Does opposition to immigration mostly stem from prejudice or from sociotropic concerns about broad economic and cultural implications on the nation as a whole? Previous work on immigration preferences cannot answer this question because the two explanations are observationally equivalent when focusing on the attitudes of natives. I analyze a unique survey experiment that asks both natives and immigrants of various origins to evaluate different profiles of visa applicants to the Netherlands. The experiment also assigns an “ingroup treatment”—applications by individuals of the same ethnocultural background as the respondent. Using this rich data, I show that sociotropic concerns are the major source of immigration preferences, while ethnic biases play a moderate role. Remarkably, the ingroup treatment has limited effects on admission. However, bias against specific immigrant groups is detected in preferences of immigrant respondents and of those who sympathize with the far-right Freedom Party.

Vast research on immigration lumps together native citizens' attitudes toward two different groups: theimmigrant stockof non-naturalized resident aliens, and theimmigrant flow, that is, the future arrival of foreigners seeking to enter and live in the country. Does popular opposition to immigration distinguish between the two, and if so, how? This article analyzes theoretically the reasons the stock and flow might induce different views among natives, and presents experimental evidence from the United States showing that natives are systematically more accepting of the former. The analysis indicates that this ‘stock premium’ partly stems from a sense of moral obligation toward people residing in the country. Replicating two widely cited experiments, the study shows that the stock–flow distinction has important implications for the interpretation of earlier findings on immigration attitudes, and for understanding voter preferences regarding policies designed to curtail immigration.

In response to the political turmoil surrounding the recent refugee crisis, destination countries swiftly implemented new immigration and asylum policies. Are such countercrisis policies effective in mitigating political instability by reducing anti-immigrant backlash and support for radical-right parties? The present study exploits two surveys that were coincidentally fielded during significant policy changes, sampling respondents right before and immediately after the change. I employ a regression discontinuity design to identify the short-term causal effect of the policy change on public opinion within a narrow window of the sampling period. The findings show that both Swedish border controls and the EU–Turkey agreement significantly reduced public opposition to immigration in Sweden and Germany, respectively. In Germany, support for the AfD party also decreased following the new policy. Public opinion time trends suggest that the policy effects were short lived in Sweden but durable in Germany. These effects are similar across different levels of proximity to the border and are accompanied by increasing political trust and a sense of government control over the situation. The findings have implications for understanding the impact of border controls on international public opinion, as well as for assessing the electoral effect of policy responses to global refugee crises.

In the modern nation‐state, birthright citizenship laws – jus soli and jus sanguinis – are the two main gateways to sociopolitical membership. The vast majority of the world's population (97 percent) obtains their citizenship as a matter of birthright. Yet because comparative research has focused on measuring and explaining the multiple components of citizenship and immigration policies, a systematic analysis of birthright citizenship is lacking. We bridge this gap by analyzing the birthright component in prominent databases on citizenship policies and complementing them with original data and measures. This allows us to systematically test institutional and electoral explanations for contemporary and over‐time variation in birthright citizenship. Institutional explanations – legal codes and colonial history – are consistently associated with limitations on birthright law. As for electoral explanations, specific electoral powers – Nationalist, Socialist and Social‐Democratic parties – rather than the traditional left/right‐wing divide, are linked with reforms in birthright regimes.

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