Natives’ attitudes and immigration flows to Europe

Abstract

This paper analyses the extent to which natives’ anti-immigration attitudes affect migration flows to EU countries. Using bilateral panel data on migration inflows to the EU between 2000–2019, we examine how cross-country and temporal variation in natives’ anti-immigrant attitudes shapes subsequent migration from both EU and non-EU origins. To address potential reverse causality between attitudes and immigration, we employ an instrumental-variable strategy and account for interdependence across alternative EU destination countries. Our findings indicate that stronger antiimmigration attitudes significantly reduce migration inflows to EU destinations, with effects that are larger for intra-EU mobility than for migration from non-EU countries. Overall, the analysis demonstrates that public attitudes, which are often overlooked in the migration literature, play a substantial role in shaping migration patterns. More
broadly, the findings underscore that negative public attitudes towards immigration can materially constrain the effectiveness of policies designed to attract skills and talent.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Valentina Di Iasio: orcid.org/0000-0002-9775-8306

ORCID for Jackie Wahba: orcid.org/0000-0002-0002-3443

Catalogue record

Export record

Altmetrics