Attitudes towards Immigration, Occupational Groups and Welfare Regimes: Comparative Evidence From Europe

The question of how attitudes towards immigration among voters are determined remains one of the unsettled questions in the literature on the politics of immigration.  Because immigration has potentially differing consequences for different sets of voters, depending on their position in the labour market, one view holds that attitudes towards immigration should correspond to skill-profiles or occupations among voters. Yet the data on this question seems to vary significantly from country to country.  This paper postulates that the degree to which voters in more vulnerable occupational categories feel threatened by immigration is likely to depend on welfare state and labour market features. It develops a number of hypotheses as to why we would expect more or acute differences in attitudes towards immigration between occupational groups across Europe depending on welfare state features such as the characteristics of old age pension provision, "care" regimes (for children and the elder), and levels of employment protection for those with long-term job tenure.  It tests these hypotheses using data from the last three rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS) and the OECD.