Who is a ‘Deserving’ Immigrant? An Experimental Study of Norwegian Attitudes

Previous research demonstrates that opposition to immigration increases when immigrant groups are seen as economically non‐viable and burdened with distinctive and unassimilable cultural practices. However, no research to date has investigated the parallel relationship between attributes of individuals and willingness to admit these individuals as legal immigrants. This study examines Norwegians’ evaluations of individual immigrants. Using an experimental design, specific attributes of immigrants are manipulated, making them appear more or less likely to make an economic contribution and more or less likely to assimilate into Norwegian culture. It is found that the decision to admit individuals is predominantly influenced by the immigrant's economic background. Norwegians are especially supportive of highly skilled immigrants. The immigrant's race is also relevant, but the effect of racial cues varies between men and women. Immigrants with an Afrocentric appearance are more likely to be rejected by men, but accepted by women. The article recommends that immigration researchers measure public support for immigration at both the policy and individual immigrant levels.     

Explaining Attitudes toward Immigration: The Role of Regional Context and Individual Predispositions

Existing research makes competing predictions and yields contradictory findings about the relationships between natives’ exposure to immigrants and their attitudes toward immigration. Engaging this disjuncture, this article argues that individual predispositions moderate the impact of exposure to immigrants on negative attitudes toward immigrants. Negative attitudes toward immigration are more likely among individuals who are most sensitive to such threats. Because country-level studies are generally unable to appropriately measure the immigration context in which individuals form their attitudes, this article uses a newly collected dataset on regional immigration patterns in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland to test the argument. The data show that increasing and visible diversity is associated with negative attitudes toward immigrants, but only among natives on the political right. This finding improves the understanding of attitudes toward immigrants and immigration and has implications for the study of attitudes toward other policies and for immigration policy itself.     

Economic Explanations for Opposition to Immigration: Distinguishing between Prevalence and Conditional Impact

What explains variation in individuals’ opposition to immigration? While scholars have consistently shown cultural concerns to be strong predictors of opposition, findings regarding the labor‐market competition hypothesis are highly contested. To help understand these divergent results, we distinguish between the prevalence and conditional impact of determinants of immigration attitudes. Leveraging a targeted sampling strategy of high‐technology counties, we conduct a study of Americans’ attitudes toward H‐1B visas. The plurality of these visas are occupied by Indian immigrants, who are skilled but ethnically distinct, enabling us to measure a specific skill set (high technology) that is threatened by a particular type of immigrant (H‐1B visa holders). Unlike recent aggregate studies, our targeted approach reveals that the conditional impact of the relationship in the high‐technology sector between economic threat and immigration attitudes is sizable. However, labor‐market competition is not a prevalent source of threat and therefore is generally not detected in aggregate analyses.     

Public Attitudes Toward Immigration Policy Across the Legal/Illegal Divide: The Role of Categorical and Attribute-Based Decision-Making

Scholars debate the relative strength of economic and ‘socio-psychological’ sources of anti-immigrant sentiment. However, the literature often fails to distinguish legal from illegal immigration and therefore overlooks a major instance in which this debate is moot. To address this issue, we develop a theory that recognizes two different modes of evaluating immigrants: “attribute-based” judgment, in which respondents weigh immigrants’ desirability based on individual characteristics—human capital, race, language ability, and so on—and “categorical” judgment, which disregards these altogether. Categorical judgments arise when a policy issue triggers blanket considerations of justice or principle that obviate considerations about putative beneficiaries’ individual merits, instead evoking overriding beliefs about the desirability of the policy as a whole or casting the entire category as uniformly deserving or undeserving. We use experimental evidence from two national surveys to show that the principal distinction between attitudes toward legal and illegal immigration is not in the relative weight of immigrants’ attributes but the much greater prevalence of categorical assessments of illegal immigration policy, much of it rooted in rigid moralistic convictions about the importance of strict adherence to rules and laws.     

