Are the Major "Western" Findings on Attitudes to Immigration Supported by Global Evidence? Mostly Yes, Actually.

The causes of variation in attitudes to immigration have been the subject of extensive scholarship in recent decades, with some factors being repeatedly evidenced. However, these findings are overwhelmingly based on studies from a small selection of "Western" countries. This article makes use of recent World Values Survey data across 66 countries globally to test how generalizable such findings on the determinants of attitudes to immigration are globally. It finds that the most typically identified sociodemographic, economic, and contextual determinants of immigration policy preferences, prejudices, and perceived effects are largely generalizable globally, namely: age, low income, job worries, rurality, not having an immigrant background, social distrust, national migration rate, feeling unsafe in one's neighborhood, and national media bias. The effects of gender, education, and left-right self-placement are weaker and less generalizable. These findings are robust across world regions. Although the predictive power of all factors tend to be smaller outside of Western Europe, these findings shed light on the more profound, universal, and genuine nature of attitudes to immigration, their likely internal determinants-rather than purely external and contextual ones-and the global reliability of measuring their predictors.