Previous research on the determinants of the immigrants’ political support for the host country found that second-generation migrants depict lower levels of positive political attitudes than first-generation migrants. Little comparative attention has been paid to the country-specific context, in which these migrants are embedded. This is surprising, because not only citizenship policies, but also migrants’ political attitudes differ substantially across European countries. I argue that liberal citizenship regimes promote an equal treatment between the majority and the migrant population, which in turn positively influences their political attitudes. Moreover, this effect is expected to be stronger for second-generation migrants, as their negative evaluation of the host society’s political system stems from their negative experience when comparing their living conditions to the ones of the majority population. The equalizing effect of liberal citizenship regimes is thus expected to counter this discrepancy. This paper provides a novel empirical assessment as it disaggregates citizenship regime conceptions in their separate components and further tests whether they mediate the effect of the generational status. Based on European Social Survey data from 24 European democracies and multilevel analyses, I found that allowing migrants to politically participate (i.e.: being eligible for elections and represented in advisory bodies) positively influences their political attitudes. Regarding the generational status, the good news is that liberal citizenship regimes weaken the negative effect of being a second-generation migrant on political attitudes by promoting their equalization and integration into the host society. These findings contribute to the study of the migrants’ political inclusion and more generally to the normative discussion about how to achieve unity despite diversity.
