How gender shapes attitudes and concerns about immigration

Abstract

ABSTRACT Gender disparities in political attitudes and behavior are widely documented. However, when it comes to immigration policy, there is a lack of consensus in existing research: some studies indicate that women are more opposed to accommodating immigrants than men, while others suggest the contrary or find no significant gender difference. In an effort to shed light on these conflicting findings, this paper focuses on gendered differences in how individuals perceive and cultivate concerns about immigrants. We argue that gender plays a crucial role in how misconceptions about immigrants activate concerns about immigrants. To test our hypotheses, we conducted a pre-registered survey experiment in the Netherlands, in which we randomly varied participants' perceptions of the characteristics of the immigrant population. Our results offer suggestive evidence consistent with previous findings: altering immigrant perceptions did not significantly impact immigration policy preferences of either gender. However, perceiving immigrants as more in need did affect individuals' concerns about immigrants: we found that revised perceptions led men, but not women, to feel less morally obligated to accommodate immigrants.