The world is growing less accepting of migrants. That is the message from the latest Gallup Migration Acceptance Index, published last week, which shows that many countries are “slightly less accepting” of migrants as residents, neighbors, and family members than in 2016.

Of the 145 countries where the survey was conducted, the largest declines were in South America. In particular, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia saw the biggest drops in acceptance of migrants. There might be a simple explanation for that. All three countries have received large numbers of the more than 5 million Venezuelans who have emigrated in recent years—and the results underscore the anxieties that can emerge among populations on the receiving end of this movement. In Colombia, the share of residents who thought it was a good thing that migrants were living in their country fell from 61 percent in 2016 to just 29 percent.

Yet the outcome is reversed in Chile, another country with a large Venezuelan population. There, support for immigrants has increased slightly since 2016, according to the Gallup data. The same is true in Moldova, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and a handful of other nations.

There are some possible easy explanations here, too. Because of the high hurdles for Venezuelans to enter Chile, those who arrive may be better educated and wealthier than Venezuelan migrants elsewhere. Moldova has a rapidly declining population and its economy relies in part on large numbers of foreign laborers.

In all, Gallup found Canada to be the most amenable to migrants, followed by Iceland, New Zealand, and Australia. Four of the top ten most accepting countries were in Africa: Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Rwanda. And it might not be reflected in national policy, but the United States came in as the sixth most-accepting country. In separate findings, Gallup reported earlier this year that more U.S. residents supported increasing immigration than decreasing it—a first in the organization’s 55-year history of asking.

Meanwhile, North Macedonia topped the list as the least-accepting country for immigrants, followed by several other Balkan and Central European states: Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Many of these countries struggled with their position along a critical transit route for migrants heading into the European Union during the 2015-16 migrant crisis.

The findings paint a mixed picture of public openness toward migrants. While experience with unanticipated large-scale migration may engender some opposition, certain kinds of immigrants may have the opposite impact in specific contexts.

Scholarship generally backs this up. Public attitudes towards immigrants can be diverse and contradictory, and can be shaped by cultural and economic factors. Individual self-interest plays a relatively minor role, while “immigration-related attitudes are mostly driven by symbolic concerns about the nation as a whole,” Jens Hainmueller and Daniel J. Hopkins wrote in a 2014 review of the literature. The Gallup findings show that globally, those attitudes are becoming less accepting. But that outcome is not inevitable.

Best regards,
Julian Hattem
Editor, Migration Information Source
[email protected]