Public perceptions about immigration are wrong

A survey done for the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory shows a significant difference between public perceptions of immigration and the facts. Whilst most opinion polls only show a majority in favour of reducing immigration, this one shows the different feelings the public has about different groups and types of immigrant. It also shows a marked lack of understanding about what immigration is and how it is currently happening.

The largest divergence between perception and reality is what people think of when they think of immigration. The largest group of people responded by saying asylum seekers, and the fewest number of responses was for students. But students are the largest group of immigrants to the UK, and asylum seekers are the smallest.

62% of people thought of asylum seekers when thinking about immigrants, but only 4% of immigration is for asylum. Similarly, only 29% think of students, but they account for 37% of immigrants.

It also shows that people take little, if any, account of the fact that immigration really means the movement of people in and out of the country, not the arrival of foreigners. The movement of British citizens is not perceived as immigration by most people. But if a British citizen lives abroad for more than a year they are part of the net statistics, as they are when they return to live here. Nor do people distinguish much between temporary and permanent migration.

As the report says,

Members of the public and the government may be thinking about different things even when both are talking about “immigration.” Categories such as temporary immigrants and students loom large in official  statistics, but less than a third of the public has in mind either of these categories when thinking about immigrants.

But the most surprising thing about this polling is that the place in the UK that has the least support for reducing migration is London, where 30% of the population is foreign born. And that isn’t because more of the people polled in London were immigrants:

Londoners who identify themselves as white and British by both  birthplace and nationality are also statistically far less likely to  support reduced immigration than white British respondents elsewhere in  the country (53% in London compared to 75% in the rest of the country).

And the regional difference in attitudes is huge: 19% of Londoners want to reduce immigration “a lot”, but in the Midlands and Wales that figure is 56% - nearly three times as many people.

And there is more complexity when the figures for type of immigrant are considered. 40% of Londoners want to reduce asylum, compared to 22% that wants to reduce highly skilled worker immigration.

All of this seems to show two things. First, there is little correlation between the sort of migration that happens and the public attitude to it. As an example, in the 1960s and 1970s immigration was very low – but opposition to it was 85%. As another example, today most people oppose immigration and they think that immigration is mainly for asylum, when that is the smallest category.

Second that the variation in attitudes, both regionally and by type of migrant, show that this is a far more complex issue than politicians and newspapers would have you believe.

Whilst the polling does show a majority in favour of reducing migration, when you take the figures of people who want it to remain the same and people who want it reduced “a little” they are the same as the figure for people who want it reduced “a lot”. As many people are moderate as are extreme.

The benefit of polling like this is that it reveals the true extent of serious opposition to immigration to be much less than the headlines would have you believe.

In short, the good news is that gradually, by degrees of region and type of migrant, Britain is becoming a more hospitable place to immigrants.