attachment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European migration crisis has divided the population of Germany along the lines of the country’s migration policy and the attitude to immigrants. The antiimmigrant sentiment, supported by the rhetoric of the extreme right-wing parties and the criticism of current policies, have been growing in the society. This article reviews theoretical approaches to the study of public attitude to migrants proceeding from the effect that immigration has on the socioeconomic development of the host society. The authors propose a mechanism for analysing the political life of a society to develop viable approaches to managing the migration shock and mitigating its effect. The article considers the attitudes of the German population to immigration and immigrants in terms of the transformation of electoral preferences under the influence of the migration crisis. Recent data on the electoral standing of the Alternative for Germany party are used to develop a typology of states, based on the level of support for this party from the local population and on other measures of the migration situation and socioeconomic development. The authors identify northeastern regions with a high probability of popular support for the extreme right views on the migration crisis and northern and southwestern states that are most and least susceptible to the extreme right influence.

В свете крупномасштабного европейского миграционного кризиса население Германии разделилось в своем отношении к реализуемой в стране политике в области миграционного регулирования и к самим иммигрантам. В обществе нарастают антииммиграционные настроения, поддерживаемые антииммиграционной риторикой крайне правых партий, и критика проводимой политики. Осуществляется теоретический обзор подходов к изучению отношения населения к мигрантам с точки зрения влияния иммиграции на социально-экономическое развитие принимающего общества. Предлагается механизм анализа политической сферы жизни общества для разработки подходов к управлению последствиями миграционного шока в жизни общества и их смягчению. Делается попытка оценить отношение населения Германии к иммиграции и иммигрантам с точки зрения трансформации его электоральных предпочтений под влиянием миграционного кризиса. С опорой на последние данные электорального рейтинга партии «Альтернатива для Германии» предложена типологизация земель по критериям поддержки партии «Альтернатива для Германии» населением того или иного региона, а также по дополнительным показателям, характеризующим состояние миграционного поля и уровень социально-экономического развития земель, разработана ее методология. Выявлены регионы с высокой степенью вероятности поддержки населением крайне правых взглядов на миграционный кризис на северо-востоке страны, а также наиболее и наименее подверженные правому влиянию земли в юго-западной и северной частях Германии. The European migration crisis has divided the population of Germany along the lines of the country’s migration policy and the attitude to immigrants. The antiimmigrant sentiment, supported by the rhetoric of the extreme right-wing parties and the criticism of current policies, have been growing in the society. This article reviews theoretical approaches to the study of public attitude to migrants proceeding from the effect that immigration has on the socioeconomic development of the host society. The authors propose a mechanism for analysing the political life of a society to develop viable approaches to managing the migration shock and mitigating its effect. The article considers the attitudes of the German population to immigration and immigrants in terms of the transformation of electoral preferences under the influence of the migration crisis. Recent data on the electoral standing of the Alternative for Germany party are used to develop a typology of states, based on the level of support for this party from the local population and on other measures of the migration situation and socioeconomic development. The authors identify northeastern regions with a high probability of popular support for the extreme right views on the migration crisis and northern and southwestern states that are most and least susceptible to the extreme right influence.

We consider the role of values as determinants of voting in the UK's 2016 EU referendum. First, we consider and clarify 'values' conceptually, before proceeding to utilise Schwartz's basic human values as the most appropriate. Second, we theorise how these basic human values determine both voting in the referendum as well as three of the most consistently demonstrated determinants of voting in that referendum: attitudes to immigration, identifying as European and trust in politicians. Finally, we demonstrate that this psychological theoretical framework effectively predicts voting behaviour in the referendum using multigroup structural equation modelling. Overall, we show that voting dynamics in the referendum are likely to reflect deeper, more personal psychological predispositions than those captured by existing explanations. In doing so, we make an original contribution to the literature on political psychology related to Brexit, Euroscepticism, political attitudes and electoral behaviour., (Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)