The Determinants of Individual Attitudes towards Migration in the Netherlands

This paper investigates the determinants of individual attitudes towards migration by means of a literature review and an empirical research, which focuses on the case of the Netherlands. Compared to other economic facets of globalization like trade and investment flows, migration seems to be less important. Some argue that this is the result of restrictive migration policies of the governments of the destination countries. The migration policies are a result of the individual attitudes towards migration of the inhabitants of the destination country, who express these attitudes through the voting system. This paper is interested in investigating the factors that determine the individual attitudes towards migration of the inhabitants of the receiving country. The literature review presents two main channels through which immigrants can affect the natives of the receiving country: the labour market and the welfare state channel. Several academic papers argue that the welfare state can work as a ‘magnet’ for immigrants. Economic reasoning also states that immigrants take a part of the natives’ jobs, and wages are expected to decrease as a result of the inflow of immigrants, while the overall economy, reflected in Gross Domestic Product, will be better off. The main objective of the empirical analysis is to investigate whether or not the number of immigrants living in a Dutch municipality has an effect on the natives’ voting behaviour, which is used as a proxy for the individual attitudes towards migration. The empirical analysis does find a significant and positive effect of the number of immigrants on the relative number of votes for anti-immigrant parties. This paper has contributed to the existing literature about immigration by drawing a direct link between the number of immigrants in a region and the individual attitudes towards migration, reflected in the number of votes for anti-immigrant parties.