Crime Story: The role of crime and immigration in the anti-immigration vote

Some scholars have found that mass immigration fuels the success of anti-immigration parties, whereas others have found that it does not. In this paper, we propose a reason for these contradictory results. We advance a set of hypotheses that revolves around a commonly ignored factor, crime. To test these hypotheses, we examine a setting where an anti-immigration party, the LPF, participated in simultaneous elections in all Dutch municipalities, which form a single constituency. According to our results, the impact of immigration rates on the individual vote for the LPF only manifests itself among those voters who are very ‘tough on crime’. In addition, we demonstrate that high local crime rates make an anti-immigration vote more likely, but only among voters who are very ‘tough on immigration’. This suggests that immigration and crime rates do not make all citizens more likely to cast an anti-immigration vote, but only those who perceive a link between the two issues. Thus, if one wishes to reduce anti-immigration leaders’ electoral support, countering their criminalization of immigrants may be a more fruitful strategy than trying to stop immigration – if at all possible.     

Rethinking Anti-Immigration Rhetoric after the Oslo and Utøya Terror Attacks

This article examines right-wing populism and populist rhetoric in Norway preceding the July 22, 2011 terror attacks at Utøya and in Oslo. It describes how the mainstream media, academics, and political parties have appealed to the public in an increasingly populist fashion and have spread fear about immigration, immigrants, and integration. It argues that while the populist right-wing Progress Party has adopted immigration and integration as its main cause and has gained support because of it, the Progress Party alone cannot be blamed for the widespread xenophobia in Norway. The media are also responsible for the way immigration, culture, and race have been reported, as are a wide range of politicians for formulating increasingly stricter immigration policies. In the aftermath of July 22 politicians became acutely concerned about their own anti-immigrant rhetoric and how it may have influenced the terrorist Anders Behring Breivik. A broad consensus to address and change the language used in the immigration debate was agreed upon; more openness and more democracy was promised. Much has changed, but even more has stayed the same in Norwegian politics and attitudes to immigration and Islam.     

The 2015 Norwegian Local Elections: Support for Governing Radical Right Progress Party Plummets and Great Gains for Greens in ‘Second-Order’ Elections

Two years into the first term of the right wing Conservative/Progress Party coalition government, the 2015 Norwegian local elections displayed many features of a ‘second-order’ election: the governing parties lost considerable support, minor parties did well and voter turnout was low. For the second local elections in a row, political circumstances prevented the far right Progress Party from mobilizing on the anti-immigration issue, adding to the burdens of governing nationally for the first time. The Green Party leveraged its 2013 entry into the national parliament into record support, consolidating the progress made in the 2011 local elections. Although the elections were shaped by national politics, municipal and county variation shows that local political factors did matter.     

How news content influences anti-immigration attitudes: Germany, 1993–2005

Immigration is an increasingly important political issue in Western democracies and a crucial question relates to the antecedents of public attitudes towards immigrants. It is generally acknowledged that information relayed through the mass media plays a role in the formation of anti-immigration attitudes. This study considers whether news coverage of immigrants and immigration issues relates to macro-level dynamics of anti-immigration attitudes. It further explores whether this relationship depends on variation in relevant real world contexts. The models simultaneously control for the effects of established contextual explanatory variables. Drawing on German monthly time-series data and on ARIMA time-series modeling techniques, it is shown that both the frequency and the tone of coverage of immigrant actors in the news significantly influence dynamics in anti-immigration attitudes. The strength of the effect of the news, however, depends on contextual variation in immigration levels and the number of asylum seekers. Implications of these findings are discussed in the light of the increasing success of extreme right parties and growing opposition to further European integration.     

“The Immigration Problem” and Norwegian Right-Wing Politicians

In this article, we explore Norwegian Progress Party politicians’ change of their rhetoric of immigration after the party for the first time became part of a coalition government in 2013. Equal to other right-wing populist parties in Europe, immigration has been the main reason for voters to support the Progress Party. How then does their immigration rhetoric change after entering office? This is important, as an intolerant immigration rhetoric has far-reaching consequences for the political climate in Europe. Right-wing populist parties can achieve much regarding migration policies merely because there is broad consensus on a strict migration policy today. However, to succeed remaining in office, they must remain being acceptable to other parties in the parliament and their coalition partner and therefore they need to moderate the way they go about communicating their message. Too much moderation however might lead to a split within the party, or losing core voters.     

