Immigration Policies and Political Support. Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Germany

Few studies examine how immigration policies affect citizens’ political support orientations. Existing studies on this topic mostly use abstract policy indices to test effects of immigration policies on political support but these studies may be struck with unobservable variable bias. We test the validity of the link between immigration policies and political support by conducting a unique survey experiment in which we prime respondents’ political support with real specific immigration laws regulating labor migration and asylum that were adopted in Germany between 2012 and 2015. The results of our analyses validate the link between immigration policies and political support. We also test how immigration policies affect the association of various social groups with political support. We find that immigration policies affect the association of social groups that are in favor or against immigration with political support differently. Based on our results we make two arguments: First, if governments want to restrict immigration in order to increase political support of those opposed to immigration they face a tradeoff, as restrictive policies also decrease political support of social groups that support immigration. Second, our results suggest that in order to increase political support among those opposed to immigration the adoption of skill-selective immigration policies may be equally efficient as merely containing immigration.