Are the anti-immigrant public moods preventing politicians of immigrant background from being successful at the stages of selection and election to national office? We argue there are three distinct possibilities. First, in response to rising anti-immigrant sentiment among the electorate, political parties may seek to limit the numbers of CIO politicians. Specifically, this will especially affect those of the more visible origins and those from groups that are deemed more problematic. Second, we think that this relationship may be more complex and depend on political opportunity structure in each country. This chapter will argue that whether anti-immigrant sentiment leads to counter-mobilisation of immigrants into elected office depends on the electoral power given to these communities and the degree to which the anti-immigrant politics has been institutionalised in each country. We will hypothesise that anti-immigrant sentiment will create an obstacle for selection and election of immigrant-origin politicians in countries with strong anti-immigrant institutionalisation and poor access to power for CIOs, but in countries where immigrants have electoral power and the mobilisation of anti-immigrant sentiment is not institutionalised, there will not be a straight-forward relationship as immigrants themselves may be able to mobilise more electoral influence than they lose through prejudicial voting patterns from anti-immigrant voters.
