The changing alignment of attitudes towards immigration and redistribution across Europe between 2002 and 2020

Immigration has been a highly salient issue across Europe in recent decades. An important debate among scholars centers on whether immigration is eroding support for the welfare state especially among working class and lower educated people. Whereas some argue that there is a positive correlation between support for immigration and redistribution, others highlight that holding anti-immigration attitudes alongside support for redistribution is common in some countries. However, it is unclear whether these attitudinal configurations are stable over time and across socio-economic groups. To address this puzzle, we ask: first, how has the correlation between attitudes towards immigration and income redistribution changed across European countries? Second, how do the attitudinal configurations change over time? Third, do changes in attitudinal configurations vary across occupational and educational groups? We use data from ten waves of the European Social Survey (ESS) between 2002 and 2020 for 29 countries. Our approach begins with a country-based analysis of trends in the correlation between the two attitudes. Aiming to identify shifts in this association since 2002 and the degree of country-level heterogeneity in its size, direction, and evolution. To capture potential non-linear shifts in the relationship between immigration and redistribution attitudes, we then construct combinations of attitudinal groups based on individuals' stances on the two issues and examine which groups may have driven the potential changes at the correlational level. Given our particular interest in people combining anti-immigration with pro-redistribution and those combining pro-immigration with pro-redistribution positions, we then use multi-level modelling to assess whether these groups have more strongly increased in size over the last decades compared to other attitudinal groups. Additionally, we examine whether the working class and people with higher education are driving some of these changes. Our findings revealed that attitudes towards immigration and redistribution are not as strongly correlated as previously suggested. However, we observe a trend towards a more positive correlation particularly in Northern and Western European countries. This trend is mainly driven by a growing number of people supporting both immigration and redistribution. The group holding anti-immigration and pro-redistribution attitudes has not changed significantly between 2002 and 2020 relative to the other groups. Yet, there is substantial heterogeneity in the estimated effect of time across countries. Anti-immigration combined with pro-redistribution attitudes are more likely among workers than among the other occupational groups but this association decreases over time. Further, higher educated people are more likely to combine pro-immigration with pro-redistribution attitudes and this association increases over time.