Who deserves what and why? The driving forces behind public opinion towards immigrants’ integration

Abstract

As emphasized by the European Commission’s new Action Plan on Integration and Inclusion (2021-2027), the integration of immigrants is high on the political agenda of many destination countries and often a main concern of their native population. Against this background and given the timeliness of the topic, this panel proposes to examine public attitudes to immigrant´s economic, social, and political integration. The participation and socio-economic inclusion of people with a migrant background into the economy and other areas of society is indeed a particularly relevant topic, not least because of the large numbers of immigrants that have entered Europe during the past decade and the recent global pandemic, which has plunged the world into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Prevailing attitudes in destination societies regarding immigrants’ access to jobs and social benefits have been the subject of intense debates in the scientific literature. Yet, the unprecedented employment losses resulting from the COVID pandemic call for further investigations of natives’ income-based competition with immigrants on the labor market. Likewise, as the Coronavirus destroys jobs and worsens inequality, more and more people rely on welfare protection, which will put to the test existing theories about native workers’ attitudes towards immigrants’ access to redistribution. Surprisingly, less is known about public attitudes to immigrants’ access to citizenship and voting rights, which represent an area of weakness of current integration policies in Western countries, where with very few exceptions such as New-Zealand, Portugal, and the UK, foreign residents are mostly excluded from national suffrage. The study of attitudes towards political integration remains however an important research question given the potential consequences of granting political representation to immigrants in increasingly diverse host societies. This panel contributes to our understanding of the driving forces behind public opinion towards immigrants’ integration, including comparative works on the similarities and discrepancies in public attitudes between countries and across various integration areas.