Should They Stay or Should They Go? Attitudes Towards Immigration in Europe
| Author | Simona Mateut,Sarah Bridges |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/sjpe.12051 |
| Date | 01 September 2014 |
| Published date | 01 September 2014 |
SHOULD THEY STAY OR SHOULD
THEY GO? ATTITUDES TOWARDS
IMMIGRATION IN EUROPE
Sarah Bridges and Simona Mateut
ABSTRACT
This paper examines the main determinants of individual attitudes towards immi-
gration in Europe. Our results suggest that both economic and non-economic
variables shape attitudes towards immigration, but the relative importance of
these factors depends crucially on the race/ethnicity of the arriving immigrants.
While fears over labour market competition are more likely to shape attitudes
towards the arrival of same race immigrants, more exposure to immigrants
reduces opposition towards the arrival of different race immigrants. These find-
ings persist after controlling for socioeconomic characteristics, and after exploit-
ing the data to allow for cohort-specific effects.
II
NTRODUCTION
Immigration is often a hotly debated topic and one that is likely to loom large
in political and media circles throughout Europe as worsening economic con-
ditions take hold. Tensions between natives and immigrants are often por-
trayed, in the media at least, as being at their worse in an economic downturn
as immigrants and natives compete for scarce jobs and public resources. With
this in mind, this paper investigates the extent to which economic and non-
economic factors shape attitudes towards immigration in Europe, and in
doing so, focuses on an issue that has received much less attention in the liter-
ature, namely the extent to which attitudes towards immigration vary with the
race or ethnicity of the arriving immigrants.
A large literature has developed examining attitudes towards immigration,
across a wide range of countries.
1
Much of the empirical research in this area
focuses on the economic effects of immigration and finds that attitudes towards
the arrival of immigrants are strongly shaped by economic self-interest. Native
University of Nottingham
1
See, for example, Hainmueller and Hiscox (2010), Facchini et al. (2007), Kessler (2001),
Scheve and Slaughter (2001), Citrin et al. (1997), and Espenshade and Hempstead (1996) for
the United States; Dustmann and Preston (2001, 2007) for the United Kingdom; Hainmueller
and Hiscox (2007) for Europe; and Facchini and Mayda (2008) and Mayda (2006) for the
United States, Canada, Japan and a sample of countries in Europe.
Scottish Journal of Political Economy, DOI: 10.1111/sjpe.12051, Vol. 61, No. 4, September 2014
©2014 Scottish Economic Society.
397
workers appear to be more likely to oppose immigration when they feel threa-
tened by labour market competition from migrants. Scheve and Slaughter
(2001), for example, find that less-skilled individuals are more likely to oppose
the arrival of immigrants (and vice versa), and argue that attitudes towards
immigration are influenced by a person’s position in the labour market. Simi-
larly, Mayda (2006) finds that skilled individuals are more likely to favour immi-
gration in countries where the relative skill composition of natives relative to
immigrants is high (and vice versa). Such findings are consistent with the labour
market predictions of the factor proportions model.
2
In contrast, Hainmueller and Hiscox (2007), using European data, argue
that the relationship between education (which is often used as a proxy for
skill level) and attitudes towards immigrants has little to do with fears about
labour market competition. They find that individuals with higher levels of
education are more likely to favour immigration regardless of the immigrant’s
skill level or country of origin. Similarly, Citrin et al. (1997) find little role for
personal economic circumstances in shaping attitudes towards immigrants,
while Dustmann and Preston (2007) assert that racial prejudice is an impor-
tant factor.
Welfare considerations are also important in shaping attitudes towards
immigration. Hanson et al. (2007) using data for the United States find that
exposure to fiscal pressure from migrants’ increases opposition towards immi-
gration, especially among the more skilled. In a cross-country analysis, Fac-
chini and Mayda (2009) show that individuals on a high income are more
likely to oppose immigration in countries where immigrants are unskilled and
therefore potentially represent a net burden to the welfare state (and vice
versa when immigrants are skilled). Dustmann and Preston (2007) also find
that welfare concerns play a major role in determining attitudes towards
immigration.
With a few exceptions, the literature tends to assume that natives view all
immigrants in the same way.
