Migration, Public Opinion and Politics E-Book

• Herausgeber: Bertelsmann Stiftung
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Deutsch

Seitenzahl: 513

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Public perceptions and media coverage of immigrants and immigration policy are powerful forces in shaping the immigration debate. Understanding public opinion on immigration, how this impacts the political debate and how it affects reform prospects is critical in designing a strategy to advance thoughtful, rational and effective immigration and integration policy. This volume explores a critical policy issue that has often been underestimated in the migration policy debate: the media and public opinion. This volume contains expert analysis of how our publics perceive immigration and immigrants-from their effects on the job market, to their impact on culture and society, to their prospects for integration. It assesses the forces that are shaping how our publics perceive immigration and immigrants. The authors also highlight patterns and trends in how political leaders speak about immigration. The volume ranges more broadly as well to examine how public opinion and political debates about issues such as globalization, economic crisis and demographic change affect the immigration debate. The work is deeply informed by the Council's transatlantic perspective. The book focuses in particular on three case studies: the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. The volume includes chapters analyzing public opinion and media coverage of immigration issues in each country. Additional chapters propose strategies for unblocking opposition to thoughtful, effective immigration-related reforms. This book is the third major product of the Transatlantic Council on Migration. It is a result of the deliberations and thinking of the Transatlantic Council on Migration, which brings together leading political figures, policymakers and innovative thinkers-pollsters, political consultants, journalists, community organizers and politicians-from the USA and Europe. The Transatlantic Council on Migration is an initiative of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, DC and its policy partner the Bertelsmann Stiftung. Its work is supported by numerous foundations and several governments. The Council is a unique deliberative body that examines vital policy issues and informs migration policymaking processes across the Atlantic community. Council members include leading politicians and policymakers from both sides of the Atlantic.

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ISBN : 978-3-86793-272-1

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel

Impressum

Einleitung

Part I: - The Transatlantic Council on Migration

Council Statement: Migration, Public Opinion and Politics - May 6-8, 2009, ...

Introduction

The Politics of Migration: Political Rhetoric, Media Coverage and Public Opinion

Conclusions and Policy Recommendations

Part II: - Public Opinion on Migration

German Public Opinion on Immigration and Integration

Immigration to Germany: A Temporary Phenomenon Becomes Permanent

Regulating Integration

Citizenship Reform

The Immigration Act of 2005: A Milestone in Immigration Policy

Attitudes toward Immigrants

Public Opinion on Immigrant Integration

Conclusion

Works Cited

America’s Views of Immigration: The Evidence from Public Opinion Surveys

Immigration: A Second-Tier Policy Priority

Overall Opinions on Immigration: Favorable, though Divided

Growing Anxiety over Illegal Immigration: Who Is Most Concerned?

The 2008 Election: The Dog that Did Not Bark

Policy Options: Support for Legalization and Enforcement

Conclusion

Works Cited

The Politics of Immigration and the (Limited) Case for New Optimism: ...

Introduction

The Evidence from Public Opinion Polls

“The Misperception of Opposition”: Reasons for Caution

Conclusion: How to Improve the Politics of Immigration Reform

Works Cited

Immigrating from Facts to Values: Political Rhetoric in the US Immigration Debate

Introduction

Dissecting a Political Message: Understanding Networks of Associations

Common Messaging Mistakes

How to Develop Strong Messages on Immigration

Empirical Case Studies: Messages That Work in the United States

A Comparative Analysis: Effective Messages across the Atlantic

Conclusion

Works Cited

Political Rhetoric in the Netherlands: Reframing Crises in the Media

Introduction

Public Perceptions and Media Coverage in the Netherlands

Crafting Successful Political Rhetoric

Case Studies: Searching for Effective Political Responses to a Crisis

Perceiving Perceptions: Some General Observations

Conclusion

Works Cited

British Attitudes to Immigration in the 21st Century

Introduction

Who Is Most Concerned about Immigration?

Has the Downturn Exacerbated Public Concern?

More Immigrants, Increasing Concern

Immigration through a Media Prism

National, Regional and Local Concerns

Multiculturalism and the Muslim Community

Policy and Political Responses

Conclusion

Works Cited

A Commentary on Public Attitudes on Immigration: The United Kingdom in an ...

