Analyzing Generational Differences in Attitudes to Immigration in Europe

Public divisions over immigration have dominated European politics for more than four decades. Understanding long-term trends in public opinion on this issue is crucial, as this may suggest increasingly positive (or negative) attitudes to immigration and help governments and political parties develop policy proposals that fit with public preferences on this issue. Collaborative research conducted by the project lead has taken an important first step in developing cross-national measures of long-term trends in immigration opinions. These measures are currently only available at a highly aggregated level – the country and year. And yet, research suggests the need to understand long-term cross-national trends in attitudes to immigration among different generations. This is the primary objective of this project: we propose to build on existing research on constructing ‘macro public opinion’ indicators to construct measures of immigration attitudes at the generation (or, birth cohort) level. The project also aims to understand the potential causes of changes in immigration attitudes among different generations. Some research suggests a potentially positive effect of government adoption of ‘multicultural’ policies that signal positive affirmation of multiculturalism (constitutional, legislative or parliamentary affirmation of multiculturalism, adoption of multiculturalism in school curriculum, and so on). Other research suggests the possibility of a public backlash against these policies. We suggest that public reactions to government adoption of these policies may vary significantly by generation, with younger generations in many countries being more open to these policies, and the adoption of them having a long-term positive impact on those who are ‘coming of age’ politically (approximately 15-20 years old) at the time the policies are adopted. Our cohort-level measures of attitudes to immigration will allow us to analyze this relationship – as well as the potentially differential impact of fluctuations in immigration levels – across a 35-year timespan and 30 European countries. Other factors known to be associated with attitudes to immigration include satisfaction with one’s own life, satisfaction with the way democracy is working and trust in national political institutions. However, it is unclear whether these are related to attitudes to immigration among all generations or only some. As part of this project, we will construct indicators of these variables, measured across generations/birth cohorts and investigate their impact on different generations’ immigration attitudes. Our research will contribute to the study of immigration attitudes in the fields of politics, sociology and economics. We plan to produce three academic journal articles that will first be presented at academic conferences to disseminate methods and findings and gain feedback. Our research will be of interest to national and EU parties and governments in planning their immigration policies, as well as to think tanks and other organisations that help inform government proposals and party platforms. We will ensure stakeholder engagement with our research by drawing on the 16,000+ policy contacts held by Policy Institutes at the University of Leicester and King’s College London for dissemination, and will choose a core set of contacts for participation in a Policy Lab to discuss the evidence from our project and get stakeholders to agree on a set of actions. We will also write a book and policy report intended for non-academic audiences and will publicize these amongst the team’s contacts.