Immigration attitudes among Western and Eastern European MPs: social identity, economic aspects and political ideology

Abstract

This article calls for greater attention to immigration attitudes of members of national parliaments (MPs) who absent harmonized immigration policy at the EU level remain the chief decision-makers and are thus responsible for swift government reaction to large influx of immigrants as witnessed in summer 2015 and spring 2020. Against this background, attitudes of MPs toward non-EU immigrants can be highly informative for understanding the foundation and direction of future immigration policy reforms. Although knowledge of MPs immigration attitudes is seemingly important, studies interested in this topic remain scarce. To test the relative importance of identity and economic aspects of MPs' immigration attitudes, this study adopts few well-established theoretical approaches from citizen-level research. Our data come from an MP survey that was administered in 11 Western and Eastern European countries in late 2014 as part of the European National Elites and the Crisis project. Our results suggest that social identity (religiosity) along with political ideology rather than economic concerns drive MPs' immigration attitudes. In addition, we find that in Eastern Europe immigration is only a light force behind political competition unlike in Western Europe, while economic left in Eastern Europe is more anti-immigrant than in Western Europe.

Politicization of Immigration and Language Use in Political Elites: A Study of Spanish Parliamentary Speeches

“…As it has been repeatedly shown in previous research, content of immigrants' representations is dependent on political ideology (Benson, 2013;Simmons et al, 2018;Mendelsohn et al, 2021;Kocijan & Kukec, 2022). However, our results show an interaction between ideology and political position on particular frames to stereotype immigrants over the whole 20-year period considered [RQ1].…”

“…Over the past decades, immigration has become one of the most salient and controversial issues in party competition in Western Europe. There is plenty of evidence linking immigration attitudes to right-wing or left-wing ideological orientations when examining attitudes of both political elites (Alonso & Fonseca, 2011; Kocijan & Kukec, 2022) and the general public (Brooks et al, 2016). There is also some empirical evidence that migration inflows influence both political parties’ and general public's attitudes to immigration (Consterdine & Kintz, 2018; Markaki & Longhi, 2013).…”