Introduction

Public Attitudes

Transatlantic Trends: Immigration

Policy and Advocacy: Local Impacts and Local Solutions

Conclusion

Works Cited

Part III: - Migration Narratives in the Media

The Evolution of German Media Coverage of Migration

Introduction

Media Coverage as a Reflection of the Sociopolitical Debate on Migration

The Evolving Image of Immigrants in the Media

Indicators of Change

Conclusion and Recommendations

Works Cited

Promoting Stalemate: The Media and US Policy on Migration

Introduction

Background

How Media Coverage Has Influenced Immigration Policy

Conclusion

Note on Content Analysis Methodology

Works Cited

The Media and Migration in the United Kingdom, 1999 to 2009

Introduction

The UK Media and Migration Reporting

Media Coverage of Immigration from 1999 to 2009

Does the Media Drive Policy?

A Chronology of Research Reports

Research Highlights

Conclusion

Works Cited

Part IV: - Migration Policy Strategies in Germany, the United States of America ...

The Future of Migration and Integration Policy in Germany

Introduction: The Evolution of Migration and Integration Policy in Germany

Shifting Migration Patterns

Opposing Policy Pressures and Challenges on the Horizon

Current Challenges and Policy Gaps

Policy Strategies and Recommendations

Conclusion

Works Cited

Memo to President Obama Regarding Immigration Policy

Introduction

What Conditions Would Make a Reform Push Viable in 2009?

Will the Public Support Immigration Reform? Particularly in an Economic Downturn?

What Are the Components of a Workable Bill that Can Pass Congress?

What Is the Relevant History and Context for the Upcoming Debate?

What Are the Factors Working For and Against Reform in 2009?

Making the Choice Clear

Works Cited

Future Immigration Patterns and Policies in the United Kingdom

Introduction: UK Migration Patterns

How Have Politicians Responded?

Horizon Scanning

Challenges and New Policy Directions

How to Effect Change

Final Thoughts: Challenges and the Importance of Narrative

Works Cited

A Commentary on Integration and Belonging in the United Kingdom

Works Cited

A Commentary on Global Migration and Modern Regulation

Introduction

Is There a Policy Consensus in UK Politics?

Key Regulatory Principles and Issues

Conclusion

Part V: - Discussion Summary

Council Statement: Migration, Public Opinion and Politics - Transatlantic ...

Introduction

Words Matter: Political Rhetoric on Immigration

Understanding Public Opinion on Migration

How the Media Shape the Immigration Debate

The Potential for Reforms: Migration and Integration Policies in the Next Three Years

Strategies for Reform: The Case of the United States

Strategies for Reform: The Case of the United Kingdom

Lessons from the Politics of Migration for Policymakers and Experts

In Closing, Council Convener Demetrios G. Papademetriou Offered Some ...

Biographies of the Authors

Agenda and Participants List from 2009 Council Meeting

About the Transatlantic Council on Migration

Introduction

Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Gunter Thielen

The Transatlantic Council on Migration

First convened in 2008, the Council generates, studies and evaluates practical ideas about immigration and integration in order to promote more thoughtful, evidence-based migration policies. The Council’s principal policy partner in this effort is the Bertelsmann Stiftung. The Council is generously supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Hellenic Migration Policy Institute (IMEPO), and the governments of the Netherlands and Norway. More information about the Council’s membership, operations and publications can be found at: www.migrationpolicy.org/transatlantic.

There is little doubt that immigration systems on both sides of the Atlantic are dysfunctional at best, broken at worst. High levels of illegal migration are just one testament to this. Another is the lagging social mobility of immigrants, which speaks to systemic discrimination in educational and other public institutions. The question that must be answered by advocates of reform-be they government policymakers, civil society activists or think tank experts-is: Why have we been unable to fix these systems, in some cases for decades?

The Transatlantic Council on Migration made an effort to shed light on this question by analyzing the forces that shape the politics of migration. What exactly do our publics think about immigration, and how should we interpret their views? How should politicians and others who champion reform speak about immigration? And what effect does media coverage have on the prospects for changing the laws and practices that shape immigration and immigrant integration?

To confront this challenge, the Council brought together an unusual constellation of experts: Migration specialists, politicians, pollsters, political consultants and experts on rhetoric. This book is the result of their efforts. It is built around a series of strategies and recommendations that can help farsighted policymakers enact and implement policies that are at once ambitious yet also have a chance of winning public support. The Council also convened working groups in Berlin and London in early 2009 to test these strategies for reform in Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom.

