European Natives’ Attitudes Towards High-Skilled and Low-Skilled Immigrants: Evidence from the European Social Survey

Abstract

This paper aims to test whether the labor market competition channel and fiscal burden channel can explain European natives’ attitudes towards high- and low-skilled immigrants. It addresses the limitations of the existing literature by utilizing the rich data of the seventh round of the European Social Survey (ESS). This survey of 20 European countries allows me to explicitly differentiate between attitudes towards high- and low-skilled immigrants without relying on the respondents’ assumptions about the skill level of the immigrants. The labor market competition channel predicts that natives will oppose immigrants with similar skill level to their own. My results suggest that the labor market channel does not have a substantial impact on European natives’ attitudes towards immigrants. The fiscal burden hypothesis predicts that, under tax-adjustments, high income natives will oppose low-skilled immigrants and favor high-skilled immigrants. Under transfer-adjustments, low income natives will oppose low-skilled immigrants and favor high-skilled immigrants. My results fail to reject this hypothesis.