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Many people argue that support for populist radical‐right political agents is motivated by people feeling “left behind” in globalized Western democracies. Empirical research supports this notion by showing that people who feel personally or collectively deprived are more likely to hold populist beliefs and anti‐immigration attitudes. Our aim was to further investigate the psychological link between individuals' justice concerns and their preferences for populist radical‐right political agents. We focused on stable individual differences in self‐oriented and other‐oriented justice concerns and argue that these should have opposing correlations with preferences for populist radical‐right parties. We tested our hypotheses in two national samples, one from the United States (N = 1500) and one from Germany (N = 848). Sensitivity to injustice towards oneself enhanced the likelihood of preferring Trump (United States) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) (Germany) via increased anti‐immigration attitudes and increased populist attitudes. Sensitivity to injustice towards others reduced the likelihood of preferring Trump and AfD via decreased anti‐immigration attitudes. We discuss our findings in regard to how stable individual differences in the evaluation of fairness can motivate intra‐ and interpersonal political conflicts in modern western societies and how politics and mass media can fuel these conflicts.

This article provides an overview of the literature on the relationship between terrorism and migration. It discusses whether and how (1) migration may be a cause of terrorism, (2) terrorism may influence natives' attitudes towards immigration and their electoral preferences and (3) terrorism may lead to more restrictive migration policies and how these in turn may serve as effective counter-terrorism tools. A review of the empirical literature on the migration–terrorism nexus indicates that (1) there is little evidence that more migration unconditionally leads to more terrorist activity, especially in Western countries, (2) terrorism has electoral and political (but sometimes short-lived) ramifications, for example, as terrorism promotes anti-immigrant resentment and (3) the effectiveness of stricter migration policies in deterring terrorism is rather limited, while terrorist attacks lead to more restrictive migration policies.

The sociocultural divide in Western Europe is increasingly focused on issues of national identity, namely immigration. It is commonly assumed that opponents of immigration also exhibit conservatism on other sociocultural issues. Yet recent research suggests that general social conservatism is declining in the region. Do immigration attitudes fit squarely into the sociocultural dimension? Using survey data from eleven West European countries, as well as a Dutch household panel from 2007–2019, this study finds that gender attitudes, a key sociocultural issue, are subject to change through both cohort and life cycle effects, while immigration attitudes are stable over the course of the panel and exhibit little variation across cohorts. Immigration attitudes also appear to be immune to period effects resulting from the 2015 refugee crisis. Further, those born during and after the ‘post-materialist revolution’ have weakened associations between these two attitudes, while older individuals' attitudes are strongly correlated. The combination of gender egalitarianism and anti-immigrant sentiment may become increasingly common as acceptance of the former spreads, while immigration remains a hotly contested issue.

Managing immigration is a challenge at the political, economic, and social levels. Clarifying the social psychological antecedents behind the onset of negative attitudes towards immigrants might help overcome this challenge. The present study investigates the relationships between people's experience of social exclusion, feelings of generalized interpersonal trust, and anti-immigrant attitudes across 23 European countries. We used data from the European Social Survey 8 (2016), employing a representative sample of the European population. A 1–1–1 multilevel mediation model showed that: (a) the higher the experience of social exclusion, the lower the generalized trust towards others; (b) the experience of social exclusion related positively and directly with anti-immigration attitudes; and (c) generalized interpersonal trust mediated the relationship between experienced social exclusion and anti-immigrant attitudes so that the experience of being socially excluded reduced feelings of generalized interpersonal trust that, in turn, promoted hostile attitudes towards immigrants. Taken together, these results create a platform for future research on the emergence of negative attitudes towards immigrants and factors that might facilitate the development of a climate of integration and acceptance.

Global climate change has begun to cause widespread forced migration and drivers of this phenomenon are expected to intensify in the future, which is likely to result in increased immigration to countries in the Global North such as the USA. Here, two studies examine how belief in this phenomenon could influence Americans’ opinions on climate change and immigration. A correlational pilot study demonstrated that belief in climate-immigration was associated with greater climate change concerns and policy support. It was also associated with attributing more blame to immigrations for their predicament, especially among Republicans. This provides initial correlational evidence that that awareness of climate-induced migration is associated with pro-social responses. However, an experimental messaging study demonstrated that reading about climate-induced immigration (vs. immigration not linked to climate change) did not change participants’ climate concerns or climate policy support. Instead, reading about climate-induced immigration resulted in more negative attitudes toward immigrants. Our findings suggest that, as this issue becomes more salient in political discourse, policymakers, reporters, advocates, and other communicators should attend to the possibility of unintended negative consequences of their messages. Future research is needed to determine how to foster support on climate action while minimizing backlash against immigrants.