This volume-the third major publication of the Transatlantic Council on Migration, an initiative of the Migration Policy Institute- is based on deliberations and research commissioned for the Council’s May 2009 meeting in Bellagio, Italy. All the contributions are original work. The book joins the first two Transatlantic Council volumes- Delivering Citizenship (November 2008) and Talent, Competitiveness and Migration (April 2009)-in offering an evidence-based, pragmatic approach to the most complex and controversial policy debates surrounding migration.

The authors of this book examine the complex and contradictory challenges to immigration policy that governments face in the short and mid term. Their contributions are organized into five sections.

Part One consists of the Council Statement on “Migration, Public Opinion and Politics.” It distills the consensus views on the issues at hand from the Council’s deliberations at Bellagio on May 6-8, 2009. A full list of participants in that meeting and an agenda can be found at the end of this book.

Part Two of the book is devoted to the interplay between public opinion and political rhetoric concerning migration and integration across the Atlantic. Case studies on the evolution of public opinion in Germany, the United States, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom illuminate how migration policies, public opinion and social realities interact with and influence one another. The seven chapters in this section show how politicians increasingly rely on polling evidence when prioritizing reforms, designing new policies and communicating these reforms to the public.

The first contribution in this section, entitled “German Public Opinion on Immigration and Integration” by Oya S. Abali, focuses on Germany over the past two decades. While a de facto country of immigration since the 1950s, Germany failed to acknowledge this reality until 2000-a fact that at least partly explains why the German public continues to show unease with large-scale immigration and cultural diversity. Abali examines the public’s main concerns on migration and integration and maps how these perceptions are changing.

Roberto Suro’s penetrating analysis, “America’s Views of Immigration: The Evidence from Public Opinion Surveys,” forms chapter two of the section. Americans, Suro shows, are divided both over immigration’s impact and the best ways to manage it. He investigates how American attitudes towards immigration are influenced by public policy debates and major events, and how these attitudes have shifted in recent years.

The section’s third chapter examines US public opinion from a different angle. In “The Politics of Immigration and the (Limited) Case for New Optimism: Perspectives from a Political Pollster,” Jeremy Rosner looks beyond what opinion polls tell us and examines issues such as the intensity of opinions, attitudes among small but pivotal audiences, the interplay between immigration and other issues and the power of particular issues in electoral campaigns. These factors are critical in shaping immigration policy-yet are often overlooked.

Drew Westen, in chapter four, offers a roadmap to understanding the effects of political rhetoric on public opinion. In “Immigrating from Facts to Values: Political Rhetoric in the US Immigration Debate,” he analyzes why policymakers across the Atlantic must consider public sentiments and emotion when communicating about immigration reforms, and guides them on how to think about the different associations a term such as “immigrant” may generate in the electorate. The same idea, depending on how it is communicated, can spark either consensus or discord. Westen recommends ways of thinking and speaking about immigration that might seem counterintuitive or even at odds with the goals of progressive immigration reform.

In chapter five, Maarten Hajer and Wytske Versteeg examine how political rhetoric impacts public perceptions during times of crisis in the Netherlands. “Political Rhetoric in the Netherlands: Reframing Crises in the Media” looks closely at the words used by right-wing populist politicians, who are often more effective than moderates in shifting popular opinion in their favor. The authors argue that right-wing rhetoric conveys more passion and emotion, and is thus more readily picked up by the media. Moderate politicians often find themselves reacting to their opponents’ messages rather than proactively delivering their own. The authors conclude with recommendations on how moderate politicians can win over public opinion.

Ben Page outlines the contours of public opinion in the United Kingdom in chapter six, “British Attitudes to Immigration in the 21st Century.” In the past decade, concern about immigration has skyrocketed, but UK public opinion on immigrants and integration remains varied. Anxiety peaked in 2007 for three reasons: unanticipated numbers of workers from the new European Union (EU) countries arriving in Britain; media coverage of foreign prisoners; and a public debate about limiting immigration. Concern about migration in Britain only began to recede in autumn 2008, as economic concerns trumped all other worries. Page ends by distilling how perceptions of fairness and equality will be critical factors in influencing UK public opinion in coming years.

