The Political Assimilation of Immigrants : Migrant-to-Native Differences in Western Europe

This paper documents the migrant-to-native gap in political preferences towards redistribution, restriction on gay rights, European integration, immigration policy, and political trust using repeated cross-sectional data from the European Social Survey. At the country level, our findings reveal that first-generation immigrants hold relatively more restrictive views on gay rights, show greater levels of trust in national parliaments and are more supportive of EU integration and open immigration policies than natives. These differences owe mostly to immigrants from low-income countries and immigrants' religious beliefs. After controlling for immigrants' background, further analysis indicates that the opinion gap on immigration policy no longer exists and that differences in political trust are reduced by 80% among immigrants that have spent at least 10 years at destination. In contrast, political divergences about gay rights and European integration remain stable while those regarding redistribution widen with the time spent at destination. These issue-specific patterns are also salient when studying convergence to regional and subregional political norms. In particular, while preferences about immigration policy and levels of political trust show clear signs of acculturation, i.e the transmission of political preferences through contact between natives and immigrants, our results suggest that migrants' adoption of redistributive preferences in their host region is more likely to be driven by local context and opportunities than cultural assimilation. We interpret these differences as a reflection of the fundamentally heterogeneous nature of political preferences and the specific role played by self-interest and cultural drivers in shaping these preferences