How does knowing more about migration relate to attitudes and preferences? Evidence from seven European countries

Across many political domains, understanding how being more informed relates to attitudes and preferences presents high stakes. Not only are informed electorates central to most theories of legitimate democratic functioning, but also concerns about misinformation threaten readings of what voters think and want when they base those beliefs on factually incorrect claims. We address this relationship using the issue of migration—a contentious issue for European citizens, and one in which perceptions are often misinformed. Specifically, we analyze 2018 survey data collected in seven European countries (Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, UK; N = 10,749), and use Item Response Theory (IRT) to build knowledge scales based on general and migration-specific question batteries within the survey. This allows us to distinguish between more- and less-informed respondents. We find that being more-informed about migration is generally associated with (1) more positive economic perceptions of, and preferences towards migrants, particularly in countries that had not recently experienced high inflows of asylum-seekers; (2) viewing migrants as improving national security; and yet also (3) higher levels of fear about migration regardless of prior asylum inflows—a pattern that appears to be driven by respondents being more-informed about migration specifically as opposed to politics generally. Then, we explore whether these findings can be explained by contact with asylum-seekers and migrants. Our results contribute important comparative evidence about the consequences of migration knowledge, with implications for improving public understanding of this issue as well as methodological practices relying on batteries of general and domain-specific knowledge questions.