From Individual Attitudes towards Migrants to Migration Policy Outcomes: Theory and Evidence

Giovanni Facchini and Anna Maria Mayda

No 3512, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In democratic societies individual attitudes of voters represent the foundations of policy making. We start by analyzing patterns in public opinion on migration and find that, across countries of different income levels, only a small minority of voters favour more open migration policies. Next we investigate the determinants of voters' preferences towards immigration from a theoretical and empirical point of view. Our analysis supports the role played by economic channels (labour market, welfare state, efficiency gains) using both the 1995 and 2003 rounds of the ISSP survey. The second part of the paper examines how attitudes translate into a migration policy outcome. We consider two alternative political-economy frameworks: the median voter and the interest groups model. On the one hand, the restrictive policies in place across destination countries and the very low fractions of voters favouring immigration are consistent with the median voter framework. At the same time, given the extent of individual-level opposition to immigration that appears in the data, it is somewhat puzzling, in a median-voter perspective, that migration flows take place at all. Interest-groups dynamics have the potential to explain this puzzle. We find evidence from regression analysis supporting both political-economy frameworks.

Keywords: immigration; median voter; interest groups; political economy; immigration policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2008-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-mig and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (134)

Published - published in: Economic Policy, No. 56, October 2008, 651 - 713

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp3512.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: From individual attitudes towards migrants to migration policy outcomes: Theory and evidence (2008)
Working Paper: From individual attitudes towards migrants to migration policy outcomes: Theory and evidence (2008)
Working Paper: From Individual Attitudes towards Migrants to Migration Policy Outcomes. Theory and Evidence (2008)
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:dp3512

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 ().