3
Attitudes towards immigration are however,
likely to vary with the race or ethnicity of the arriving immigrants, especially
if the arriving immigrants are of a different race or ethnicity to the dominant
race/ethnic group within a country. Thus, grouping all immigrants together
and pooling across countries is likely to produce unreliable results. This is
likely to be particularly true in Europe where the composition of the immi-
grant population varies widely across countries.
2
In other words, assuming that skilled and unskilled workers are complements, if natives
are more skilled than immigrants, immigration should reduce the supply of skilled workers
relative to unskilled workers and raise the skilled wage, whereas the opposite is true in coun-
tries with a low skill composition of natives relative to immigrants.
3
Dustmann and Preston (2007) use data from the British Social Attitudes Survey and dis-
tinguish among immigrants from four origin regions: the West Indies, India and Pakistan,
countries in the European common market, and Australia and New Zealand. Hainmueller
and Hiscox (2007) use data from a single wave of the European Social Survey to investigate
whether attitudes towards immigration depend on the origin of immigrants (from richer or
poorer countries both in and outside Europe), while Hainmueller and Hiscox (2010) use data
from a survey experiment to investigate the role played by the immigrants’ skill level.
398 SARAH BRIDGES AND SIMONA MATEUT
Scottish Journal of Political Economy
©2014 Scottish Economic Society
We attempt to address these limitations by conducting an analysis of atti-
tudes towards immigration using data from the European Social Survey
(ESS), a particularly rich data set for examining some of the issues surround-
ing immigration. Above all, the ESS enables us to investigate the extent to
which attitudes are affected by the race or ethnicity of the arriving immi-
grants. In addition, although the ESS is not a panel and hence the same indi-
viduals cannot be tracked over time we are, nevertheless, able to use the data
to construct a pseudo panel (see Deaton, 1985) and track different ‘cohorts’
over time in order to eliminate any unobserved fixed effects.
A common way to gauge the impact foreign workers have on the domestic
labour market is to control for the relative income and education level (as a
proxy for skill) of the native population. We refine this approach and match in
data from the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU LFS) to examine the
effect the size of the immigrant population has on attitudes towards immigra-
tion. Indubitably there are two effects at work in this context. Firstly, attitudes
are likely to be shaped by exposure to immigrants in daily life.
4
Secondly,
natives may be more likely to oppose immigration when they feel threatened by
labour market competition from migrants, since it is likely to induce downward
pressure on labour market opportunities and wages. We attempt to separate
these conflicting effects by controlling for both the proportion of non-nationals
in the respondent’s region and the proportion of non-nationals in each occupa-
tion. We argue that the former proxies for the degree of contact respondents
have with immigrants, while the latter captures the competition effect.
We find that contact is important in shaping attitudes towards immigration,
but mainly towards those of a different race or ethnic group to the dominant
group within a country. In general, more exposure to immigrants appears to
reduce opposition towards the arrival of different race/ethnicity immigrants,
but perhaps not surprisingly has little effect on attitudes towards the arrival of
those of the same race or ethnicity. In contrast, we find evidence of a positive
association between our proxy for labour market competition and a restrictive
immigration policy (Mayda, 2006, finds a similar result). However, once again
race/ethnicity has an important role to play. Natives appear to regard immi-
grants of the same race or ethnicity as representing a greater ‘threat’ to their
labour market opportunities than those of a different race or ethnicity. This
result is also correlated with education levels, and we find that highly educated
Europeans (those with a post-secondary education) appear to only perceive
labour market competition from immigrants of the same race or ethnicity.
Finally, we show that public finance considerations are also important in
shaping attitudes towards immigration, but mainly towards those of a differ-
ent race/ethnicity. Immigrants of a different race/ethnicity to the native popu-
lation appear to be perceived as being more likely to make use of public
funds than immigrants of the same race/ethnicity. Dustmann and Preston
(2007) make a similar finding in their study of the United Kingdom.
4
More exposure may either increase or decrease the perceived threat posed by immigrants
(Card et al., 2005).
SHOULD THEY STAY OR SHOULD THEY GO? 399
Scottish Journal of Political Economy
©2014 Scottish Economic Society
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