The determinants of individual attitudes towards immigration

Abstract

We are grateful to Kevin Denny and Chris Minns for helpful suggestions. O'Rourke is an IRCHSS Government of Ireland Senior Fellow, and wishes to thank the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences for its generous financial support. The usual disclaimer applies. AbstractThe paper uses a cross-country dataset to investigate the determinants of individual attitudes towards immigration. There are three main conclusions. The first is that attitudes towards immigration are not a function of economic interests alone; rather, they also reflect nationalist sentiment among respondents. The second is that for labour market participants, standard economic theory does a good job of predicting individual attitudes towards immigration. The high-skilled are less opposed to immigration than the low-skilled, and this effect is greater in richer countries than in poorer countries, consistent with Heckscher-Ohlin theory; and in more equal countries than in more unequal ones (consistent with the Borjas theory of immigrant self-selection). On the other hand, noneconomic factors are much more important in determining the attitudes of those not in the labour force.

Je t'aime, moi non plus: Bilateral opinions and international trade

“…The existing literature has used as dependent variables individual level opinions on the protectionist sentiment (Mayda and Rodrik, 2005;O'Rourke and Sinnott, 2006) and on the will in candidate countries to enter the EU (Doyle and Fidrmuc, 2006). They therefore only have information on "non-dyadic opinions" which they try to explain with "nondyadic opinions" determinants.…”

Immigration, fertility, and human capital: A model of economic decline of the West

“…Moreover, although the burden of taxation is not levied on the unskilled workers, the effect of redistribution on the offspring of the local unskilled is in a sense stronger than the effect on the offspring of the skilled, who by assumption always acquire education. This may contribute to a better understanding why the negative sentiments toward several minorities are particularly strong among the less prosperous segments of the indigenous population, as has been widely established empirically (Bauer, et al 2000;Scheve and Slaughter, 2001;Dustmann and Preston, 2001;2006;2007;O'Rourke and Sinnott, 2006).…”

“…See Hillman (1994), Hillman and Weiss (1999a), Bauer et al (2000), Hansen (2003), Dustmann and Preston (2001;2006;2007), Scheve and Slaughter (2001), Gang et al (2002), O'Rourke and Sinnott (2006), Miguet (2008), among others. In this paper, I focus only on economic aspects of immigration.…”

Voting over selective immigration policies with immigration aversion

“…In the UK, the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme is a point system used to select the most qualified immigrants. The admission threshold has been recently increased from 65 to 75 points 19 , indicating and increasing protectionism. Since 2002, a Sectors Based Scheme and a Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme are used for unskilled workers: they must be between 18 and 30 and have a job offer from a list of sectors where the local labour supply is scarce.…”