Change in migrants’ political attitudes: Acculturation and cosmopolitanization

Abstract

This paper investigates change in international migrants’ political attitudes. It theorizes a novel attitudinal typology distinguishing polity-specific attitudes influenced by national contexts and transnational attitudes forged by migratory experience. It applies the typology to four dimensions of political competition in contemporary Europe: redistribution, homosexuality, European integration, and immigration. The paper tests the new theory using cross-sectional and panel data spanning nearly 380,000 observations from 104 sending and 28 destination countries. It introduces a new strategy to model cross-classified hierarchical data, addresses issues inherent to group comparison, and pioneers two empirical inquiries into migrants’ self-selection. The results show that migration prompts the acculturation of polity-specific attitudes and the cosmopolitanization of transnational attitudes. Migrants adopt their host countries’ attitudes toward redistribution and homosexuality while developing a uniquely liberal outlook on European integration and immigration. These findings carry major implications for our understanding of attitudinal change and the dimensionality of the ideological space.