Dr Scott Blinder awarded funding from John Fell OUP Research Fund

Scott Blinder has received funding from the John Fell OUP Research Fund for his project `Immigration attitudes in British Electoral politics`.

With ever-increasing numbers of immigrants residing in the UK and Europe, public opinion among native populations continues to favour tighter restrictions on the number of immigrants and on their rights as residents, to the concern of many European policy-makers. Far right wing parties have won large portions of the vote in several elections around Europe by tapping into anti-immigrant attitudes, although not yet in the UK. How should politicians and scholars understand public concerns about immigration-as ethnic prejudice, for example, or as cultural pride, or as a defence of economic interests? Understanding anti-immigration sentiment has crucial implications for political and policy questions. For example, must mainstream parties make rhetorical and policy concessions to right-wing views to maintain public support? Are there pro-immigration arguments that might matter to publics predisposed to oppose immigration? And can the BNP make further inroads in British or European elections without a reputational shield (as in Elisabeth Ivarsflaten`s work on right-wing parties) against accusations of racism by political opponents? This project will address such questions through two methods. First, I will conduct a survey on British immigration attitudes under the auspices of the British Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project, led by Ray Duch (Oxford), Simon Jackman (Stanford), and Lynn Vavreck (UCLA). The survey will include questions assessing individuals` motivation to avoid appearing prejudiced, a step toward determining whether and to what extent racial or ethnic prejudice underlies anti-immigrant sentiment in the UK population. Second, I will conduct laboratory experiments testing the impact of different political messages that are either explicitly or implicitly about negatively-viewed immigrant groups. These are designed to show how campaigns and political debates might either mollify or exacerbate anti-immigrant sentiment, and how and to what extent anti-immigrant sentiment can be mobilized into right-wing votes.

The project started on 1 June 2009 and will run until 30 June 2011.

Scott Blinder is a Research Fellow in Comparative Government (US Politics), Department of Politics and International Relations and Nuffield College.