GMF - The German Marshall Fund of the United States - Strengthening Transatlantic Cooperation

The following article was published in the September issue of Migration Policy Practice. 

Since 2008, the German Marshall Fund has been conducting Transatlantic Trends: Immigration (TTI), a public opinion survey focused on immigration and integration attitudes and policy preferences on both sides of the Atlantic. Supported by the Barrow Cadbury Trust, the Compagnia di San Paolo, and Fundación BBVA, TTI has measured opinion in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, as well as the Netherlands, Canada and Poland.

The TTI survey is the richest and most comprehensive measure of transatlantic public opinion on immigration and integration issues, and it serves as a valuable tool for policymakers working on many policy areas related to diversity and migration. Learning more about the views of the public can assist policymakers in strategizing about how to approach and frame policy change for their constituents, as well as provide them with added perspective by learning about similar dynamics and attitudes in other countries. This article will discuss the key findings of the most recent TTI collected in the fall of 2011, highlighting relevant lessons for policymakers and reflecting on the long-term takeaways from the survey now evident after four years of data collection.

2011 Transatlantic Trends: Key Findings

In 2011, immigration and integration continued to be matters of intense policy discussion in both the United States and Europe. One of the most important developments in international affairs, the so-called Arab Spring, had a direct impact on immigration dynamics and movements mostly within, but also out of, North Africa and the Middle East. This led to intense policy discussions about burden-sharing and border security. Disagreements within Europe about the responsibility for dealing with migrants in the context of continuing economic crisis resulted in further avid debates about the free movement area. On the other side of the Atlantic, Americans debated the appropriate role of states and localities in immigration enforcement, as well as the possibilities of streamlining deportation procedures and providing legalization to illegal immigrants.

Views on all of these pressing policy issues were captured by the TTI survey this year, which included special sections on high-skilled immigration and the impact of the Arab Spring, in addition to capturing trend data on the public’s general stances on immigration and immigrants. The survey also asked about a range of specific policy decisions and tradeoffs, such as appropriate measures regarding undocumented migration, forced migration, temporary migration schemes and others.

Some notable key findings of TTI 2011 include:

GENERAL PERCEPTIONS

· Stability in public opinion. Basic public stances on immigration have surprisingly not changed notably in the last year, even in Europe where the perceived threat of movement resulting from the Arab Spring was a controversial political issue and where populist parties rose in popularity.

GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE

· Views of government performance are poor. There was high disapproval of government management of immigration, with 68 percent of European and 73 percent of American respondents believing that their governments are doing a “poor” or “very poor” job. The rate of disapproval increased between 2010 and 2011 in all countries except the United States and Germany.

THE ARAB SPRING AND BURDEN-SHARING

· Dealing with the Arab Spring. Europeans in general were very open to helping countries in North Africa and the Middle East in the aftermath of the Arab Spring with either trade (84% in support) or development aid (79%), though they were wary of opening their labor markets to migrants from the region (47%) and preferred that migrants who were admitted stayed only temporarily.

· Support for burden-sharing. Eighty percent of European respondents supported European burden-sharing to cope with the migrant flows coming from the region.

· Growing support for a European Union authority. Support for a European Union role in setting national-level immigration numbers increased to 42 percent this year, though the Southern European countries still showed far greater interest than other parts of Europe.

ECONOMIC CONCERNS

· Different views on the economic effects of immigration. A strong majority of respondents in all surveyed countries agreed that immigrants fill jobs for which there are shortages of workers. Except in the United States and the United Kingdom, publics generally did not agree that immigrants take jobs away from native workers. Publics on both sides of the Atlantic were split on the effect of immigrants on wage levels, as well as whether they produce jobs by creating new businesses.

· Preference for highly educated immigrants. Majorities everywhere (63% of American respondents and 62% of European respondents) supported increasing admissions of highly educated immigrants. On the other hand, when asked to which type of immigrant the government should give preference – a highly educated immigrant with no job offer or a lower educated immigrant with a job offer – majorities or pluralities in all countries preferred the lower-educated worker with a job offer.