Liberal Nationalism,Imagined Immigration and the Progressive Dilemma

The article critically evaluates liberal nationalist perspectives on immigration by drawing on findings from a qualitative research project undertaken in 2014 among White British interviewees in England. From one perspective the study's participants' attitudes seem to support arguments made by David Goodhart and other liberal nationalists regarding immigration, social trust and integration. However, further analysis suggests that these attitudes are to a very significant extent drawn first from partially imagined ideas surrounding immigration and second from potentially unreliable sources. These findings thus provoke the question of whether social trust and notions of a national community are actually being disrupted by immigration, or whether they are being disrupted by prejudiced nationalist and xenophobic perceptions about immigration and immigrants. The article will conclude by arguing for more nuanced research into attitudes towards immigration and in favour of a sceptical approach to nationalist frameworks for interpreting society and politics in Britain today.     

Alien Citizens and the Canonical Immigrant: Do Stigmatized Attributes Affect Latina/o Judgment about Discrimination?

Negative elite and news media attention to Latino‐relevant issues, particularly undocumented immigration, has dramatically increased in recent years, potentially stigmatizing attributes of Latinos such as immigration status and language use. Concomitantly, immigration policy changes were leading to widespread arrests and deportation of many Latinos. Herein, we ask two questions: First, to what extent do Latinos perceive and experience discrimination? Second, to what extent do immigration status, generational status, and language use moderate beliefs about discrimination? Using Pew National Survey of Latinos data, we find that Latino beliefs about the problem of discrimination is a decreasing function of “proximity” to the “canonical immigrant”—defined here as first‐generation immigrants who are Spanish‐language dominant. Further, we demonstrate that reported rates of victimization due to discrimination exhibit no clear pattern and are flat over time. We conclude by demonstrating that discrimination beliefs have significant implications for systemic trust, anxiety, and policy preferences.     

Buying into Myths: Free Movement of People and Immigration

The way in which free movement of people has become the central issue of the British government's renegotiation and referendum campaign on the UK's relationship with the European Union (EU) risks obfuscating at least three central issues: why immigrants are coming to the UK; what impact EU migrants are having on the UK; and what can be done to effectively regulate such inflows. It is, however, not just the eurosceptics and the British government, but also ‘in campaigners’ and other EU member states, who risk perpetuating a number of widely held misconceptions about free movement and immigration for political reasons. Buying into such myths risks undermining attempts to have a more honest and more evidence‐based debate about immigration and migrant integration.     

Immigration and the Imagined Community in Europe and the United States

Both Europe and the United States are confronting the challenges of economic and cultural integration posed by immigration. This article uses the ESS and CID surveys to compare transatlantic public opinion about immigrants and immigration. We find more tolerance for cultural diversity in the United States, but we also find that Americans, like Europeans, tend to overestimate the number of immigrants in their countries and tend to favor lower levels of immigration. The underpinnings of individual attitudes are similar in all countries and immigration attitudes are surprisingly unrelated to country-level differences in GDP, unemployment and the number and composition of the foreign born. An implication of these findings is that acceptance of higher levels of immigration, deemed by many to be an economic need, will require both more selective immigration policies and an emphasis on the cultural assimilation of newcomers.     

Revealing preferences: Does deliberation increase ideological awareness among the less well educated?

