Racial and Economic Factors in Attitudes to Immigration

Christian Dustmann and Ian P. Preston
Additional contact information
Christian Dustmann: University College London
Ian P. Preston: University College London

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2007, vol. 7, issue 1

Abstract: In this paper we distinguish between three channels that determine attitudes to further immigration: labour market concerns, welfare concerns, and racial or cultural concerns. Our analysis is based on the British Social Attitudes Survey. A unique feature of the survey is that it includes questions on attitudes towards immigration from different origin countries, with populations differing in ethnic similarity to the resident population. It also contains sets of questions relating directly to the labour market, benefit expenditure and welfare concerns, and racial and cultural prejudice. Based on this unique data source, we specify and estimate a multiple factor model that allows comparison of the relative magnitude of association of attitudes to further immigration with the three channels, as well as comparison in responses across potential immigrant groups of different origin. Our results suggest that, overall, welfare concerns play a more important role in determination of attitudes to further immigration than labour market concerns, with their relative magnitude differing across potential emigration regions and characteristics of the respondent. In addition, we find strong evidence that racial or cultural prejudice is an important component to attitudes towards immigration; however, this is restricted to immigration from countries with ethnically different populations.

Keywords: international migration; attitudes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 F22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1655&context=bejeap (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:7:y:2007:i:1:n:62

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy from Berkeley Electronic Press
Series data maintained by Avi Warner ().