INTEGRATION, CITIZENSHIP AND BELONGING

· Optimism about the state of immigrant integration. Publics on both sides of the Atlantic were optimistic about the success of immigrant integration, and even more positive about the integration of the “second generation”. Sixty-five percent of European and 74 percent of American respondents said that the children of immigrants are well or very well integrated. However, many Europeans still viewed Muslim immigrants as less well integrated than immigrants in general, particularly in Spain, where only 29 percent of respondents thought that Muslim immigrants are integrating well, compared to 62 percent of respondents regarding immigrants in general. In all countries but France, however, the children of Muslim immigrants were seen as better integrated than their parents. Fifty-five percent of European and 68 percent of American respondents agreed that the children of Muslim immigrants born in the country are well or very well integrated.

· U.S. policy debates. A majority of the U.S. public (53%) supported the provision of citizenship to all individuals born on U.S. territory regardless of parents’ immigration status. They were even more strongly supportive (65%) of the provisions of the DREAM Act, which would legalize illegal immigrant youth who enter college or the military.

Lessons for Policymakers

The collection of data over several years permits the possibility of analyzing change over time in public opinion, both within countries and more generally across the transatlantic public. Sharing the TTI results with high-level policymakers and a wide range of stakeholders over the last five years has revealed a number of notable general trends that should inform policymaking and decision-making. Understanding a clear picture of public opinion on immigration debates provides useful corrective information to policymakers on the views of their own nationals, and also provides them with valuable perspective on how their nationals compare to others in countries dealing with similar challenges and opportunities. A number of themes have emerged as the TTI project has developed and identified key trends.

a) Stability in public opinion on immigration in times of heated debate and economic crisis

Contrary to what might be commonly expected, one of the key overall insights is that public opinion on immigration and integration is quite stable over time. TTI shows that public opinion on many issues has not changed significantly from year to year, despite times of economic crisis, unstable labor markets and austerity, as well as the continuing salience of immigration policy debates in many countries and often very bold immigration-skeptic rhetoric and policies.

This stability is exemplified by the case of Germany, where the publication of a book by Thilo Sarrazin, Deutschland schafft sich ab (“Germany abolishes itself”), sparked a very heated public debate over integration in 2010 that lasted for many months. In the bestseller, the author decried the influence of immigration on Germany and criticized the non-integration of immigrants in German society. For TTI in 2010, GMF was in a fortunate situation to be able to measure public opinion in Germany twice that year: once in September during the general fieldwork, just days before the book was pre-released; and then a second time in Germany in November, after the heated public debate surrounding the publication. Dr. Claudia Diehl and Jan-Philip Steinmann of the University of Göttingen found in a TTI Focus Paper that German public opinion was not affected by the extremely public and contentious debate over Muslim integration elicited by the book. They used the 2009, 2010 and 2011 results to show that even though higher-educated Germans did temporarily show a rise in skepticism about Muslim immigrants in the aftermath of the Sarrazin debate, these changes were not permanent and did not change public opinion in the long-term.

b) The power of facts to change views and improve poor public awareness of immigration realities

TTI has shown that the public regularly overestimates the size of the immigrant population. When asked what portion of their population was born abroad, the average estimate is between 50 percent and 300 percent greater than the actual share of the population that is foreign-born. For example, in 2011, the average response among British respondents was that 31.8 percent of the population was born abroad; this contrasts with the actual 11.3 percent of the population that is foreign-born. There are also high percentages of the public that believe there are “too many” immigrants, rather than “a lot but not too many,” or “not many”. However, it was found through an experiment in the 2010 survey that those respondents who were first told how many foreign-born there actually were in the country were less likely to say there were “too many” immigrants. Among respondents in France, the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy, there was a 20 percentage point drop among those who were informed about the official population statistic. This highlights the need for greater education of the public about the actual realities of immigration demographics, as well as the possibilities for changing attitudes through greater information and education.

c) Age matters and the possibility for opinion change over time.

Another finding, analyzed in-depth in a TTI Focus Paper commissioned to Dr Robert Ford of the University of Manchester, highlights the deep polarization of the public over immigration issues. Dr. Ford finds that in the United Kingdom, more strongly than in other polled countries, the strongest dividing line is age. Older people tend to be more pessimistic and negative about immigration than their younger counterparts, who have grown up with diversity and tend to have a more open attitude.

