Immigration, Integration, and Naturalisation: New Immigrants, Policy Decisions, and Citizens’ Responses

While it is commonly argued and shown that immigration is one of the most divisive issues in Western Europe and that people have strong opinions either in favour or against immigration, the aim of this project was to investigate whether preferences and commitment to immigra-tion policy are more nuanced than often assumed. We went beyond previous studies that ex-amine general attitudes towards immigration policy and, based on a series of survey experi-ments in Germany and to some extent in the UK and the US, explored the extent to which peo-ple's attitudes vary in the interrelated areas of immigration, integration, and naturalisation policy. Finally, we also wanted to find out to what extent the commitment of immigration sup-porters and opponents differs.

Based on the assumption that immigration is a complex issue and involves many specific poli-cy choices, we first examined whether individuals’ attitudes towards a range of immigration policy criteria are consistently restrictive or permissive. Our results suggest that attitudes to-wards immigration, integration, and naturalization policies are not uniformly open or closed. Overall, the public tends to be open on some aspects of immigration policy and closed on oth-ers. Moreover, population groups that are either “pro” or “anti” immigration in general have the same preferences for an open or closed stance on certain immigration policies.

In a second step, we distinguished between three dimensions of immigration policy. Most studies are concerned with the number of people who are admitted to the country. However, immigration policy must also address who is admitted to the country and what rights they may have. We found that attitudes towards immigration policy depend on the criteria for entry and the migrant rights. Respondents who are generally against immigration are willing to compro-mise and allow more immigration if the admission criteria become more selective. Respond-ents who are in favour of immigration are willing to compromise and accept less immigration if rights become more generous.

In a third step, we went beyond most studies, which have so far focussed on attitudes, and ex-amined how committed people’s behaviours are when it comes to immigration issues. A key finding of our study is that people with positive attitudes towards immigration are more civi-cally engaged in supporting immigration. However, we also find that people with anti-immigration attitudes are more likely to support politicians based on their immigration pro-posals. In addition, people with anti-immigrant attitudes are more likely to support politicians who agree with them on immigration but violate democratic norms. These differences in elec-toral prioritisation can largely be explained by ideological extremes.

Our findings have implications for understanding differences of opinion on immigration and for policy debates in general. The study promotes a more detailed approach to the study of immi-gration preferences. In doing so, we show how future studies can refine expectations about when policy preferences are more permissive or restrictive and how policy compromises can be achieved.