EU attitudes to migration remain stable, forum hears

Just as bad news drives out good news in the news space, across the EU “migration” drives out all other issues from political discourse.

That was the experience of all political parties, according to Austrian MP Muna Duzdar, who said “it was nearly impossible to talk about migration on a fact-based basis” in the recent election in that country. The conservatives won, she said, by adopting the programme of the far right, while the left was frozen out of the debate by the media because it would not focus on migration.

Ms Duzdar was speaking on Thursday during a debate on attitudes to migration at the European University Institute in Florence conference on “solidarity” in the EU.

Yet what is striking and "counterintuitive", James Dennison – a research fellow at the institute's Migration Policy Centre – told the meeting is that research shows that despite huge public controversies in recent years and the rise of populist right-wing parties, public attitudes to migration have actually remained remarkably stable. The crisis seems to have left attitudes very much the same across the EU, he said.

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What had changed, he said, was the “salience” of the issue, which had moved to the centre of public debate. He said that in studies of widely shared 10 basic human values, attitudes to three could be said to be closely linked to negative attitudes to migration – tradition, conformity and security. Only one value, the prizing of equality, was identified as associated with positive attitudes to Migration.

‘Conflicted majority’

Polling also showed, said Chiara Ferrari, of the Ipsos polling organisation, that throughout the EU there was a "conflicted majority" which was by no means closed to immigration or showed empathy to immigrants. Less than half of the population felt uncomfortable over the changes brought about by immigration.

She said they had identified a “left behind” group representing about 17 per cent of the population which had particular fears. They were less well-educated, older, economically vulnerable, and more prone to “nativism” and a belief that a richer, more secure past was being lost.

It was important to understand their perspective – “why should they be empathetic to other poor people?”

“Disengaged moderates” represent some 19 per cent, she said. These were young, well-educated and had little preoccupation with the past. They were more worried about their future, but see immigrants as their peers. This group, likely to be more empathetic to migration, was, however, unlikely to vote.

Ms Duzdar acknowledged a challenge posed by a member of the audience who said that in France both the traditional left and the hard left had decided they had nothing to say to voters about migration, leaving the field open to the right. She said that, in her own Social Democratic Party, members were deeply divided and forging a consensus was very difficult.

And, referring to the debate about the EU's asylum policy, she said she supported the introduction of mandatory quotas of relocations of asylum seekers to share the burden on the frontline states like Italy and Greece. Those states which refused to take their share of the burden should be fined, she said.