Towards a typology of European migration attitudes across time and space: a person-centred approach

Abstract

ABSTRACT Citizens’ attitudes towards migration have received ample scholarly and public attention in recent years. While there is a growing consensus on what is driving such migration attitudes, we know little about the heterogeneity of these attitudes. Several scholars have used and operationalised terms such as ‘migration mood’, ‘policy preferences’, or ‘anti-foreigner sentiment’ interchangeably, while others have argued that citizens have distinct preferences, depending on the type of immigrant, and on what policies, or consequences of migration are studied. We shed new light on this debate, by suggesting a person-centred approach. We investigate if a typology of attitudes towards migrants and migration at the individual and country level is present, by applying multilevel latent class analysis to European Social Survey data (2002–2020). We uncover three distinct profiles of migration preferences at the individual level, and three specific country level clusters. Altogether, Europeans make a distinction between policy preferences, and their threat perceptions of out-groups, though most Europeans are either generally in favour or against immigration. Further, we demonstrate that there has been a shift in attitudinal profiles at the individual and at the country level: the group of Europeans that is generally positive about migration has grown in size.