Agree. But what don’t they like about it? Economic costs exceed benefits? (If so aren’t there fixes?) Immigrants don’t assimilate? Immigrants DO assimulate? (Either way isn’t this a selection criterion problem?) And if a voter doesn’t like immigration how does that make them anti Ukraine?
Sure. Agreeing that opposition to immigration is a reason people vote for the AfD is just the first step. Someone worried about the costs might want a different fix from someone worried about integration. A voter can also agree with the AfD on immigration and disagree with it on Ukraine.
To repeat a bit: I don't think there is any conclusive evidence that, with less immigration, AfD would have got significantly less votes:
- Stated preferences about immigration are endogenous to attitudes towards parties (and politics more generally). In other words, it is not clear to me what comes first, discontent against mainstream parties/support for AfD, or attitudes towards immigration.
- In the counterfactual with less immigration, there might be other problems which may boost that discontent and boost support for the radical right. This has general equilibrium effects.
I wouldn't go as far as to say there is no evidence about the effect of immigration. What I am saying is that the evidence that we have so far can also be interpreted along other lines.
Thanks for this, Luis. I think we might be trying to explain different things. You’re explaining support for the far right, and I agree that draws on lots of grievances, from trade to lockdowns (as the AfD did). I’m trying to explain the anti-immigration vote. Counterfactuals are hard, but it’s inconceivable to me that the AfD or many other anti-immigration parties in the EU would be where they are without the refugee crisis or other major immigration dysfunction. Maybe other problems can explain that vote too, but my sense is it’s a stretch.
I do agree with you. If we look at my country, there's no way the Sweden Democrats would have reached 20% without the refugee crisis.
Yet, i think fundamentally Luis is right. When I looked into this, there was a surprisingly low correlation between numbers of migrants and support for anti-immigration party.
And the parties that are anti-immigration have such different backgrounds that it is just part of a general populism that takes a bit of this and that. (For example, Dansk Folkeparti was started as a libertarian party)
From my realist perspective, I would argue that migration related issues can become a factor , but usually people are mainly concerned with their economic worries. That's why we rarely find strong anti-immigration sentiments when the economy is doing great, but they suddenly arise when the economy tanks.
I guess that's an optimistic note. For me it was anyways, when I came to this realization.
But what this also means -- that perhaps few people want to consider -- is that some migrants likely worsen the economy long-term.
I haven't yet read any economic study on this. They all seem to assume that migration is a net benefit for everyone, in the long-term. But I think the fallacy lies in looking at historic migration (which often was of the “best and brightest “ type, as Teddy Roosevelt described) and the huge economic development in the last 150 years.
There's no guarantee that the US taking in 50 million Hispanics , or Europe taking in a similar number of people from the Middle East and Africa , will be a net benefit for us and our economy, looking 50 years into the future .And that's when the real problems will start.
I take your Schrödinger’s headline seriously. You’re probably right.
But people like Jaeger are trying to causally analyse why people who vote AfD or One Nation (where I am in Australia) don’t like immigrants: cultural distaste (related to but not exactly the same as), racism, worries about resource competition, distortion of the labour market, fears about an erosion of cultural familiarity and authority etc…
Not liking immigrants isn’t in my mind a category of preference. It’s a lazy way of saying I’m don’t like the effects of increased population often from places whose values or customs are anathema or at least foreign to ‘mine’.
I very much liked your analogy of people having a right to a view on climate change without having lived through a flood.
Too many Brahmin lefties (like me) tut tut people who oppose immigration fail to appreciate that people can dislike a thing even if they aren’t surrounded by it. That’s fair.
Thanks, Ananth. You're right that Jäger acknowledges that voters care about immigration and tries to explain why the issue gets so much attention. And "not liking immigrants" doesn't tell us much about what someone wants the government to do. As I said to Thomas above, agreeing that immigration itself matters to voters is just the first step.
What worries me is how often an explanation about racism or scapegoating turns into a reason to explain away the opposition itself. Some people just dislike immigration or the way it's managed. In my experience, telling them they secretly agree with you if not for neoliberalism, or that their reasons for disagreeing are nasty, rarely gets you far.
My shtick has always been to look for policies people across the spectrum can get behind. There's already quite a bit to work with, from skilled immigration and humane enforcement to things like private refugee sponsorship.
Thank you, Alexander. I agree that this seems like a naive interpretation of the data.
The author seems to rely on the assumption that only direct social contact—whether permanent or transitory—leads to social conflict. For me, this offers evidence pointing in a different direction: exposure through other channels, such as social media, is powerful enough to foster anti-immigrant preferences.
On the other hand, I think we should be careful when interpreting the correlation between education and anti-immigrant preferences. The literature usually focus on attitudes towards immigrants, but what we observe could simply be that AfD voters oppose the current migration system rather than migration itself.
Agree. But what don’t they like about it? Economic costs exceed benefits? (If so aren’t there fixes?) Immigrants don’t assimilate? Immigrants DO assimulate? (Either way isn’t this a selection criterion problem?) And if a voter doesn’t like immigration how does that make them anti Ukraine?
