Questions about immigration – how many should be allowed to come,
who should be allowed to come, and on what terms – cut to the core of
what political communities are about. In democratic societies, political
elites mobilize public sentiment to gain office, and they depend on public
support to stay there and, ultimately, make policy.
In what follows, we present, in condensed form, the findings of a May
2022 workshop generously supported by the Konrad-Adenauer-Siftung.
For this workshop, titled, “Public Views of Immigration and Diversity:
Causes and Consequences for Policy,” we assembled a group of leading
scholars of public opinion to present cutting-edge work describing
what people in modern, immigrant-receiving countries think about
immigrants and immigration, why they think it, and how knowing the
answers to these questions shapes the policy-making process. In addition,
we asked these scholars to reflect on how their work, considered
holistically, informs broader relationships between researchers, media,
the punditocracy, and the political class.