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Of Citizens, Refugees, Green Cards and Border Guards: Explaining Immigration Flows
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Abstract
How can democracies respond to cross-border human migration without lowering
standards of civil liberties and international norms of human rights? To what degree can advanced industrial states actually control immigration, thereby responding to restrictive public opinion? Scholars of immigration politics are divided about the relative causal impact of “push factors” (conditions in immigrant-sending countries) and “pull factors” (conditions in immigrant-receiving countries) on levels of immigration. Our model tests the impact of both types of factors, arguing that political conditions in immigrant-receiving countries will exert an independent effect on immigrant inflows.
The paper’s primary hypothesis is that institutional factors, by potentially weakening
the link between majoritarian/anti-immigrant sentiment and public policy, can explain variation in immigrant inflows. Democracies vary in the extent to which institutions enforce civil liberties and human rights norms, and democracies also vary in the extent to which political parties must depend on business lobbies and other pro-immigration groups for support. The more institutional checks that a given political system places on majoritarianism, the more liberal we expect that system’s immigration policies to be. Drawing alternative hypotheses from a broad range of literature, we also test the impact of government party preferences, political ideology, economics, and push factors (in the form of levels of refugees on the move worldwide).
The paper tests the effect of these explanations on two dependent variables: inflows of
foreign workers, and inflows of political asylum-seekers. There is debate in the literature over the degree to which the politics of asylum mirror the politics of immigration in general. We posit that economic factors should exert a larger impact on inflows of foreign workers, while political-institutional factors should exert a larger impact on inflows of asylum-seekers, despite the tendency of publics and the media to conflate the two issues.
Our study links the literature on immigration politics with the literature on political
party competition. Many analysts have studied the link between political ideology and immigration, but the independent impact of political institutions has not been adequately tested. Employing time-series, cross-sectional regression analysis, we test this impact against a broad range of other factors, across multiple regions and years. Our data set covers 18 advanced industrial countries, from the late 1980s to the turn of the century, at a time when immigration rose to the top of the political agenda in the industrialized world.
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| | Authors: Breunig, Christian. and Luedtke, Adam. |
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Abstract
How can democracies respond to cross-border human migration without lowering
standards of civil liberties and international norms of human rights? To what degree can
advanced industrial states actually control immigration, thereby responding to restrictive
public opinion? Scholars of immigration politics are divided about the relative causal impact
of “push factors” (conditions in immigrant-sending countries) and “pull factors” (conditions
in immigrant-receiving countries) on levels of immigration. Our model tests the impact of
both types of factors, arguing that political conditions in immigrant-receiving countries will
exert an independent effect on immigrant inflows.
The paper’s primary hypothesis is that institutional factors, by potentially weakening
the link between majoritarian/anti-immigrant sentiment and public policy, can explain
variation in immigrant inflows. Democracies vary in the extent to which institutions enforce
civil liberties and human rights norms, and democracies also vary in the extent to which
political parties must depend on business lobbies and other pro-immigration groups for
support. The more institutional checks that a given political system places on
majoritarianism, the more liberal we expect that system’s immigration policies to be.
Drawing alternative hypotheses from a broad range of literature, we also test the impact of
government party preferences, political ideology, economics, and push factors (in the form of
levels of refugees on the move worldwide).
The paper tests the effect of these explanations on two dependent variables: inflows of
foreign workers, and inflows of political asylum-seekers. There is debate in the literature
over the degree to which the politics of asylum mirror the politics of immigration in general.
We posit that economic factors should exert a larger impact on inflows of foreign workers,
while political-institutional factors should exert a larger impact on inflows of asylum-seekers,
despite the tendency of publics and the media to conflate the two issues.
Our study links the literature on immigration politics with the literature on political
party competition. Many analysts have studied the link between political ideology and
immigration, but the independent impact of political institutions has not been adequately
tested. Employing time-series, cross-sectional regression analysis, we test this impact against
a broad range of other factors, across multiple regions and years. Our data set covers 18
advanced industrial countries, from the late 1980s to the turn of the century, at a time when
immigration rose to the top of the political agenda in the industrialized world.
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