Sure. Agreeing that opposition to immigration is a reason people vote for the AfD is just the first step. Someone worried about the costs might want a different fix from someone worried about integration. A voter can also agree with the AfD on immigration and disagree with it on Ukraine.
I mean figuring out where exactly people disagree and which policies they might actually agree on is much of what I've been writing about here (e.g., https://www.popularbydesign.org/p/why-governments-dont-have-to-restrict).
I think I was one of those pushing for a different interpretation, along with Tibo Rutar https://lmguirola.substack.com/p/would-a-stricter-immigration-policy .
To repeat a bit: I don't think there is any conclusive evidence that, with less immigration, AfD would have got significantly less votes:
- Stated preferences about immigration are endogenous to attitudes towards parties (and politics more generally). In other words, it is not clear to me what comes first, discontent against mainstream parties/support for AfD, or attitudes towards immigration.
- In the counterfactual with less immigration, there might be other problems which may boost that discontent and boost support for the radical right. This has general equilibrium effects.
I wouldn't go as far as to say there is no evidence about the effect of immigration. What I am saying is that the evidence that we have so far can also be interpreted along other lines.
Thanks for this, Luis. I think we might be trying to explain different things. You’re explaining support for the far right, and I agree that draws on lots of grievances, from trade to lockdowns (as the AfD did). I’m trying to explain the anti-immigration vote. Counterfactuals are hard, but it’s inconceivable to me that the AfD or many other anti-immigration parties in the EU would be where they are without the refugee crisis or other major immigration dysfunction. Maybe other problems can explain that vote too, but my sense is it’s a stretch.
I do agree with you. If we look at my country, there's no way the Sweden Democrats would have reached 20% without the refugee crisis.
Yet, i think fundamentally Luis is right. When I looked into this, there was a surprisingly low correlation between numbers of migrants and support for anti-immigration party.
And the parties that are anti-immigration have such different backgrounds that it is just part of a general populism that takes a bit of this and that. (For example, Dansk Folkeparti was started as a libertarian party)
From my realist perspective, I would argue that migration related issues can become a factor , but usually people are mainly concerned with their economic worries. That's why we rarely find strong anti-immigration sentiments when the economy is doing great, but they suddenly arise when the economy tanks.
I guess that's an optimistic note. For me it was anyways, when I came to this realization.
But what this also means -- that perhaps few people want to consider -- is that some migrants likely worsen the economy long-term.
I haven't yet read any economic study on this. They all seem to assume that migration is a net benefit for everyone, in the long-term. But I think the fallacy lies in looking at historic migration (which often was of the “best and brightest “ type, as Teddy Roosevelt described) and the huge economic development in the last 150 years.
There's no guarantee that the US taking in 50 million Hispanics , or Europe taking in a similar number of people from the Middle East and Africa , will be a net benefit for us and our economy, looking 50 years into the future .And that's when the real problems will start.
I take your Schrödinger’s headline seriously. You’re probably right.
But people like Jaeger are trying to causally analyse why people who vote AfD or One Nation (where I am in Australia) don’t like immigrants: cultural distaste (related to but not exactly the same as), racism, worries about resource competition, distortion of the labour market, fears about an erosion of cultural familiarity and authority etc…
Not liking immigrants isn’t in my mind a category of preference. It’s a lazy way of saying I’m don’t like the effects of increased population often from places whose values or customs are anathema or at least foreign to ‘mine’.
I very much liked your analogy of people having a right to a view on climate change without having lived through a flood.
Too many Brahmin lefties (like me) tut tut people who oppose immigration fail to appreciate that people can dislike a thing even if they aren’t surrounded by it. That’s fair.
Thanks, Ananth. You're right that Jäger acknowledges that voters care about immigration and tries to explain why the issue gets so much attention. And "not liking immigrants" doesn't tell us much about what someone wants the government to do. As I said to Thomas above, agreeing that immigration itself matters to voters is just the first step.
What worries me is how often an explanation about racism or scapegoating turns into a reason to explain away the opposition itself. Some people just dislike immigration or the way it's managed. In my experience, telling them they secretly agree with you if not for neoliberalism, or that their reasons for disagreeing are nasty, rarely gets you far.
My shtick has always been to look for policies people across the spectrum can get behind. There's already quite a bit to work with, from skilled immigration and humane enforcement to things like private refugee sponsorship.
Thank you, Alexander. I agree that this seems like a naive interpretation of the data.
The author seems to rely on the assumption that only direct social contact—whether permanent or transitory—leads to social conflict. For me, this offers evidence pointing in a different direction: exposure through other channels, such as social media, is powerful enough to foster anti-immigrant preferences.
On the other hand, I think we should be careful when interpreting the correlation between education and anti-immigrant preferences. The literature usually focus on attitudes towards immigrants, but what we observe could simply be that AfD voters oppose the current migration system rather than migration itself.