This pattern suggests that, in several decades, public opinion trends may look very different than they do today, with younger cohorts who have grown up in diverse contexts tending to be more open to inclusive immigration and integration policies, and less skeptical about the benefits of immigration. This will require further empirical research and analysis.

d) Gap between public opinion and public discourse

Another clear insight revealed by the TTI survey is the relative openness of many in the European and North American public to inclusive immigration policies. These stances contrast with the general wisdom about the views of the public, and the extreme rhetoric that has come to categorize debates and media coverage in many countries. Far-right parties in many European countries, from the Danish People’s Party to the Front National in France, or the rising Golden Dawn in Greece, have tended to move centrist discussions about immigration further to the right. And yet the findings of TTI show that the public is often more open to immigrants than politicians suggest.

For example, the 2011 results showed that:

· Seventy-two percent of European and 82 percent of American respondents were not worried about legal immigration.

· Seventy-three percent of European and 68 percent of American respondents agreed that immigrants help to fill jobs where there are shortages of workers.

· Sixty-one percent of European and 62 percent of American respondents preferred permanent to temporary legal immigration.

· Fifty-eight percent of European and 64 percent of American respondents supported letting people enter their countries if they were coming in order to avoid poverty.

· Sixty-one percent of European respondents agreed that they should let in immigrants from North Africa to come and live temporarily in their countries.

In many ways, therefore, the public does seem quite optimistic about immigration and the benefits it can provide to national economies and societies. Expectations among policymakers that the public would prefer temporary to permanent migration, or that they would be entirely against the entrance of disadvantaged migrants, should be updated to take into account actual stated preferences and public opinion. TTI provides that valuable information. Gauging and measuring public opinion on these often heated debates, and asking the questions in measured ways that do not predispose the respondent to choose one particular response or the other, are useful initiatives that can be used to more accurately understand public sentiment on important issues of public affairs.

e) Country differences and areas for further research

In addition to some general trends and tendencies highlighted here, TTI has also highlighted key country differences that are persistent over time. In general, the public in the United Kingdom have consistently expressed the most pessimistic views towards immigration and immigrants, while Canadians (surveyed through 2010) consistently have shown the most positive views.

Many interesting country differences, such as the higher concern about native job displacement in the United States and the United Kingdom versus continental Europe, or the lower optimism about the success of Muslim immigrant integration in France and Germany as opposed to other countries surveyed, all require further analysis and in-depth research.

Although general trends across the transatlantic public are useful to note, it is also important to analyze differences between countries and regions, as well as differences by individual-level traits and demographic and political lines, such as political ideology, age, education and other factors. Further research is planned to explore these dynamics, and some of these issues have been analyzed in the TTI Focus Paper series, the first editions of which were published in mid-2012. GMF is enthusiastic for researchers around the world to use the publicly available datasets to explore many of these empirical questions.

Conclusion

Collecting an accurate and timely view of public opinion on current issues being debated and discussed in policy circles provides extremely valuable perspective and information to policymakers as they weigh options, consider strategies and seek to implement decisions about migration and integration policy.

A transatlantic view is important, as so many common challenges are being confronted in the United States, Canada and the many European countries with varying immigration-receiving experience. Relatively new receivers such as Spain and Italy, only immigrant destinations since the 1990s, can benefit from comparing their perspectives to those of more traditional receivers such as France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, as well as the traditional settler states of the United States and Canada.

Each country’s debates tend toward myopia, with the complex range of issues – border protection, admissions, citizenship, and more generally the fundamental issues of belonging, inclusion and exclusion – often being seen through strictly national lenses and caught up in country specific institutions, histories and cultures. Transatlantic Trends: Immigration provides a consistent comparative frame, truly allowing stakeholders to understand their own situation in relation to that of other countries facing similar policy debates and challenges. Both the public and policymakers benefit from opening up their perspective and viewing these issues through a more global and comparative lens.

Read the August to September 2012 edition of Migration Policy Practice here.