Research suggests that the rightist discourse on immigration appeals to left‐leaning citizens with lower levels of education. The opposite is, however, not true for right‐wing voters with lower educational levels, and this asymmetry leaves left‐wing parties at a disadvantage compared with the right on immigration and integration issues. Deliberative theory promises that discussion, information and reflection can promote a more balanced political discussion and a more enlightened citizen. This article assesses the extent to which deliberative polling increases the ideological awareness of citizens with lower educational levels. More specifically, it gauges the extent to which especially less well educated left‐wing voters – those whose attitudes research finds to be particularly out of tune with their ideological predispositions regarding immigration and integration – adjust their attitudes as a consequence of deliberate exposure to informational input and the presentation of two‐sided arguments. Use is made of unique data generated during the first European‐wide deliberative polling project, ‘EuroPolis’, held in 2009. The results indicate that less well educated left‐wing voters indeed have slightly more negative attitudes towards immigrants than leftist voters with secondary or post‐secondary educational levels. Turning to the micro‐mechanisms of attitude change in a deliberative setting, the analyses show that both levels of education and ideological predispositions play a role in the extent to which participants of the deliberative poll adjust their attitudes. In three out of four models, evidence is found that less well educated left‐leaning citizens are indeed most likely to adjust their attitudes on immigration and integration after being presented with a more balanced discussion of the topic.     

Tightened Immigration Policies and the Self‐Employment Dynamics of Mexican Immigrants

As the U.S. government has intensified its crackdown on illegal immigration in recent years, an important question to ask is how undocumented immigrants react to the stricter enforcement of immigration laws. This paper seeks to answer whether they increasingly choose self‐employment in an effort to avoid apprehension and subsequent deportation. To guard against endogeneity bias that might stem from increased enforcement in reaction to illegal immigration, the empirical analysis makes use of the September 11 terror attacks (9/11), which inadvertently triggered stricter immigration enforcement nationwide, as a natural experiment. Using a difference‐in‐differences approach and data from the Current Population Survey between 1996 and 2006, this paper examines the changes in the self‐employment choices of male and non‐citizen Mexican immigrants (a proxy for undocumented immigrants) compared to less‐educated Whites (the control group). The findings indicate that male and non‐citizen Mexican immigrants are substantially more likely (40 percent) to enter into self‐employment than less‐educated Whites after 9/11. The analysis further suggests that this finding is not driven by the 2001 recession that coincided with the terror attacks. The increased entries are mainly observed in the group that is most likely to be in the United States illegally and in those who face strong economic incentives. In addition, increased entries are not driven by increased unemployment among Mexican immigrants after the 9/11 event, but, rather, they reflect a change in the behavior of the unemployed Mexican immigrants, perhaps due to changes in perceived risks of detection and deportation.     

The effects of tougher enforcement on the job prospects of recent Latin American immigrants

Attempts to enforce immigration laws in the U.S. interior have proliferated in recent years, yet the effects of these laws on immigrants are largely unknown. This paper examines whether increases in immigration‐related law enforcement since 2001 have adversely affected the labor market outcomes of low‐education male immigrants from Latin America, a group that comprises the bulk of undocumented workers in the U.S. The crackdown on the use of fraudulent Social Security numbers, increased requirements for government‐issued identification, and other changes associated with greater focus on national security likely lowered the demand for undocumented foreign‐born workers in the years following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Using Current Population Survey data and a difference‐in‐differences estimation technique, we find strong evidence of worse labor market outcomes among recent Latin American immigrants in the post‐9/11 period relative to natives and prior Latin American immigrants. The results indicate a decline in employment, hours worked, and earnings among recent male Latin American immigrants relative to similarly low‐skilled black and Hispanic natives and vis‐à‐vis Latin American immigrants who have been in the U.S. longer. Our findings are consistent with firms increasingly substituting legal workers for undocumented labor in the years following 9/11. © 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

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.     

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.     

The Many Facets of Effective Immigration Reform

The United States needs a new immigration policy that is based less on wishful thinking and more on realism. Spending vast sums of money trying to enforce arbitrary numerical limits on immigration that bear no relationship to economic reality is a fool’s errand. We need flexible limits on immigration that rise and fall with U.S. labor demand, coupled with strict enforcement of tough wage and labor laws that protect all workers, regardless of where they were born. We need to respect the natural human desire for family reunification, while recognizing that even family-based immigrants are unlikely to come here if jobs are not available. And we need to create a pathway to legal status for unauthorized immigrants who are already here so that they can no longer be exploited by unscrupulous employers who hang the threat of deportation over their heads.     

