I keep getting questions from folks asking whether I’ve become a reactionary conservative. Well, here is one of my more liberal takes for you, if you wish. I originally published this research note in 2024 for the European University Institute’s Ethics of Migration Policy Dilemmas project, in response to Zsolt Kapelner’s article (which he later responded to). My apologies for a bit of the extra academic language here.
Germany’s latest state elections are bringing yet another first-place finish for Alternative for Germany (AfD), this time in Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania. The debate keeps returning to a point I recently made: people vote for anti-immigration parties because they don’t like immigration. I still think that is a good place to start. But it doesn’t follow that mainstream parties should oppose immigration in general, or that admitting more immigrants necessarily puts democracy at risk.
It is true, though, that politicians who favor immigration have reasons to worry about the electoral consequences of letting more people in. They can believe in freer immigration and still fear that, by pursuing it, they would help bring their anti-immigration opponents to power (which is presumably something their pro-immigration voters would also want to avoid). If these opponents are also willing to undermine democracy, the case for restricting immigration becomes much more appealing even to people who otherwise find such restrictions objectionable. They may see it as a necessary compromise to preserve the institutions that allow them to pursue a more just immigration policy in the future.
Probably the best conceptualization of this “democratic dilemma” that I know comes from the philosopher Zsolt Kapelner. He generally favors immigration justice, but allows that restrictions might be justified in exceptional cases if they help avert a democratic threat. His question is what governments should do when their obligations to would-be immigrants conflict with their obligation to protect democracy. I agree that empirical research alone cannot settle every such choice.
But the evidence can tell us how often we should expect that conflict. While counterproductive backlash to freer immigration is possible, the risk is limited to particular types of immigration and particular policies. The backlash argument is thus not a good justification for most existing immigration restrictions, and it should not be used to argue against programmatic1 pro-immigration reforms that demonstrably benefit citizens in receiving countries.
Whose backlash to what, when, and why?
Some commentators use the term “backlash” as simply another word for any unexpected political disagreement. Kapelner defines backlash more narrowly, focusing on support for anti-democratic politics in response to immigration people perceive as excessive or otherwise undesirable. But “backlash” is also not a synonym for any adverse political reaction to change among some people. As many authors including myself emphasize, for the concept to be fruitful, it must refer to a particularly strong and sustained adverse reaction among large swaths of the public to political advancements that may be counterproductive to these very advancements. Since the idea of backlash necessarily implies uncertainty and a counterfactual argument about what would have happened to the cause and related behaviors without a particular advancement, reasonable observers can disagree regarding whether the backlash has actually occurred.
What constitutes pro-immigration advancements that voters lash back against? The backlash argument is interesting because people can adversely react to various advancements, from increasing immigrant presence and ethnic diversity to specific immigrant behaviors, pro-immigration rhetoric, and policies. Scholars have primarily conceptualized immigration backlash as an adverse voter response to the rising physical presence of immigrants or “anti-immigrant backlash”, as Kapelner puts it. However, focusing solely on immigration-induced demographic change may miss a significant part of the issue, as immigrant presence is neither necessary nor sufficient for voter backlash.2 While rapid immigration flows may increase the salience of immigration and the likelihood of anti-immigration voting, they can only account for a small portion of the variation in these outcomes. Moreover, evidence regarding immigrant presence is not very helpful for policymakers, as migration flows have multiple complex causes beyond migration policy. Therefore, focusing on how voters react to immigration policy changes regarding would-be immigrants (or “anti-immigration backlash”) is more analytically fruitful, especially when considering how policymakers should incorporate these public responses into their decision-making.
There are also numerous ways in which pro-immigration advancements can be counterproductive, from increasing public opposition to pro-immigration policies and immigrant rights to contributing to populist radical right voting and democratic backsliding. While many empirical immigration scholars, including myself, have primarily focused on the immediate signs of anti-immigration backlash, such as changes in attitudes toward immigration, Kapelner, like many other generalists, is mainly concerned with the broader threat that immigration backlash poses to democracy. The general idea is simple—open immigration may be just, but it can undermine the democratic institutions that make immigrant-receiving countries desirable in the first place.
But anti-immigration or any other backlash is arguably most plausible when it concerns immediate behavioral causes and outcomes where the causal chain is clear: “if you advance this particular policy too forcefully now, people will oppose this policy more, making it more likely to be rescinded than if you had advanced it more slowly.” When arguing that backlash against immigration threatens democracy more generally, the causal chain becomes much more convoluted and thus less likely to hold up. After all, not every voter opposes or cares about immigration, not every politician is willing or able to use anti-immigration sentiment for their electoral benefit successfully, and not every context is susceptible to democratic backsliding.
Furthermore, since much of politics is dynamic and “thermostatic”, for every reaction of immigration opponents, there may be a counter-reaction from immigration supporters. When it comes to the more proximate outcome of immigration support, for instance, there also appears to be a reverse backlash to the rise of populist far-right parties, as James Dennison and I found. In this sense, one may even argue that Kapelner’s paper and related work are part of this ongoing pro-democratic and pro-immigration backlash to populism and backsliding among intellectuals.
How significant is the threat of anti-immigration backlash to democracy?
