Migration and Affective Polarization

• In Event: Polarization at Both the Elite and Voter Level

Abstract

The level of affective polarization has risen throughout the industrialized democracies, influencing many aspects of citizens’ political as well as non-political behaviors. Most studies of the causes of affective polarization have examined either individual-level factors (e.g., demographic factors) or country-level factors (e.g., ideological polarization). Yet, the level of affective polarization also varies between regions within a country. Here we examine a regional factor, inward migration of foreigners, and its relationship to affective polarization in Great Britain.
We argue that the extent of inward migration of foreigners has different effects on the affective polarization displayed by supporters of the two major parties in Great Britain - the Conservative party and the Labour party. While such migration lowers the level of affective polarization amongst Labour party supporters, it raises the level of affective polarization amongst Conservative party supporters. We suggest that there are two causal mechanisms at work: the strength of voters’ partisan identity and their stance on migration. Given the propensity of ethnic minorities to support the Labour party, the inward migration of foreigners to a region will reinforce and accentuate the heterogeneity of the party’s supporters in the region, thereby weakening Labour party supporters’ partisan identity. In contrast, amongst Conservative party supporters the increase in the perceived difference in party profiles of the two parties’ supporters serves to strengthen Conservative supporters’ partisan identity. The inward migration of foreigners to a region makes supporters of both parties more receptive to a more restrictive immigration stance. This entails feeling more favorably toward the Conservative party’s migration policies and less so towards the Labour party’s policies. As a result, Labour supporters’ affective polarization is lowered by the inward migration of foreigners to a region because their in-group attachment is weakened, and their stance on immigration becomes more in line with a restrictive to Conservative party position. In contrast, Conservative supporters’ affective polarization increase because their out-group animosity is strengthened, and their stance on immigration diverges even further from the Labour party’s position.
We test these hypotheses using 24 waves of the British Election Study from 2014 to 2023. We take advantage of the data’s panel survey structure to examine how changes in explanatory variables, including the inward migration of foreigners, determines the change in affective polarization. We also test how the migration effect is mediated by the two causal mechanisms, strength of partisan identity and position on migration, using a causal mediation analysis model. Lastly, we also use two measures of the change of migration: the (objective) change of the percentage of foreign-born people at the local level and people’s (subjective) perception of that change. We find that while migration lowers the level of Labour party supporters’ affective polarization, it raises the level of Conservative party supporters’ affective polarization. We also find that while the migration effect on Labour supporters’ affective polarization is mediated by their stance on migration, the migration effect on Conservative supporters’ affective polarization goes through the strength of their partisan identity. Finally, we obtain similar results no matter whether we use the objective measure of migration change or we employ its subjective measure.
Our results make contributions to and provide implications for the emerging literature on affective polarization. First, we use panel survey data and examine how individuals modify the level of their affective polarization over time. Second, there are discussions on the extent to which affective polarization is driven by partisan identity or issue (ideological) position. Our results imply that both matter but that their relative significance may depend on the context. Finally, our results imply that we need more research focused on the ways in which local circumstances and the daily lived experiences of people serve to shape their affective polarization.

Authors

• Ian Down, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

• Kyung Joon Han, University of Tennessee, Knoxville