The Majority‐Minority Divide in Attitudes toward Internal Migration: Evidence from Mumbai

Rapid urbanization is among the major processes affecting the developing world. The influx of migrants to cities frequently provokes antagonism on the part of long‐term residents, manifested in labor market discrimination, political nativism, and violence. We implemented a novel, face‐to‐face survey experiment on a representative sample of Mumbai's population to elucidate the causes of anti‐migrant hostility. Our findings point to the centrality of material self‐interest in the formation of native attitudes. Dominant group members fail to heed migrants' ethnic attributes, yet for minority group respondents, considerations of ethnicity and economic threat crosscut. We introduce a new political mechanism to explain this divergence. Minority communities facing persistent discrimination view in‐migration by coethnics as a means of enlarging their demographic and electoral base, thereby achieving “safety in numbers.” Our article sheds light on the drivers of preferences over internal migration. It also contributes insights to the international immigration literature and to policy debates over urban expansion.     

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.     

Acculturating Contexts and Anglo Opposition to Immigration in the United States

This article explores the impact of novel change in the ethnic composition of Americans’ local context on their attitudes toward immigrants and immigration policy preferences. Adapting the “defended‐neighborhoods hypothesis” regarding residential integration and black‐white interracial relations to the context of immigration and intercultural relations, this article advances the acculturating‐contexts hypothesis. This hypothesis argues that a large influx of an immigrant group will activate threat among white citizens when it occurs in local areas where the immigrant group had largely been absent. This theoretical argument is explored within the context of Hispanic immigration and tested using national survey and census data. This article demonstrates that over‐time growth in local Hispanic populations triggers threat and opposition to immigration among whites residing in contexts with few initial Hispanics but reduces threat and opposition to immigration among whites residing in contexts with large preexisting Hispanic populations.     

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.     

Who's Welcome and Who's Not? Opposition towards Immigration in the Nordic Countries, 2002–2014

This article demonstrates the analytical advantages of studying not only the degree to which people oppose immigration in a country, but also the character of their opposition. Using Latent Class Analysis and data from the European Social Survey, Nordic patterns and trends are examined with the aim of identifying different kinds of immigration attitudes and how they develop in different national contexts. The Nordic countries are interesting to compare as, while they are similar in many respects, they also diverge significantly from each other in areas theoretically considered important to the formation of attitudes towards immigration. Studying the character of immigration opposition reveals five different types of immigration attitudes. These are differently distributed between the Nordic countries as well as over time, and include nativist opposition (opposition only towards immigrants of ethnic/racial groups other than that of the majority population) and economic opposition (opposition that entails a separation between immigrants considered to be an economic resource and an economic burden). By demonstrating how immigration opposition in the Nordic countries varies not only in degree but also in character, the article contributes to a deeper understanding of the nature of immigration opposition as well as of how different attitudinal profiles evolve under different contextual circumstances.     

‘Strangers in their own Country’: Epideictic Rhetoric and Communal Definition in Enoch Powell's ‘Rivers of Blood’ Speech

This article treats Enoch Powell's ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech as an example of the epideictic rhetoric of blame and exclusion. Drawing on a framework proposed by Celeste Michelle Condit, the analysis explores the functions of the address for the speaker and for the audience. Of particular concern are Powell's self‐presentation as a statesman and prophet; his account of the impact and consequences of unrestricted immigration; and his portrayal of a community where ordinary, decent English people were being displaced and victimised by Commonwealth immigrants—a process in which he claimed the authorities were complicit. For the audience, the speech gave public expression to their concerns about immigration, though Powell's predictions of a dystopian future also aroused sentiments of anger and foreboding. Despite the controversy that ensued, the impact of ‘Rivers of Blood’ was far‐reaching, and its influence is still apparent in contemporary debates over immigration.