To his credit, Kapelner acknowledges that high-risk hypothetical scenarios of the democratic dilemma are rare. He also notes that anti-immigration parties are not always anti-democratic and that further immigration restrictions may not be sufficient to defuse democratic threats when they arise. Nonetheless, I believe it is also important to re-emphasize that immigration is just one of many policy areas that people may have strong opinions about and vote based on. Immigration is not unique compared to other issues like redistribution, trade, crime, education, and foreign policy, all areas in which people may lash back against policy advancements in a democracy-threatening way.
Still, what does the best evidence say about the relationship between immigration and democracy? In a comprehensive study of Europe, Christopher Claassen examines how people’s attitudes toward democracy have changed over several decades in relation to immigration increases. His results show that immigration does not undermine people’s trust in, satisfaction with, or support for democratic institutions.
My own (admittedly somewhat underpowered) study of reforms examined legal labor and family admission policies across 24 European countries. I compared changes in immigration policy with changes in populist voting and immigration concerns within countries. I found no relationship between either pro-immigration or anti-immigration reforms and changes in populist voting. The findings are about reforms to those legal channels, which make up a large part of immigration into rich democracies. They do not establish that every possible immigration policy is immune to backlash.
What about the impact on democratic institutions? In his 2023 book, Larry Bartels also shows that democratic backsliding is not a grassroots process but rather a top-down one. In countries where democracies have recently eroded, such as Hungary and Poland, this erosion was engineered by politicians without any mandate from voters, whether related to immigration issues or not. Overall, while inferring causality or the absence thereof is always tricky, these recent empirical studies indicate that countries that liberalize and have consistently liberalized their immigration policies are not the ones experiencing threats to democracy.
What immigration policies do voters lash back against? Can some policies legitimize migration?
Regardless of whether we focus on what happens to immigration or democracy more generally, it is important to be clear about what people lash back against when it comes to immigration. Curiously, as Kapelner notes, it is not about all immigration: “[w]hen wealthy Scandinavians migrate between Norway and Sweden, no tension between immigration and democracy seems to arise.” Similarly, Ryan Pevnick acknowledges that “the evidence of backlash does not appear to extend to programs that prioritize highly skilled migrants.”
This is all good, but I would argue that Kapelner, Pevnick, and most of us probably have it backwards. Namely, we don’t appreciate enough the facts that “immigration” is not just one thing and that some migration is already popular. In fact, to the extent that anti-immigration backlash is possible, I would argue that it is confined to narrow types of unauthorized and mismanaged unskilled and forced immigration. Indeed, it is notable that most backlash scenarios Kapelner depicts involve involuntary migrants, whereas the role of labor or other types of regular immigration is not discussed until the end of the paper.
At the same time, according to the growing literature on immigration public opinion, most people support skilled and other selective immigration because they believe it benefits their countries. Fortunately, uncontroversial migration is much broader than just attracting the best and the brightest, and some pro-immigration policies can even further legitimize freer immigration.
In my 2025 book, In Our Interest, I show that voters generally support even very liberal pro-migration policies when these policies explicitly and straightforwardly benefit their countries. These policies, which I call “demonstrably beneficial,” can also be about filling labor shortages, reuniting families, increasing population growth, revitalizing declining regions, or even improving national security. When governments open legal pathways for foreign workers and their families through policies that demonstrably benefit their countries, voters do not lash back.
On the contrary, relaxing immigration restrictions on skilled and other economically beneficial workers can legitimize international mobility and increase public support for immigration in general. When consistently high immigration flows of workers come to be viewed as legitimate by the electorate, and voters start trusting their government on the issue, there is also more room for humanitarian immigration and other responsible policies even when they are not quite responsive to public opinion. Overall, when representative democratic governments enact programmatic pro-immigration policies that align with the preferences of their citizens, it ensures that these governments have a sufficient public mandate to lead on the issue and help the most vulnerable involuntary immigrants when a crisis hits.
In his later response, Kapelner agrees that growing immigration does not automatically produce a threat to democracy. His remaining concern is that racial and ethnic anxieties may prevent acceptance of favored migrants from extending to other groups. Those anxieties may also affect which immigration people call “mismanaged.” I agree that support for a particular immigration policy does not settle every question about asylum. But the possibility of those hard cases does not justify treating popular legal pathways as a threat to democracy.
Immigration is a contentious issue on which many reasonable people disagree. Policymakers who otherwise believe in the merits of more open immigration policies understandably fear backlash from their voters and thus tread carefully. Given the complexity of the issue, even the best-intentioned and sound reforms can backfire. It is also unlikely that there will be an ultimate policy solution that satisfies all relevant parties, even among those who are already pro-immigration.
Mainstream parties in Germany can take immigration concerns seriously while supporting reforms that let more people enter legally and deport more people who are there illegally. They need to distinguish which policies voters oppose from which policies voters would welcome. Perhaps immigration debates would be more productive if we talked about the relevance and consequences of the more specific “backlash to mismanaged migration” or “backlash to large-scale unauthorized migration” rather than “anti-immigration backlash” or “anti-immigrant backlash” in general.
By “programmatic,” I mean reforms that use transparent rules to benefit the public at large, such as opening legal pathways for workers and their families in the case of immigration.
Margalit and Solodoch examine these distinctions, as does Solodoch separately.