scholarly journals Attitudes toward Highly Skilled and Low-skilled Immigration: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

2010 ◽  
Vol 104 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENS HAINMUELLER ◽  
MICHAEL J. HISCOX
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Market Competition ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Skill Levels ◽  
Skilled Immigrants ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
Highly Skilled ◽  
Skilled Immigration

Past research has emphasized two critical economic concerns that appear to generate anti-immigrant sentiment among native citizens: concerns about labor market competition and concerns about the fiscal burden on public services. We provide direct tests of both models of attitude formation using an original survey experiment embedded in a nationwide U.S. survey. The labor market competition model predicts that natives will be most opposed to immigrants who have skill levels similar to their own. We find instead that both low-skilled and highly skilled natives strongly prefer highly skilled immigrants over low-skilled immigrants, and this preference is not decreasing in natives' skill levels. The fiscal burden model anticipates that rich natives oppose low-skilled immigration more than poor natives, and that this gap is larger in states with greater fiscal exposure (in terms of immigrant access to public services). We find instead that rich and poor natives are equally opposed to low-skilled immigration in general. In states with high fiscal exposure, poor (rich) natives are more (less) opposed to low-skilled immigration than they are elsewhere. This indicates that concerns among poor natives about constraints on welfare benefits as a result of immigration are more relevant than concerns among the rich about increased taxes. Overall the results suggest that economic self-interest, at least as currently theorized, does not explain voter attitudes toward immigration. The results are consistent with alternative arguments emphasizing noneconomic concerns associated with ethnocentrism or sociotropic considerations about how the local economy as a whole may be affected by immigration.

scholarly journals Attitudes toward Highly Skilled and Low-skilled Immigration: Evidence from a Survey Experiment—Erratum

2010 ◽  
Vol 104 (3) ◽  
pp. 624-624 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENS HAINMUELLER ◽  
MICHAEL J. HISCOX
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Political Science ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Science Review ◽  
Skilled Immigrants ◽  
Highly Skilled ◽  
Skilled Immigration ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
First Time

In their article in the February 2010 issue of APSR, Jens Hainmueller and Michael J. Hiscox (2010) asserted that they had “conducted a unique survey experiment that, for the first time, explicitly and separately examine[d] individuals’ attitudes toward highly skilled and low-skilled immigrants.” That claim was in error. A prior survey experiment, also published in the American Political Science Review, in February 2004, examined attitudes toward highly skilled and low-skilled immigrants in the Netherlands and assigned respondents randomly to alternative questions (Sniderman, Hagendoorn, and Prior 2004).

Welcoming Immigrants with Similar Occupational Interests: Experimental Survey Evidence from Hong Kong

2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 391-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siu-yau Lee ◽  
Lina Vyas ◽  
Kee-lee Chou
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Market Competition ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Occupational Prestige ◽  
Skill Levels ◽  
Skilled Immigrants ◽  
Occupational Interests ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Experimental Survey

Recent studies in America and Europe suggest that individual economic self-interest plays little role in explaining individual attitudes towards immigrants. A key piece of evidence for this proposition is that natives do not show particular hostility towards immigrants whose skill levels are similar to their own. We conducted an experimental survey of Hong Kong residents to examine their attitudes towards immigrants from Mainland China. We found that positive attitudes towards low-skilled immigrants were more prevalent among local labourers – whose job security would presumably be under greater threat from them – than among executives and professionals. Similarly, the premium attached to highly skilled immigrants increases significantly with locals’ occupational prestige, suggesting that immigrants are more likely to find support among natives who share similar occupational interests. Our results remain robust even after controlling for a range of potential explanatory variables. We conclude with a critical discussion of the use of skill levels to estimate the occupational interests of natives and assess the value of relying on the conventional labour market competition model to generate hypotheses about the role of economic self-interest in shaping immigration preferences.

scholarly journals Revisiting the labor market competition hypothesis in a comparative perspective: Does retirement affect opinion about immigration?

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 205316801878450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Jeannet
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Market Competition ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Important Change ◽  
Labor Market Participation ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Competition Hypothesis ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Cross National

Labor market competition is a leading explanation for defensive attitudes towards immigration but empirical support for this hypothesis is widely debated. This paper re-evaluates its explanatory power by investigating the relationship between labor market retirement and attitudes towards immigration in 14 European countries. The empirical results, based on an instrumental variable strategy to deal with potential endogeneity, find that although retirement is an important change in a person’s labor market participation, it does not generally shift opinions. As a plausible explanation for this, I use a cross-national survey experiment to demonstrate that individuals who are retired retain socio-tropic orientations towards immigration, which, I argue, likely override their ego-tropic orientations. The combined evidence indicates that the labor market competition hypothesis may not be suitable as a comprehensive explanation for public opinion about immigration.

Natives’ skills and attitudes towards immigrants: evidence from 20 OECD countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 457-471
Author(s):  
Seong Hee Kim
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Market Competition ◽  
Oecd Countries ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Attitudes Toward Immigrants ◽  
Skilled Immigrants ◽  
Age Cohorts ◽  
Data Limitations ◽  
Age Cohort

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine whether natives’ attitudes toward immigration is associated with an influx of high- and low-skilled immigrants. The current research focuses on selected 20 OECD countries as destination countries. Design/methodology/approach A pseudo-panel based on age cohort is constructed to control for the potential unobservable individual characteristics. The random effects and within estimators (where applicable) are applied in the panel-data setting. Findings Regression results indicate that natives’ attitudes depend on their labor market exposure and skill type. Low-skill immigrant inflows are negatively associated with natives’ attitudes, but the magnitude is reduced proportionally to their share of the high skilled. The association between immigrant flows and attitudes is particularly strong for the prime-age cohorts, which can be explained by the labor market competition mechanism. Research limitations/implications Given the data limitations, not all destination countries could be analyzed but only selected OECD countries. However, this situation has resulted in the sample destination countries sharing similar characteristics with advanced economies. Originality/value Although the majority of previous studies are based on survey questions on attitudes toward immigrants with respective skill type, the current study focuses on the effects of the actual immigration flows. Natives’ attitudes respond sensitively to the actual changes in the number of migrants. The selection of OECD countries makes the characteristics of the destination countries substantially homogeneous.

scholarly journals Skilled Migrants in the Swedish Labour Market: An Analysis of Employment, Income and Occupational Status

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 3428
Author(s):  
Nahikari Irastorza ◽  
Pieter Bevelander
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Occupational Status ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Skilled Immigrants ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
Highly Skilled Migrants ◽  
Highly Skilled ◽  
Integration Of Immigrants ◽  
Employment Rates

In a globalised world with an increasing division of labour, the competition for highly skilled individuals—regardless of their origin—is growing, as is the value of such individuals for national economies. Yet the majority of studies analysing the economic integration of immigrants shows that those who are highly skilled also have substantial hurdles to overcome: their employment rates and salaries are lower and they face a higher education-to-occupation mismatch compared to highly skilled natives. This paper contributes to the paucity of studies on the employment patterns of highly skilled immigrants to Sweden by providing an overview of the socio-demographic characteristics, labour-market participation and occupational mobility of highly educated migrants in Sweden. Based on a statistical analysis of register data, we compare their employment rates, salaries and occupational skill level and mobility to those of immigrants with lower education and with natives. The descriptive analysis of the data shows that, while highly skilled immigrants perform better than those with a lower educational level, they never catch up with their native counterparts. Our regression analyses confirm these patterns for highly skilled migrants. Furthermore, we find that reasons for migration matter for highly skilled migrants’ employment outcomes, with labour migrants having better employment rates, income and qualification-matched employment than family reunion migrants and refugees.

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