Migration and Public Opinion

This chapter provides an overview of the different motivations underlying individuals’ anti-immigrant attitudes. It lays out three types of explanations for immigrant exclusion—the economic threat narrative, the cultural threat narrative, and the physical threat narrative—and surveys the empirical evidence supporting each argument. It shows that the cultural threat narrative, which explains immigrant exclusion as a response to a perceived threat to one’s cultural values and norms, is a powerful determinant of anti-immigrant attitudes. It then highlights the important limitations of the research on this topic, including its over-emphasis on migration in rich democracies.