‘Bloom where you’re planted’: explaining public opposition to (e)migration

Why is migration unpopular? A vast literature argues that voters oppose immigration because of threatened interests and prejudice. This paper is among the first studies of opposition to emigration – the other side of the issue salient in many countries. Departing from existing public opinion research, I develop a number of tests comparing emigration and immigration attitudes and then exploit relevant survey data from 30 countries, as well as original experimental and qualitative evidence. Overall, I document high opposition to both emigration and immigration in many countries and show that respondents are unlikely to confuse these issues. I then show that individual emigration and immigration attitudes are significantly correlated and have similar predictors, which is reflected in respondents’ own open-ended explanations. While consistent with sociotropic accounts, this new evidence suggests that many natives may exhibit an aversion to human mobility between countries in general, not immigration or emigration in particular.