Immigration and trust in the EU : a territorial analysis of voting behaviour and attitudes

This report, inspired by the work of DG REGIO on the Geography of Discontent, adopts a territorial perspective in analysing across all Member States opinions and voting in relation to immigration and trust in the EU. As indicated recently in the mission letter on Democracy and Demography for the new Commission, deep changes in European society have led to a loss of faith in democracy for some individuals across Europe. This report responds to the mandate included in the mission letter of analysing the impact of demographic change in areas and regions that may be disproportionately affected by these dynamics. Among the processes of demographic change, the study specifically looks at the concentration of migrants in the local context. It examines disaffection towards the EU and negative positions towards immigration from the two lenses of attitudes recorded in Eurobarometer surveys and the geographical patterns of voting. The main conclusions of the report are that attitudes towards immigration and trust in the EU are associated and voting for parties with restrictive views on migration is better explained by socio-economic factors than the presence of migrants at local level. The structure of the report is the following. Chapter one considers attitudes towards immigration and the EU, using Eurobarometer data. Chapter two provides descriptive analyses of the share of votes in the 2014 and 2019 European Parliament elections at different geographical scales for the entire EU. Chapter three further explores the relationship between voting and the local presence of migrants at the more refined geographical scales of municipalities in the case of Italy and of neighbourhoods in the case of the Netherlands.