Individual Migration Preferences: Culture, Context or Competition?

• In Event: Experimental Approaches to IPE: Evidence from Survey and Field Experiments

Abstract

Existing literature theorizes that immigration has an impact on the wages and employment of native workers. Depending on their skill level and sector of employment, natives are therefore expected to be more tolerant towards immigrants who pose no threat to their job security. Empirical studies, however, find little evidence for this market competition hypothesis in that high skilled immigrants tend to be preferred by all types of natives independent of their skill level. The literature offers two potential explanations: First, individuals may form their opinion based on sociotropic preferences. This argument centers on the idea that it is not so much a personal economic threat that drives migration attitudes but rather considerations as to whether the country as a whole, their sector of employment or their community at large would benefit or not from the influx of specific immigrant groups. The rationale for sociotropic preference formation may arise due to the fact that many individuals equate low-skilled immigrants with a higher risk of these immigrants becoming a burden to the welfare system of their country and being less likely to find adequate work. Hence natives independent of their skill-level might prefer high skilled over low skilled immigration. Second, it might be that economic competition does not play a significant role in evaluating immigrants because it is rather cultural factors that are decisive as to why some people oppose immigration. In particular, some natives might perceive immigrants as a threat to their usual way of life, their customs and tradition.

We test these explanations using original survey experimental data from Switzerland fielded to a sample of 4000 respondents in September 2019 (and potentially again in May 2020). To test whether it is cultural reasons in contrast to economic threats that drive natives’ attitudes vis-à-vis immigrants we make use of a particularity of the Swiss case. Since Switzerland is a rather small country and shares long stretches of borders with Germany, France and Italy, it attracts an unusually high number of cross-border commuters. In contrast to regular immigrants, these individuals only come to work in Switzerland but otherwise leave the country and its citizens alone. Hence although economically they pose the same threat as immigrants, culturally they should not.

Preliminary results indicate that indeed there is a difference in the perception of immigration into high- vs. low-skilled sectors and this is especially so for less educated persons lending first support for the labour market competition hypothesis. Also, the status of the person (cross-border commuters or resident foreign national) makes a difference, but contrary to what we would expect, we find that resident foreign nationals are generally viewed more positive than the cross-border commuters. We propose that this has to do with the fact that resident foreign nationals also contribute more to the financing of the state and the provision of public goods within Switzerland and that this might override potential cultural concerns.

Authors

• Lena Maria Schaffer, University of Luzern

• Gabriele S. Spilker, University of Konstanz