Political Ideology and Individual-Level Attitudes Towards Immigration in the European Union: Evidence from the European Values Study, 2008/2009

Abstract

Using data from the 2008/2009 wave of the European Values Study, I examine the determinants – demographic, socio-economic and ideological – of individual-level attitudes towards immigrants and of preferences over variously restrictive immigration policy regimes in the European Union (EU-27). In addition to testing the predictions of factor-proportions models with new data, I perform an innovative analysis of the role of political ideology: Using principal components analysis (PCA), I decompose political ideology along three dimensions – social traditionalism, national pride and attachment to laissez-faire views. My results confirm that predictions from factor-proportions models generally hold, but there appears to be a great deal of variation in the effect of individuals' political ideology: In the pooled EU-27 sample, higher degrees of social traditionalism, national pride and, perhaps surprisingly, stronger attachment to laissez-faire views are associated with less favorable views of immigrants, and with a higher likelihood of supporting restrictions on immigration. There is, however, a great deal of heterogeneity across countries in both the direction and magnitude of these ideological components' effects.