The Determinants of Anti-Immigrant Attitudes in Europe: The Impact of Existing Immigrant Populations and National Political Parties

Abstract

Attitudes towards immigrants are determined by both interests (immigrants are taking my job) and values (immigrants are taking my country). While these individual attributes (e.g., education, occupation, and national attachment) are a useful first step in predicting citizens’ anti-immigrant attitudes, it is also important to control for the national context. Domestic factors will alter how individual characteristics are translated into attitudes, and in the current analysis, we focus on two groups of contextual factors. The first is the immigrant population while the second focuses on the policy position of the political parties within a country. Using data from the Eurobarometer (fall 2003) to measure individual attributes and attitudes, Eurostat for immigrant populations and Benoit and Laver’s (2006) data set on party positions, we find, holding all individual-level variables constant, citizens residing in countries with larger immigrant populations and a national political discourse that is more negative with respect to immigration will express stronger anti-immigrant attitudes.

Keywords: Anti-Immigrant attitudes, European Union, Party positions