In a commentary, “Public Attitudes on Immigration: The United Kingdom in an International Context,” that accompanies Ben Page’s chapter, Ayesha Saran draws on comparative polling to show that the apparent mistrust of immigration in the United Kingdom is more complex and nuanced than it initially appears. Saran concludes that the government must address irregular migration to improve the public’s view of immigration in the United Kingdom.

Part Three of this book looks at how the media have shaped- rather than simply mirrored-the migration debates in North America and Europe. The way in which narratives are constructed and communicated to the public, emphasizing certain facets of immigration while leaving others out of the headlines, has played a crucial role in affecting both public opinion and policy.

The German case is illustrated in chapter seven by Gualtiero Zambonini. His contribution, “The Evolution of German Media Coverage of Migration,” details how the German media have helped reinforce the image of immigrants as “foreigners” and “aliens” ever since the first guest workers came to Germany in the 1950s and 1960s. This changed in 2000 when Germany’s migration strategy shifted to reflect the long-overlooked need for integration policies, and media coverage changed in parallel to stop depicting immigrants as “foreigners.” Zambonini explores how the media have long bolstered popular attitudes in Germany and are now struggling to keep up with rapidly changing social realities.

In chapter eight, Roberto Suro makes a strong case for how media coverage of immigration played a critical role in hindering immigration policy reform in the United States. His piece, “Promoting Stalemate: The Media and US Policy on Migration,” argues that the media have conditioned Americans to associate immigration with illegality, crisis, controversy and government failure-a trend that has been exacerbated by the recent transformation in the ways Americans get their news. While Suro does not contend that the media was the principal impediment to immigration reform during legislative debates in 2006 and 2007, he provides strong evidence that news coverage did play an important role in influencing public opinion and creating the current policy stalemate in the United States.

Terry Threadgold argues that media coverage in the United Kingdom also has an alarmist tone. In chapter nine, entitled “The Media and Migration in the United Kingdom, 1999 to 2009,” she shows how the print and broadcast media in the United Kingdom cover only a very narrow range of migration stories, primarily focused on asylum seekers, refugees, illegal immigrants and migrant workers. She argues that the media use a “template” to frame stories about migration, contributing to a perception that immigration is in perpetual crisis. Threadgold concludes that there is a need to monitor output across all media and carry out newsroom ethnographies. But the focus needs to be as much on politics/policy, regulatory mechanisms, education and journalism education, as on the media.

Part Four of this book presents a series of practical, political strategies on how to advance immigration reforms in Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom. These are the unique result of the deliberations convened in Berlin and London in the months preceding the Transatlantic Council’s May 2009 plenary meeting. Initially conceived as “strategy memos,” these papers have been shaped according to the particular political developments in each country, and conclude with pragmatic recommendations to German, US and British policymakers on how to thoughtfully and effectively move forward with immigration policy in the coming years.

Chapter ten, written by Rita Süssmuth and Christal Morehouse, tackles “The Future of Migration and Integration Policy in Germany.” Since 2000, the German government has undertaken a series of steps to reform laws and shape public opinion in order to bring about better integration and managed migration. Despite considerable progress, the government still must address policy gaps in three main areas in order to effectively reform its migration and integration systems to meet the needs of the 21st century: integration and social cohesion, equality for third-country nationals and modern labor migration policies.

Frank Sharry offers recommendations on US policy reform in the form of a “Memo to President Obama Regarding Immigration Policy.” In chapter eleven, Sharry expresses his personal views as an advocate for progressive immigration reform, making the case for rapid and comprehensive reform. He also debates the various hurdles to reform and suggests how these might be overcome. The chapter concludes with a proposal as to how the President should speak about immigration reform.

Chapter twelve is entitled “Future Immigration Patterns and Policies in the United Kingdom” and was written by Will Somerville. In the past decade, the size and characteristics of immigration to the United Kingdom have changed significantly. In parallel, UK immigration policy has undergone radical changes. Most recently, economic pressures have led the United Kingdom to introduce a selection system to help attract specific categories of economic immigrants. Somerville outlines some of the strategies policymakers should pursue to address three key policy challenges: improving public confidence, investing in integration and strengthening good governance.

In a commentary accompanying the Somerville chapter, Alessandra Buonfino examines how social cohesion can be fostered by carefully formulated immigration and integration policies in the United Kingdom. The commentary, entitled “Integration and Belonging in the United Kingdom,” expands on concepts in the previous chapter by Somerville.