When like-minded people discuss with each other, i.e. engage in 'enclave deliberation', their opinions tend to become more extreme. This is called group polarization. A population-based experiment with a pre-test post-test design was conducted to analyze whether the norms and procedures of deliberation interfere with the mechanisms of group polarization. Based on a survey, people with either permissive or restrictive attitudes toward immigration were first identified and then invited to the experiment. The participants were randomly assigned to likeminded and mixed small-n groups. Each like-minded group consisted of only permissive or restrictive participants, whereas each mixed group consisted of four permissive and four restrictive participants. The like-minded treatment represents enclave deliberation, and the mixed treatment a 'standard' deliberative mini-public design. The main finding of our experiment is that people with anti-immigrant attitudes become more tolerant even when they deliberate in like-minded groups. Moreover, similar learning curves are observed in both treatments. Based on the results, we conclude that deliberative norms can alleviate the negative consequences of discussion in like-minded groups.

This article contests the view that the strong positive correlation between anti-immigration attitudes and far right party success necessarily constitutes evidence in support of the cultural grievance thesis. We argue that the success of far right parties depends on their ability to mobilize a coalition of interests between their core supporters, that is voters with cultural grievances over immigration and the often larger group of voters with economic grievances over immigration. Using individual level data from eight rounds of the European Social Survey, our empirical analysis shows that while cultural concerns over immigration are a stronger predictor of far right party support, those who are concerned with the impact of immigration on the economy are important to the far right in numerical terms. Taken together, our findings suggest that economic grievances over immigration remain pivotal within the context of the transnational cleavage.

There is a large discrepancy in European countries between the measured impact of immigration on the welfare state and how this impact is perceived by citizens. This study examines the determinants of individuals’ perception of the impact of immigration on the welfare state. A number of hypotheses at both the individual and contextual level are tested using a multilevel model with data from the European Social Survey. I find that the institutional features of welfare states are associated with different views on the impact of immigration on welfare states: generous contributory social welfare benefits are associated with more favourable attitudes about immigrants, while generous non-contributory benefits, by contrast, are associated with more pessimistic assessments about the fiscal impact of immigration. I argue that this can be because the latter potentially signals to natives that migrants could access generous benefits without any requisite work history. At the individual-level, the results indicate that subjective risk and general opposition to immigration are powerful individual-level predictors: people who feel more economically insecure or who are generally opposed to immigration are more likely to think that it constitutes a burden for the welfare state.

I investigate whether the political ascent of Donald Trump, an adamant immigration restrictionist, during the 2016 presidential campaign was accompanied by decreasing support for the legalization of undocumented immigrants. Compiling survey data from 2012 to 2016, I show consistent support for legalization throughout the period. However, support was on the decline until Trump entered the presidential race in June 2015, rising thereafter. I use two Pew Research Center surveys, fielded in May 2015 and October 2016, to document that the increase in support for legalization was spearheaded by females, suburban residents, and self-identified Democrats. No demographic group, however defined, recorded a significant decline in their support for legalization. The political ascent of Donald Trump between mid-2015 and the presidential election of November 2016 was not associated with a decline in support for the legalization of undocumented immigrants but the opposite, consistent with similar trends recorded in Europe following the rise of right-wing parties. I discuss the implications of these findings for research on immigration attitudes.

This article investigates three explanations for electoral support for the far right – ‘cultural backlash’, ‘economic grievances’ and ‘protest voting’ – in a novel way. Our main contribution is that we contrast far-right voters with voters of centre-right parties, traditional left-wing parties and abstainers. Equally innovative is the comparison between mature and post-communist democracies. Using European Social Survey data (2014–16), we conclude that anti-immigration attitudes are most important in distinguishing far-right voters from all other groups. Yet, these differences are significantly smaller in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, far-right voters are not the so-called socioeconomic ‘losers of globalization’: this is only true when compared with centre-right voters. Concerning protest voting, distrust of supranational governance particularly enhances far-right voting. Overall, our study concludes that more fine-grained distinctions pay off and avoid misleading generalizations about ‘European far-right voters’ often presented in public debates.