Racial and economic factors in attitudes to immigration

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Racial and economic factors in attitudes to immigration

Dustmann, C.; Preston, I.; (2007) Racial and economic factors in attitudes to immigration. The B E Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy , 7 (1) 10.2202/1935-1682.1655. Green open access

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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.

Type:	Article
Title:	Racial and economic factors in attitudes to immigration
Open access status:	An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI:	10.2202/1935-1682.1655
Publisher version:	http://dx.doi.org/10.2202/1935-1682.1655
Language:	English
Additional information:	© The Berkeley Electronic Press 2007
UCL classification:	UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Economics
URI:	https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/16433