The Role of Politics in Public Views About Immigrants

Research on the role of politics in shaping public views about immigration is surprisingly limited. We aim to advance this literature by (1) paying more attention to moderating effects of political variables and (2) analyzing separately how politics shapes empirical perceptions, normatively laden beliefs, and entirely normative attitudes about immigration. We combine socio-economic and political data with public opinion data from 34 European countries and multiple time periods (the European Social Survey of 2002 and 2014 and the European Values Survey of 2008 and 2017) to investigate the role anti-immigrant party success and ideological orientation play in public perceptions about the size of the immigrant population, public beliefs about immigrants’ reliance on welfare and their impact on crime, and public attitudes about socialization with immigrants (having a close relative marry an immigrant). Our main findings are threefold. First, anti-immigrant party success tends to lead to more negative public opinion about immigration. Second, ideological orientation crucially shapes public opinion: not only is it a powerful bivariate predictor of public beliefs and attitudes, but it also interacts in meaningful ways with other influences on public opinion. Third, political variables have a larger effect on value-laden attitudes and beliefs than on perceptions of empirical reality.