Attitudes towards highly skilled and low‐skilled immigration in Europe: A survey experiment in 15 European countries

Abstract

To what extent do economic concerns drive anti‐migrant attitudes? Key theoretical arguments extract two central motives: increased labour market competition and the fiscal burden linked to the influx of migrants. This article provides new evidence regarding the impact of material self‐interest on attitudes towards immigrants. It reports the results of a survey experiment embedded in representative surveys in 15 European countries before and after the European refugee crisis in 2014. As anticipated by the fiscal burden argument, it is found that rich natives prefer highly skilled over low‐skilled migration more than low‐income respondents do. Moreover, the study shows that these tax concerns among the wealthy are stronger if fiscal exposure to migration is high. No support is found for the labour market competition argument predicting that natives will be most opposed to migrants with similar skills. The results suggest that highly skilled migrants are preferred over low‐skilled migrants irrespective of natives’ skill levels.

The Impact of Eu Immigration on Economic Growth Through the Skill Composition Channel

“…The effect of migration of this category is double: in the sending country there are losses of tax contributions, and in the host country there are budget spending as a result of the increase of low skilled workers unemployment. The impact of immigration on the public finances is also different due to other aspects: the nature of rules regarding taxes, the way immigrants are chosen, the phase of the business cycle (Preston, 2013;Naumann et al, 2018). In order to reduce the financial burden, the country's policies regarding the immigrants can limit the access of low skilled immigrants from certain countries or can follow a faster policy integration of immigrants (Gathmann, 2015).…”

Economic Vulnerability, Cultural Decline, and Nativism: Contingent and Indirect Effects

“…Further, while less (better) educated working‐class citizens may be more (less) opposed to immigration, the reason may have less to do with labor market considerations among the working class than with the value placed on cultural diversity among higher income, better educated citizens (Hainmueller and Hiscox, , ). However, given recent experimental work in the United States and Europe on self‐interest and nativist attitudes (Gerber et al., ; Naumann, Stoetzer, and Pietrantuono, ), there remain questions about how culture and economics can shape anti‐immigrant sentiment.…”

Immigration and the British news media: Continuity or change?

“…In the context of the politics of immigration, the conflation of migration types is important as evidence suggests that the public's (mis)perceptions about the scale, nature, and distinctions between types of immigration align closely with the representations advanced by mass media outlets (Blinder, ; Blinder & Allen, ). While public opinion about immigration varies depending on preferred attributes such as skill level, purpose of settlement, ethnicity, and cultural proximity, among others (Ford, ; Ford, Morrell, & Heath, ; Hainmueller & Hopkins, ; Kaur‐Ballagan & Mortimore, ; Naumann, Stoetzer, & Pietrantuono, ; Valentino et al, ), there are significant differences between “imagined immigration” (i.e., how people perceive immigration) and “statistical immigration” (i.e., government records of immigration). Consequently, if and when media representations do conflate groups of migrants and thereby fuel public misperceptions, this could have a significant impact on the pressure that is brought to bear on government policy (Blinder, ).…”