Birth Cohort Differences in Attitudes to Immigration in European Democracies

Immigration – or public responses to it – arguably presents one of the biggest challenges to modern democracies, prompting the rise of high levels of public division in most democracies between those favoring a more open, tolerant approach and those preferring more restrictive policies on immigration and in the treatment of migrants. Existing research on attitudes to immigration over relatively short time periods suggests that – at least in some countries – younger generations, or birth cohorts, appear to be significantly more positive about immigrants and immigration than older cohorts. One difficulty in establishing whether differences in birth cohorts persist or not is the historic reliance on public opinion surveys that repeat the same items over time. This paper builds on advances in the development of macro-public opinion indicators, which combine fragmented survey items – questions that have been asked in different ways across different cross-national survey programs. We create macro-public opinion indicators of immigration attitudes across birth cohorts between 1988-2024 in 30 European democracies and discuss differences in cohorts and what the implications of these are likely to be for immigration attitudes in the future (in light of generational replacement). The paper also examines some of the potential predictors of cohort differences in immigration attitudes. For instance, older birth cohorts were less likely to be socialized during high levels of immigrant-origin diversity, and increasing migration levels over-time are expected to create a stronger sense of threat and push these cohorts toward more negative perceptions of migration; for younger birth cohorts, who (in many countries) were likely to have been socialized during a high level of pre-existing immigrant-origin diversity and to have had greater face-to-face and mediated contact with immigrant-origin minorities (e.g., in sports and the media), fluctuations in immigration levels are expected to have little impact since migrants themselves are likely to be perceived as less threatening than for older birth cohorts. The paper also examines the potential impact of state multiculturalism policies – e.g., constitutional, legislative or parliamentary affirmation of multiculturalism, adoption of multiculturalism in school curriculum. Some research suggests a potentially positive effect of government adoption of multicultural policies that signals positive affirmation of multiculturalism. Other research suggests the possibility of a public backlash against these policies. We suggest that public reactions to government adoption of these policies may vary significantly by birth cohort, with younger cohorts in many countries being more open to these policies, and the adoption of them having a long-term positive impact on those who are ‘coming of age’ politically (approximately 15-20 years old) at the time the policies are adopted. Our cohort-level measures of attitudes to immigration will allow us to analyze this relationship – as well as the potentially differential impact of contemporaneous fluctuations in immigration levels (period effects) – across a 37-year timespan and up to 30 European countries. The paper also examines the potential impact of economic conditions and far-right mobilization during early-years socialization, as well as the potential contemporaneous impact of these (period effects).