“Immigration is not unpopular because people are irrational or hateful”

Let’s start with the inspiration behind your book. What prompted you to write a whole book on how democracies can make immigration popular again? Why is this topic so vast and complex that it requires an entire book?

For more than a decade my research has circled one stubborn puzzle: why do democracies keep producing immigration policies that almost nobody is happy with? By most economic measures immigration, and skilled immigration in particular, is one of the best things a country can do for itself. And yet it is politically toxic almost everywhere, and governments that manage it, whether they open up or clamp down, keep losing the public’s trust.

The book grew out of years of data and, frankly, frustration with how that puzzle is usually answered. The common explanation, especially on the pro-immigration side I am closest to, is that people are simply misinformed or prejudiced, and that the cure is to explain the benefits better or shame the skeptics. My research convinced me this is not only wrong but counterproductive. People’s general views on immigration are remarkably stable and barely move in response to new arguments, because they are rooted in basic values rather than the latest talking point. So the whole strategy of talking the public into immigration rests on a mistake.

It had to be a book because immigration is not one thing – and also because I had to finish my dissertation and get a job. [laughs] It is dozens of different policies, from skilled work to family reunification to asylum to enforcement, each with its own logic and politics. To show why the usual approaches fail and what works instead, you have to bring together public opinion data from many countries, the psychology of how these attitudes form, and the concrete design of all those policies, and tie them into one argument.

For all our readers that don’t have the time to read the whole book: Can you try to sum up the book’s main conclusions?

The central conclusion is simple to state: immigration is not unpopular because people are irrational or hateful. It is unpopular because of how it has been designed and delivered, which means we can change it. Most people are not at the extremes. Only a small share are firmly against all immigration, and an equally small share want it without any conditions. The large majority in between are conditional supporters. They judge immigration not by what it does for them personally but by whether they think it is good for the country, backing it when it looks controlled and beneficial, and turning against it when it looks chaotic. This is why the same people happily support bringing in doctors, engineers, students, and those fleeing real danger, yet object to a border that seems out of control. That is not a contradiction but a consistent demand that immigration visibly serve the public interest.

So the way to make immigration popular is not better slogans, and not simply lower numbers. It is to make it demonstrably beneficial: legal routes that are orderly, decisions that are fast and fair, rules that are genuinely enforced, and benefits people can see where they live. No country has made immigration popular without being selective about whom it admits and showing its borders are under control. Competence builds trust, and a government that is visibly in control earns the room to be generous. I call this making immigration popular by design, it’s also the name of my follow-up newsletter: policy built to earn public support rather than merely survive opposition.

To conclude, let’s try to look to the future. How do you think public opinion and government attitudes towards immigration will evolve in the coming years across the Western world? Do you see any signs that there might be a shift towards a more positive view of the issue? Or to put it another way: what conditions would need to be in place for such a shift to occur?

I am cautiously optimistic, but I would separate two things that are easy to confuse: short-term swings in mood and a real, lasting shift. Public opinion on immigration behaves like a thermostat. When a government pushes hard in one direction, opinion tends to drift back the other way. That is what we are seeing now: after years in which many people felt the system was out of control, much of Europe and the United States has turned toward restriction, and support for immigration is already starting to recover as enforcement tightens. But this kind of swing is shallow. It reflects people reacting to the current temperature, not a change in what they ultimately want, and the moment a system looks chaotic again, the mood turns back.

A genuine, durable shift is harder, because it means breaking that cycle of backlash and overreach. It requires governments to treat immigration as a normal problem to be managed well rather than a moral war to be won: being honest about trade-offs, taking concerns about order and fairness seriously instead of dismissing them, staying selective and keeping the system visibly under control, and starting where the public already agrees, such as skilled workers and well-run legal pathways. The encouraging finding from my research is that people are far more pragmatic than the loudest voices suggest. In almost every country their underlying preference is for immigration that is controlled and good for their society. If governments finally deliver that, immigration can stop being the issue that decides elections and become something democracies simply manage. That is the most hopeful outcome I can see, and it is within reach.