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Political debates about immigration provoke strong nationalistic pushback from citizens, constraining the policymaking capacity of states. This paper investigates to what extent labour market policies shape economically motivated preferential divides among European citizens. On the one hand, I concentrate on prospective job loss threats indicative of economic grievances and assess the impact of unemployment risk exposure on immigration policy attitudes. On the other hand, as the original contribution of the paper, I contend that, if such an economically motivated explanation holds, this relationship should vary based on the labour market institutions in each country. Multi-level analyses of 16 European countries over a decade since 2002 reveal a remarkably robust relationship between unemployment risks and more restrictive immigration policy attitudes. Importantly, more protective employment regulations seem to have a dampening effect on the impact of job loss threats on immigration policy attitudes. Conversely, there are larger attitudinal divides between the risk-exposed and the more secure workers in countries with generous and expansive unemployment compensation policies. Overall, the paper helps explain the cross-national variation in economically motivated cleavages about immigration policy attitudes in Europe.

Can inclusive voting rights laws close the turnout gap between immigrant and native voters? While increasingly common, there are few studies on the political consequences of alien enfranchisement. Here, we examine the impact of electoral inclusivity on the political incorporation and participation of ethnic voters. Focusing on Switzerland, we use high-quality household panel data (SHP) from 1999 to 2015 leveraging both longitudinal and municipal level variation of enfranchisement laws. In the first part, we investigate whether ethnic voters constitute a distinct political group with systematically different attitudes towards sharing rights with non-citizens. In the second part, we show that naturalised immigrants turn out at higher rates if they live in municipalities where alien enfranchisement laws are introduced. We link this participation boost to closure of ethnic turnout gaps in the affected municipalities. Our analysis adds significantly to existing theoretical explanations and empirical evidence on electoral participation in multi-ethnic diverse democratic societies.

Supplemental material, Kolbe_supplementary for The limits of skill-selective immigration policies: Welfare states and the commodification of labour immigrants by Melanie Kolbe and Elif Naz Kayran in Journal of European Social Policy

How do socio-economic inequalities in advanced post-industrial countries determine immigration policy preferences? To what extent labor market institutions condition the relationship between unemployment risks and immigration policy demands? I hypothesize that labor market institutions, namely compensation and protection regimes, significantly condition the positive relationship between unemployment risks and restrictiveness demands through their indirect effects. I apply multi-level estimations using the European Social Survey from 2002 to 2010 in 16 European countries. The findings reveal a significant job competition effect captured by workers' relative risk exposure associated with more restrictive immigration policy demands. Risk based attitudinal differences decrease with greater employment protection legislation. Only for workers with fixed contract, contexts with more expansive unemployment compensation policies increase the effect of relative unemployment risk. Overall, this paper contributes to the scholarly work on the determinants of political preferences in advanced post-industrial democracies.