Immigration Status, Ethnicity, and Attitudes toward Immigration in Britain

Abstract

European societies are becoming increasingly ethnically diverse as a result of past and present immigration. After decades of researching immigration attitudes among the majority in Europe, scholarly interest has shifted in the last years into investigating the attitudes of the growing demographic of first and second generation immigrants. Extant explanations of individual differences in attitudes toward immigration among immigrants focus on factors related to political incorporation and socioeconomic status. However, an important blindspot of these studies is that they do not account for ethnic and racial heterogeneity within immigrant and native groups. In this article we advance the existing literature by investigating the implications of ethnicity and race among immigrants and natives on attitudes toward immigration. Our findings suggest that, unlike White immigrants and natives, Black and Asian minorities are consistently more likely to be supportive of immigration regardless of their level of political incorporation or their socioeconomic status.