Levels or changes?: Ethnic context,immigration and the UK Independence Party vote

Will the rising share of ethnic minorities in western societies spark a backlash or lead to greater acceptance of diversity? This paper examines this question through the prism of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), the most successful populist right party in British history. The paper contributes to work on contextual effects by arguing that ethnic levels and changes cross-pressure white opinion and voting. It argues that high levels of established ethnic minorities reduce opposition to immigration and support for UKIP among White Britons. Conversely, more rapid ethnic changes increase opposition to immigration and support for UKIP. Longitudinal data demonstrates that these effects are not produced by self-selection. The data further illustrate that with time, diversity levels increase their threat-reducing power while the threatening effects of ethnic change fade. Results suggest that the contextual effects literature needs to routinely unpack levels from changes. This also suggests that if the pace of immigration slows, immigration attitudes should soften and populist right voting decline.     

A New Electorate? Comparing Preferences and Partisanship between Immigrants and Natives

As immigrants constitute a large and rising share of both the population and the electorate in many developed democracies, we examine aspects of immigrant political behavior, a vital issue that has gone largely unexplored outside of the U.S. context. We focus on Germany and Great Britain, two countries that provide good leverage to explore both within-country and cross-national variation in Europe. Our overall aim is to assess the impact of the immigration context. As a first step, we investigate whether immigrants and natives have systematically different attitudes on two issues that have dominated postwar European politics: social spending and redistribution. With controls in place, we observe that immigrants are no more likely to support increased social spending or redistributive measures than natives and find support for hypotheses highlighting selection effects and the impact of the immigration regime. Where we do find an opinion gap, immigrants tend to have more conservative preferences than natives. As a second step, we explore the determinants of immigrant partisan identification in Britain and find that the salience of the immigration context helps explain immigrants' partisan attachment to the Labour Party.     

Is a Rational Solution Possible?

The debate about immigration reform, like many other critical ones in America today, cannot be resolved just by providing common sense suggestions for compromises. A substantial number of whites fear immigrants in general, not just illegal ones, and blame them for America’s economic and social problems. Attacking illegal immigrants and pretending that they can be excluded is merely an ostensibly more acceptable way of trying to curb immigration in general. Yet, the United States cannot survive without immigrants. Generally, what we need to overcome the emotional panic being promoted by anti-immigration advocates is more simply expressed numbers showing us what role various kinds of immigrants play in our society. This will not persuade the frightened right, but it might at least allow the more moderate parts of the public to approach the issue more rationally.     

Cross-city evidence on the relationship between immigration and crime

Public concerns about the costs of immigration and crime are high, and sometimes overlapping. This article investigates the relationship between immigration into a metropolitan area and that area's crime rate during the 1980s. Using data from the Uniform Crime Reports and the Current Population Surveys, we find, in the cross section, that cities with high crime rates tend to have large numbers of immigrants. However, controlling for the demographic characteristics of the cities, recent immigrants appear to have no effect on crime rates. In explaining changes in a city's crime rate over time, the flow of immigrants again has no effect, whether or not we control for other city-level characteristics. In a secondary analysis of individual data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), we find that youth born abroad are statistically significantly less likely than native-born youth to be criminally active.     