A second commentary builds on Somerville’s contribution. In “Global Migration and Modern Regulation,” Shamit Saggar investigates the impact of relevant regulatory and quasi-regulatory issues on immigration policy and popular opinion. His piece concludes by answering the question of how good governance can shift attitudes on migration.

Part Five contains a summary of the Council’s meeting in May 2009. It provides readers with a record of the Council’s deliberations. It is written in accordance with the Chatham House rule of not revealing the identities of speakers.

This volume contains the biographies of the authors, agenda and participants list from the May 2009 meeting of the Transatlantic Council on Migration in Bellagio, Italy, at the Rockefeller Foundation’s conference center. It also includes information about the Council.

Part I:

The Transatlantic Council on Migration

Council Statement: Migration, Public Opinion and Politics

May 6-8, 2009, Bellagio Conference Center, Italy

Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Annette Heuser

Introduction

The politics of migration can upend the best-laid plans of even the most clear-headed and thoughtful policymakers. As with an increasing number of other complex issues, engineers of immigration reforms must be acutely attuned and responsive to public opinion. They must also understand how their proposals will be echoed (and frequently distorted) by the media. Analysts and idea makers, meanwhile, must fireproof their recommendations-so that they survive not only on paper, but in the heat of public debate. In the controversial realm of immigration, producing groundbreaking and well thought-out ideas is not enough; policymakers must frame these ideas in a way that will resonate with voters and thus have a realistic chance of being implemented. Only through a deep understanding of public opinion on immigration can they do so.

Recent history has proved that this is true even in the best of times. Today, in the midst of a global recession that has fueled nativist sentiment and made the politics of immigration more tendentious, it is truer than ever. Given that migration systems in both Europe and North America are essentially broken, the Transatlantic Council on Migration views as one of its most urgent priorities to help reformers chart a path through the politics of migration.

The goal, therefore, of this Council meeting was to fortify policymakers and champions of reform by systematically analyzing public opinion and media coverage of migration across the Atlantic. By convening an unusual constellation of leading pollsters, politicians, political consultants, journalists and migration experts, the Council was able to assess what is known about public opinion, media coverage and political rhetoric on migration in North America and Europe. The goal was to home in on strategies to advance immigration and integration reforms. The case studies examined by the Council focused on the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, though analyses from other European countries-including the Netherlands, Norway and Spain-also were brought into the discussion.

What follows are the principal conclusions from the Council meeting.

The Politics of Migration: Political Rhetoric, Media Coverage and Public Opinion

In the hands of progressive immigration reformers, political rhetoric is a poorly wielded tool-noticed when it does damage, but rarely used to advantage. Many groups with an anti-immigration agenda have deftly seized the language of security, patriotism and values to mobilize the public for more restrictionist immigration measures. Proponents of progressive reform, meanwhile, get tangled in politically correct language and fuzzy arguments that fail to move voters.

Politicians must learn that the language used to talk about immigration and immigrant integration does matter-perhaps as much as the ideas themselves. The right words can shape public opinion, foster support for policy initiatives and stave off criticism; whereas the wrong words can inflame and polarize public opinion, amplify existing anxieties and mobilize the opposition. A catchword like “amnesty” activates value judgments and can become lodged in the public consciousness, clouding debates and obstructing policy reforms that rely on a nuanced understanding of the issue.

In order to advance thoughtful reforms, politicians must understand and constantly assess public opinion of immigrants and immigration and frame their words in a way that reflects and addresses public hopes and anxieties. Polls show that people’s everyday experiences with immigrants influence their thoughts above all else, but a politician’s word choice sets the tone for the debate. Indeed, words and phrases can become imbued with new meanings depending on how and in what context they are communicated. Elected officials thus must heed the currents of public opinion and carefully calibrate their words so that policy initiatives have the best chance of being understood and accepted.

The following points are critical to making rhetoric more effective:

1. Language should be straightforward, unambiguous and honest. Euphemisms backfire. A politically correct phrase like “undocumented worker” polls poorly with the public because it comes off as disingenuous. “Illegal immigrant” is more effective because it states the issue clearly. The public does not want to be manipulated.

2. Rhetoric should acknowledge genuine public concerns. Politicians must acknowledge and address the public’s concerns about immigration, such as border control, public security and potential crowding in the labor market. Ignoring these concerns-or worse, suggesting they are evidence of prejudice-will only alienate voters. A pragmatic emphasis on problem-solving and a focus on real solutions must be balanced with an appeal to people’s hopes.

