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a rich, detailed set of questions about the immigration issue, probing respondents’ views about
immigrants from different countries. The detailed data allow us to provide new tests of the labor market
competition explanation for anti-immigration sentiments among European voters. We focus, in particular,
upon the complex relationship between education and attitudes toward immigration. Our results indicate
that, in contrast to predictions based upon the conventional arguments about labor market competition,
which anticipate that individuals will oppose immigration of workers with similar skills to their own, but
support immigration of workers with different skill levels, people with higher education levels are more
likely to favor immigration regardless of where the immigrants come from and their likely skill attributes.
Across Europe, higher education means more support for all types of immigrants. This is true for
alternative measures of education in all 20 ESS countries. The same relationship holds for direct
(occupational) measures of respondent skill levels: higher skills are associated with greater support for all
types of immigration. And these relationships are almost identical among those in the labor force and
those not in the labor force.
The findings thus suggest that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the connection between the
educational or skill attributes of individuals and their views about immigration appears to have very little,
if anything, to do with fears about labor market competition. The conventional story appears to be based
on a fundamental misinterpretation of the available evidence. We find that a large component of the effect
of education on individual attitudes toward immigrants can be accounted for by differences among
individuals in cultural values and beliefs. More educated respondents are significantly less racist and
place greater value on cultural diversity; they are also more likely to believe that immigration generates
benefits for the host economy as a whole. Together, these factors account for around 65% of the estimated
effect of education on support for immigration.
II. Explaining Individual Attitudes Toward Immigration
Which individuals are most likely to oppose immigration? Standard economic models of the
income effects of immigration emphasize the importance of the different types of productive factors
people own. What is critical in this respect is the impact that immigration has on relative supplies of
Convention