Stronger core,weaker fringes: the Danish general election 2019

Abstract

The 2015–2019 election period was long; hence, the election campaign had already begun when the Prime Minister called the election for 5 June 2019, just 10 days after the EP election. Nine already established parties, one old yet unrepresented party and three new parties, two of which are (very) opposed to immigration, fielded candidates across the 10 electoral districts for the 175 seats in parliament (excluding the four MPs elected in Greenland and the Faroe Islands). The overlapping EP election, climate and immigration characterised the campaign agenda. One of the new (anti-immigration) parties made it into parliament, and among the established parties, some were (more than) halved, others were (more than) doubled and some remained stable. In particular, the two government (supporting) parties, Liberal Alliance and Danish People’s Party, received a slap in the face from the electorate. While the Prime Minister’s party, the Liberals, did well, the majority shifted to left of centre, which resulted in a minority Social Democratic government headed by Mette Frederiksen, supported by the Red?Green Alliance, Socialist People’s Party and Social Liberals.     

A note on the political economy of immigration

In this note it is shown that the different attitudes towards immigration can be explained in terms of economic interest, although the public immigration debate is dominated by moral and political arguments. On the one hand, immigration supporters are mainly found among those who may expect economic gains from immigration – skilled workers and especially members of certain professions. On the other hand, unskilled workers who stand to lose economically because they can be easily substitued for by immigrants are for the most part opposed to immigration.     

Freedom,immigration, and adequate options

According to the freedom argument for open borders, immigration restrictions are generally unjust because these restrictions infringe on important freedoms, such as freedom of association and the economic liberties. Some authors have objected to the freedom argument by claiming that potential immigrants only have rights to sufficient options to live decent or autonomous lives and, consequently, states can permissibly prevent people from immigrating when potential immigrants have adequate options. This paper shows that this objection to the freedom argument for open borders is unsound and that restrictions on international freedom of movement can be morally impermissible even when potential immigrants have adequate options.     

Between punishment and discipline: comparing strategies to control unauthorized immigration in the United States

Immigration scholars have noted the rise of a distinctive discourse concerning immigrants in the United States. The ‘immigrant threat’ discourse is said to portray immigrants as an existential threat to the country and contributes to highly restrictive enforcement policies. Through a close examination of national political debates concerning comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) (2005–2007), the paper shows that most politicians involved in this debate (from liberal Democrats to conservative Republicans) agreed with the basic assumptions of this general discourse. But the paper also identifies important variants on the ‘threat’ discourse and associated strategies. Hardline conservatives stressed that the essential ‘illegalness’ of immigrants posed a threat to the country. Protecting the nation state from this threat required policies to totally banish all undocumented immigrants from the country, irrespective of their ‘good’ conduct or exceptional circumstances. Moderate and liberal reform advocates agreed with the idea that undocumented immigrants posed a threat to the country. However, they believed that banishment alone could not address the threat. Instead they advocated a strategy of risk management whereby the population would be differentiated according to levels of risk (high to low priority) and policies of inclusion and exclusion would be adjusted accordingly. This would allow the government to incorporate low risk/priority immigrants while freeing government resources to target the ‘truly threatening’ groups (i.e., criminals, delinquents, homeless, repeat unauthorized entries, etc.). Thus, while both sides conceded that undocumented immigrants were a threat to the country, they developed important variants on the discourse and contrasting policy solutions to exert control over the population.     

Variation in policy success: radical right populism and migration policy

How do radical right populist parties influence government policies in their core issue of immigration? This article provides a systematic analysis of the direct and indirect effects of radical right anti-immigration parties on migration policy reforms in 17 West European countries from 1990 to 2014. Insights from migration policy theory serve to explain variations in the migration policy success of the radical right. While previous studies mostly treat migration policy as uniform, it is argued that this approach neglects the distinct political logics of immigration and integration policy. This article reveals significant variations in policy success by policy area. While immigration policies have become more liberal despite the electoral success of the radical right, when the radical right is in government office it enacts more restrictions in integration policies. Accordingly, anti-immigrant mobilisation is more likely to influence immigrants’ rights than their actual numbers.     

