Any room at the inn? The impact of religious elite discourse on immigration attitudes in the United Kingdom

Abstract

To date, scholarship has neglected the role of elite cues in shaping immigration attitudes. When included, attention has been limited to political elites and parties. Yet, other societal actors have the potential to shape attitudes. This article employs mixed methods to analyse the discourse of the Church of England and attempts to uncover whether this discourse impacts the immigration attitudes of ‘their’ audience in the United Kingdom during 2005–2015. The discourse analysis finds that non-threatening migration frames dominate. Using European Social Survey (ESS) data (Rounds 4–7), regression analysis indicates that greater exposure to elite cues, via attendance at religious services, is consistently related to more positive immigration attitudes. Thus, for those most exposed, elite cues may be acting as a partial bulwark against the ubiquitous security-threat discourse of political elites. Overall, findings imply that despite their previous neglect, religious elite actors have the capacity to shape immigration attitudes and therefore de/construct issues of security.