(2025):
Irregular immigration and the reintroduction of national border controls: Evidence from Germany.
[Annual Meeting of the DVPW Section Methods of Political Science, Mannheim, 27/03/2025 - 28/03/2025].
More
Shifting Narratives: Misperceptions and Factual Information on Immigration
Project Directors
Dr. Korinna Lindemann
MZES-funded
2024 – 2027
Research question/goal:
This project investigates how factual information on immigration policies and democracy-related attitudes held by immigrants can affect political attitudes, preferences and behaviour. Existing research has focused predominantly on numerical misperceptions, such as overestimations of the share of immigrants living in a country. While corresponding interventions providing factual information increase factual knowledge, they have limited attitudinal effects. Beyond these numerical information interventions, we know far less about whether and how accurate information on other immigration-related misperceptions can influence political opinion. To address this gap, the project focuses on two understudied dimensions: misperceptions of immigration policies (rules that, for instance, govern the integration and rights of newcomers) and of the democracy-related attitudes immigrants from non-democratic regimes hold (for example support for democratic institutions). The first dimension provides institutional signals of belonging and inclusion, but also of the potential limits and barriers migrants face. By contrast, the second dimension concerns threat perceptions tied to cultural and ideological compatibility concerns. Both dimensions carry stronger normative implications than population estimates, as they transmit more direct signals of symbolic belonging by relating to institutional rules and the characteristics of immigrants. To explore these dynamics, this project conducts surveys and experimental interventions in Germany and Switzerland to investigate misperceptions on these two dimensions and explore how corresponding factual information can shape political attitudes, policy preferences, and behaviour. The project will document not only general patterns but also, for example, the role that immigrant diversity and source expertise play in how information is used for opinion formation. In addition, it provides important insights into whether the measured misperceptions really reflect confidently held beliefs, as prior research would allude to, or if survey respondents are, in fact, unsure about their answers. The findings will not only help advance the fields of migration, public opinion, and political communication but also provide important insights for policymakers into to what extent factual information can act as a catalyst for opinion formation. In sum, this project investigates a central challenge of contemporary democracies: the role of factual information in shaping public opinion in times of misinformation, polarisation, and increasingly diverse societies.
Current stage:
A funding proposal for the project has been submitted to the German Research Foundation (DFG) and is currently undergoing the DFG's multi-stage evaluation and review process.
Publications
Presentations
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(2025): Irregular immigration and the reintroduction of national border controls: Evidence from Germany. [15th annual conference of the European Political Science Association (EPSA), Madrid, 26/06/2025 - 28/06/2025]. More