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A Rising Tide? The Salience of Immigration and the Rise of Anti‐Immigration Political Parties in Western Europe
Author(s) -
Dennison James,
Geddes Andrew
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
the political quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.373
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1467-923X
pISSN - 0032-3179
DOI - 10.1111/1467-923x.12620
Subject(s) - immigration , opposition (politics) , salience (neuroscience) , politics , voting , polling , western europe , political economy , political science , immigration policy , demographic economics , development economics , economics , european union , law , international economics , psychology , computer science , cognitive psychology , operating system
In this article, we consider the causes of the increase in voting for anti‐immigration parties in western Europe in the past decade. We first note that one of the most commonly assumed reasons for this increase is an associated increase in anti‐immigration sentiment, which we show is likely to be false. We also outline the major theoretical explanations, which we argue are likely to be incomplete. We then introduce our proposed explanation: these parties have benefitted from a sharp increase in the salience of immigration amongst some voters. We show that there are strong correlations over time between the salience of immigration and the polling of such parties in most western European countries. We argue that aspects of immigration in the last decade have activated pre‐existing opposition to immigration amongst a shrinking segment of the populations of western European states.