Local labour market competition and radical right voting: Evidence from France

How do the economic effects of immigration affect radical right support? The evidence in support of the labour market competition theory — which posits that the economic threat posed by immigration to jobs and wages leads to radical right voting — has been mixed. On the one hand, individual-level surveys underreport economic drivers because of social desirability bias. On the other hand, contextual studies show contradictory findings due to an over-reliance on units of analysis that are too aggregated to meaningfully capture the competitive threat posed by immigrants. This paper identifies the influence of labour market competition on radical right voting at a local level in contexts where native workers are directly affected by the arrival of immigrants who have similar or higher skillsets. Using an original longitudinal dataset of fine-grained municipal electoral, demographic and economic data from France over the 2002–2017 period, the paper provides empirical evidence of local contextual influences of economic competition between natives and immigrants of any skillset. Under local conditions of material deprivation, measured by the local unemployment rate, the effect of labour market competition on municipalities’ radical right vote share is amplified. Moreover, higher radical right support is observed in municipalities with a higher share of any one of the following groups: low-skilled natives, medium-skilled immigrants or high-skilled immigrants. This supports the hypothesis that immigrants with higher qualifications are compelled to accept lower-skilled jobs, and are thus perceived as a competitive threat to low-skilled natives. By reconciling radical right contextual studies and research on the political economy of immigration policies, this paper highlights the importance of a local analysis in detecting the effect of labour market competition on radical right support. This paper also explains why some local areas are more prone to radical right support than others over time.     

On David Miller on immigration control

David Miller offers a liberal realist defence of immigration control grounded in cosmopolitan ideals of self-determination, fairness and integration. But a commitment to liberal values requires a commitment to more open borders than he admits. A part of the problem is that the notion of open borders Miller criticises is under-theorised. A deeper problem is that immigration control itself is inconsistent with important liberal values – notably the values of freedom and equality. This is a concern because it is the freedom and equality not only of immigrants but also of citizens that is threatened by the closing of borders.     

Does border enforcement deter unauthorized immigration? The case of Mexican migration to the United States of America

This paper asks whether the migration decisions of unauthorized Mexican immigrants to the USA have been influenced by stronger US border enforcement efforts since 1993 that have sharply increased the physical risk and financial cost of illegal immigration. These measures were supposed to have decreased the probability of successful entry, thereby lowering the expected benefits of migration. We carried out a logistic regression analysis of data from a recent survey of 603 returned migrants and potential first‐time migrants in rural Mexico. Our findings indicate that tougher border controls have had remarkably little influence on the propensity to migrate illegally to the USA. Political restrictions on immigration are far outweighed by economic and family‐related incentives to migrate. An alternative, labor‐market approach to immigration control with higher probability of effectiveness is outlined.     

Techno-cultural opportunities: the anti-immigration movement in the Finnish mediascape

ABSTRACT

Horsti's article analyses how transformations in the media environment shaped the political success of the anti-immigration movement in Finland from 2003 to 2013. The qualitative textual analysis of blogs and mainstream media debates that relate to racism and the national populist Finns Party demonstrates how changes in the mediascape in general and in new media technology in particular have provided opportunities for the emerging anti-immigration movement. These changes facilitated the earlier development of the Finns Party but the fragmentation of online space later hindered the internal coherence of the movement and its integration into the populist party political family. In order to regain unity, the Finns Party performed the public scapegoating of individuals for racist speech, thus distancing itself from racism. Horsti shows that, rather than being isolated and marginal, the anti-immigration movement and the ‘uncivil’ public sphere overlap with traditional politics and the mainstream media.     

Adapting to party lines: the effect of party affiliation on attitudes to immigration

Public opinion on immigration is increasingly relevant for political behaviour. However, little is known about the way in which citizens’ political allegiances in turn shape their attitudes to immigration. Abundant existing evidence suggests that voters often take cues from the parties they support. Using panel data from the Netherlands and Sweden, this article investigates the dynamic relation between attitudes to immigration and party preferences. The longitudinal nature of the data allows for making stronger claims about causal mechanisms than previous cross-sectional studies. The analysis shows that voters who change their preference to the Radical Right become stricter on immigration, whereas voters changing to the Greens become less strict on immigration over time. This confirms that citizens’ support for anti- and pro-immigration parties results in a ‘radicalisation’ of their views on immigration along party lines. A similar ‘spiral’ of radicalisation can be found around the issue of European integration.