Immigration and trust in the EU

The report explores opinions and voting in relation to migration and trust in the EU with a territorial perspective. The main research objectives are to understand whether Euroscepticism and anti-immigration stances are related and to what extent they are expressions of other forms of discontent. The analyses are based on Eurobarometer surveys between 2011 and 2019 and on electoral data of the 2014 and 2019 EP elections at high spatial resolution, covering the entire EU. The electoral analysis concentrates particularly on how high shares of migrants in a given territorial unit may be associated with forms of discontent. Two case studies further unpack the effect of the local presence of migrants on voting at the more refined geographical scales of municipalities in the case of Italy, and of neighbourhoods in the case of the Netherlands. With regression models, we explore the interaction between the share of migrants and other territorial variables such as population density, age groups, education and low level of income. The overall conclusion of the report is that attitudes and voting patterns in relation to immigration and trust in the EU are better explained by socio-economic factors than the density of migrants at local level.JRC.E.6-Demography, Migration and Governanc