To Europe or Not to Europe? Migration and Public Support for Joining the European Union in the Western Balkans

Artjoms Ivlevs () and Roswitha M. King ()
Additional contact information
Roswitha M. King: Østfold University College

No 12254, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: For decades, countries aspiring to join the European Union (EU) have been linked to it through migration. Yet little is known about how migration affects individual support for joining the EU in prospective member states. We explore the relationship between migration and support for EU accession in the Western Balkans. Using data from the Gallup Balkan Monitor survey, we find that prospective and return migrants, as well as people with relatives abroad, are more likely to vote favourably in a hypothetical EU referendum. At the same time, only people with relatives abroad are more likely to consider EU membership a good thing. Our results suggest that migration affects attitudes toward joining the EU principally through instrumental/utilitarian motives, with channels related to information and cosmopolitanism playing only a minor role. Overall, our study suggests that migration fosters support for joining a supranational organization in the migrants' countries of origin, which, in turn, is likely to affect political and institutional development of these countries.

Keywords: migration; return migration; European Union; european integration; Western Balkans (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 F24 J61 O52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 53 pages
Date: 2019-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int, nep-mig, nep-pol and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: International Migration Review, 2020, 54(2), 559–584

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp12254.pdf (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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12254

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().