3. Politicians should appeal to values and emotion, not just recite statistics. Effective rhetoric hinges on the emotional resonance of key words, and understanding that people process words, phrases, images, values and emotions into connections known as networks of association. Politicians must understand and invoke the lived experiences and values of their constituents, and be mindful of the networks of association a word such as “immigrant” or “asylum seeker” will unconsciously trigger. Public opinion is based on (and influenced by) values more than by statistics; therefore addressing a contentious policy issue by “defending facts” can backfire.

4. Leaders need to be proactive, not reactive. Communication is more effective when leaders address immigration matters routinely and are on the offensive at key points rather than the defensive. Political crises offer opportunities for leaders to set the tone on sensitive issues and boost their authority by proactively creating a joint experience with the public instead of simply “reacting” to events.

5. Understand ambivalence. People hold divergent and often contradictory opinions on immigration, but can be primed with strong messages that underscore positive associations to immigrants and deactivate negative ones. In the US context, speaking about immigrants as reliable coworkers, trusted caregivers and individuals who share basic American values can spark these positive associations.

Even if policymakers rightly recognize the importance of fine-tuning their political rhetoric, they may not have the capacity to use language in a way that advances their ideas in the court of public opinion. Elected officials often have to speak to multiple audiences at once, and therefore must deliver messages that work on multiple stages (especially with a 24-hour media cycle that seizes upon sound bites and sensational catch phrases). Words may matter more or less depending on several factors, including: public priorities, local context and where the country is on its political trajectory. People can respond to a nuanced position if it appeals to their values, assuages their concerns and addresses their ambivalence, and appeals to their pragmatism and desire for leadership.

Broadly speaking, public anxiety about immigrants and immigration has increased across the globe in the past decade. While well-documented increases in migrant flows and stocks (especially illegal ones) are partially responsible, it is the rapid pace of these changes that has been a key driver of anxiety. Curiously, despite this decade-long trend of growing anxiety about immigration, the global economic crisis had not caused a spike in anti-immigrant sentiment as of the time of the Council’s meeting in spring 2009. People were more worried about their own economic and job prospects than immigration issues. This mild reaction could change if the recession and recovery turn out to be deeper and/or longer than expected, or conversely if the economy starts to pick up and immigrants are perceived to be recovering jobs more quickly and easily than natives.

There is gathering evidence that negative reactions to immigrants are indeed growing. But the issue cuts even deeper. Confidence in government is falling in countries everywhere. Many people no longer believe or trust that governments are properly managing the flows of people and the impact immigrants have on jobs, public services and the civic space. However, there is something approaching consensus as to the “right” policy prescriptions. Most clearly, publics want governments to create more stable, predictable and usually smaller flows of legal migrants; to dramatically reduce illegal entry; to prevent unscrupulous employers from undermining wages and work standards; and to ensure that immigrants learn the local language, obey the law, pay taxes and respect a country’s civic culture and institutions.

In this context, leadership is crucial in delivering a strong immigration narrative that is likely to garner public support. Politicians who take an active role in the debate, lean into controversial issues rather than respond in a reactive capacity, and emphasize that problem-solving can do well. Policy statements on immigration must appeal to the interests of the country as a whole, be rooted in an understanding of public concerns and current trends in public opinion, and also be forward-looking. Most importantly, immigration should be embedded in a narrative of solutions and measurable progress. Policymakers can cull lessons learned from polls to create more effective narratives and address their constituents’ desire for greater control over their lives. The most effective response is to acknowledge people’s fear of change, instead of trying to “counter” that fear with facts and statistics.

Public opinion is deeply influenced by media coverage of immigrants and immigration, which both reflects and influences the parameters of the policy debate. In some ways, the media act as an independent social actor, instead of simply as a mediating institution that reflects the concerns of our times, and must be understood as such. Media serve as both an agenda setter and driver on immigration issues, and a mirror, reflecting debates already going on in public and policy circles.

