Existing analyses of immigration and minority politics have adopted an overly simplistic view of an area where voters’ attitudes often betray instability and internal conflict. We argue an improved account of such politics in Europe must take into account widespread social norms sanctioning prejudiced attitudes and explicit discrimination against disliked groups. We argue that many voters are internally conflicted about immigrant-origin minorities – they harbor negative emotions and stereotypes about these groups but also want to avoid appearing or feeling prejudiced. In the first part of the paper we describe the norm, examine some of its socio-economic correlates and how it relates to some conventional measures of negative stereotypes. We show that a large part of the British public is motivated by the anti-prejudice norm. In the second part of the paper we examine the political consequences of the norm. We find, firstly, that the norm influences voters’ policy preferences more strongly when the group concerned is clearly covered by the norm—when the group consists of citizens. Secondly, we find that the norm mediates the effect of restrictionist attitudes on vote choice, steering those restrictionist voters who are motivated by the norm towards parties that are not associated with racism. Third, we find that he norm reduces support for campaigns for restrictionist minority policies when these campaigns are led by political parties with racist or ultra-nationalist pasts. However, the norm does not reduce support for such campaigns led by parties with “reputational shields” – a plausible defence against the charge that they have racist motives. The empirical evidence is from CCAP and BES surveys in 2009 and 2010 and experiments embedded in these.
