Sentiments to migration are hardening - but there are reasons for it

Scotland's main immigration research body Migration Policy Scotland has produced an annual survey of attitudes to immigration. It shows exactly what you'd expect – attitudes have both hardened and polarised. Yet the speed at which this has happened suggests this is a recent phenomenon which also suggests it can be reversed.

Let's establish the baseline here. In reality (according to the 2022 census) about one in five people living in Scotland were not born here (79.5 per cent). Of those, the biggest group by far were born in England (9.3 per cent). If you include all other UK it creeps up to 10.4 per cent. Another 4.3 per cent came from European Union countries (including Republic of Ireland).

This leaves about 5.9 per cent from outside Britain and the EU. This is the total that includes most of the 'non-white' immigration that is fuelling the anti-immigration campaigns, but it also includes Australians, Canadians, Americans and so on.

This is detached from public perception – although this too is confused by the definition of 'immigration' (how many respondents are thinking of English immigration when they are answering this poll). Then again, total migration and net migration are different measures (one effectively a total and one a rate of change)

The census data is reliable; the dynamic figures on migration are not. For this reason, over the period looked at by this report it is using a baseline of 10-15 per cent net migration (it does not include other-UK migration). There is too much data in the MPS study to cover so here we will aggregate.

Basically two in five people overestimate the amount of migration, one in five underestimate it and two fifths get it about right. The number who overestimate by a significant amount represent about one in four of the total population. The demographic skews are also fairly consistent – women, lower socioeconomic groups, people from neighbourhoods with high social deprivation and those who have no social contact with refugees all overestimate.

The opposite is obviously the case for their corollaries (being male, in a higher socioeconomic groups or low deprivation neighbourhood and having contact with migrants makes you more like to be accurate in your assessment or to underestimate the number).

The picture of political party voting and attitudes does throw up some surprises. If you were to ask most people which political party's voters they think would be most likely to overestimate the amount of immigration, many would answer Reform. It isn't; it's the Scottish Greens.

This is almost certainly because they positively project migration, and yet the voters of the other political party in Scotland associated with pro-immigration stances (the SNP) mostly underestimate the numbers. In fact Reform voters are comparatively accurate in their assessments, as are Labour voters.

Much of the rest of this report shows what you'd imagine – polarised views, with almost exactly a 50/50 split between a desire to reduce immigration a lot or a bit and a desire to increase it a bit, a lot or sustain it at its current levels. And of course, both sides are finding their viewpoints strengthening.

The crucial moment appears to be between 2023 and 2024 when the trend towards less support for immigration and strengthening will to reduce it accelerated. It has to be noted that this coincided with the election of what would traditionally have been the pro-immigration party to power at Westminster which then took a performatively cruel anti-immigration stance in government.

This tallies with numerous studies across Europe which show that the best way to increase anti-migrant sentiment is for traditionally pro-migrant parties to triangulate and take anti-migrant stances, normalising and accelerating the descent into anti-migrant sentiment.

There is a lot more in this study than this – it goes on to break down the detail of different kinds of immigration (high-skill workers to asylum seekers) and different visa types (student, work etc.). But those mainly add nuance to the overall picture.

The main conclusions are simple; attitudes to immigration are hardening on both sides. The secondary conclusions are more positive; we can identify drivers that are likely to have increased anti-migrant sentiment (social media propaganda, media and political normalisation, lack of meaningful exposure to actual migrants).

And that means, at least in theory, we can reverse them.