There are certain characteristics of media coverage on both sides of the Atlantic that obstruct the path to reform. The media focus disproportionately on illegality and overemphasize the immigrant as protagonist in that narrative (thus underplaying the role of government or employers in “enabling” illegality). Also, coverage tends to follow an “alarm-bell mentality,” as the media seize upon immigration stories primarily during crises, belying the fact that immigration is actually a fairly steady (and positive) social phenomenon. During crises, the loudest voices that get heard on media outlets are those that represent the most extreme positions, thus contributing to a polarization of public opinion that stymies reform and hinders compromise.

An effective political narrative must do three things: ground itself in the current local political context and acknowledge the public’s legitimate concerns about immigration; employ aspirational rhetoric that appeals to people’s emotions and values; and balance an appeal to people’s hopes with a pragmatic emphasis on problem-solving and a focus on real solutions. Also, comprehensive reforms will not work without taking into account the state of the economies and societies from which immigrants come (the root causes of immigration); and the myriad policy areas that immigration affects in the host society (like labor market and social protections, as well as social cohesion).

Conclusions and Policy Recommendations

Globalization, including rising immigration, is changing the fundamental character of our societies more quickly than at any other time in the post-World War II era. People are concerned that the rapid pace of change has left them without control over their lives and that the very identity of their communities is transforming before their eyes. The public has lost confidence in the government’s capacity to come to terms with, and manage, these changes effectively, particularly because the necessary social infrastructure and institutions cannot be built overnight, and only a few governments have engaged systematically in the hard work of preparing society to better understand and prepare itself for this new era.

This perceived loss of control manifests itself in a desire for visible borders and restrictions-a reality which politicians must acknowledge. In a climate where millions of workers, including disproportionate shares of immigrants, are out of work (and the legal status of many immigrants is increasingly at risk), the pressure from populist parties, especially on the right, makes maintaining a reasonable tone both more important and more difficult.

Governments must balance two main priorities: policy (making their immigrant-selection systems smarter) and politics (reassuring anxious publics that flows are managed effectively). An analysis of the interplay among public opinion, media coverage and policy reveals five lessons for crafting effective political rhetoric on immigration:

- In most immigration debates, fear resonates much more viscerally than hope. If advocates of reform do not deliver a strong aspirational message, the opposition will fill the void with passionate, negative rhetoric. Even if positive rhetoric does not prevail, it can blunt the effect of fear mongering.

- Politicians must talk about immigration reform in a way that addresses the national interest, not just the interests of certain segments of society; they must paint a picture of how society and national identity should look in the longer term, and explain how immigration fits into that construct.

- Leaders must strike a balance between language that addresses local anxiety (curbing illegal immigration and managing net legal flows to relieve costs and other pressures on society) and rhetoric that advances national priorities, such as recruiting immigrants with an eye toward maintaining economic competitiveness.

- Ambition must be balanced with pragmatism: it is important to propose legislation that legislators will actually pass, in addition to laws that make the most sense.

- The most effective messages should appeal to three different areas: smart selection (bringing in immigrants who will address economic growth and competitiveness directly); staying true to a country’s core values (e.g., continuing to permit refugee flows; also understanding that immigrants don’t move as economic units, but as families, and thus accommodating family immigration); and respect for the rule of law and security.

In Europe especially, governments must demonstrate to their publics that they are in control of both the composition and scale of immigration. In the past, politicians have made a strategic misstep by avoiding what they perceive to be tough, contentious issues, instead of “leaning into” them and thus getting them off the table. Perhaps the most critical factor in designing a reform package is to anticipate and help shape what the public will view as “success” in immigration reform, and ensure that the proposals can deliver this success.

In order to create the political space for this to work, however, politicians and advocates must recognize that immigration touches a deep nerve about national identity. Therefore, policymakers must create a forward-looking, values-based narrative that explains why our societies need immigrants and addresses the public’s practical concerns, instead of merely focusing on technical and bureaucratic issues that leave people feeling unsatisfied.

Balancing values with pragmatism can defuse social tensions. To do so, it is paramount to advance immigrant integration. Even incremental progress on integration increases the room for maneuvering on the broader immigration debate.

Managing the change that results from rapid immigration growth- that is, building the political and institutional infrastructure that can absorb and reflect the new diversity, as well as bringing the public along-takes time and challenges the way societies are organized socially, culturally and politically. Yet, nothing is more critical to succeeding with immigration than that.

Part II:

Public Opinion on Migration

German Public Opinion on Immigration and Integration

Oya S. Abali

Immigration to Germany: A Temporary Phenomenon Becomes Permanent