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The past few decades have been a period of high immigration to West European states. Since 1990, eight immigrants have arrived per year, on average, for every thousand residents. By 2017, foreign nationals comprised more than 10 per cent of their populations.1 These demographic shifts have had a dramatic impact on European societies and economies (see, for example, Geddes and Scholten 2016). They have also had powerful and controversial effects on public opinion and political behavior. Many scholars argue that high levels of immigration create a public backlash (Abrajano and Hajnal 2017; Kaufmann 2014; Norris and Inglehart 2019; Scheepers, Gijsberts and Coenders 2002; Strabac and Listhaug 2008) due to the economic and cultural threats it poses for native citizens. One needs to look no further than the rise of anti-immigrant, radical right parties for apparent evidence of this effect (for example, Ivarsflaten 2008; Lucassen and Lubbers 2012; Norris 2005; Rydgren 2008).
Yet countervailing forces might lead natives to support immigration even when immigration rates are high. These include immediate contact between natives and immigrants (for example, McLaren 2003; Wagner et al. 2003), the potential economic gains from immigration (for example, Dancygier and Donnelly 2013) and socialization in multicultural societies (for example, Bloemraad and Wright 2014). Whatever the mechanism, evidence of such habituation effects can also be readily found. Support for immigration in countries like Germany and the United Kingdom is at historically high levels (as we demonstrate below), and major European metropolitan areas are now both diverse in demography and cosmopolitan in orientation (Maxwell 2019). Indeed, some studies find that immigration raises public support (Van Hauwaert and English 2019).
This article tests these competing theories of public backlash and habituation in response to mass immigration. We examine whether higher inflows of immigrants produce lower public support and greater public concern about immigration, or whether these inflows lead to higher support and less concern. There is now considerable research on the link between immigrant numbers and immigration opinion (for example, Hopkins 2010; Kaufmann 2014; Meuleman, Davidov and Billiet 2009; Quillian 1995; Scheepers, Gijsberts and Coenders 2002; Strabac and Listhaug 2008).
However, four obstacles have prevented researchers from reaching definitive conclusions. First, in contrast to their static treatment in prior research, backlash and habituation are dynamic...